Your association’s online career center offers members a year-round valuable benefit. Providing career growth and job opportunities, it helps you support members through every stage of their careers.
Seasonality in job hunting and recruiting are usually somewhat predictable, making it relatively easy to know how to optimize your career center throughout the year. For example, early winter is usually a great time to plan for the new year, as companies typically have fewer job opportunities during the holiday season. Springtime is a popular job-hunting season and a great time to promote your career center as many college graduates begin looking for their first jobs and companies bump up recruiting efforts to start the year.
But this year is an exception, to say the least. Many companies’ plans have been postponed, while others have accelerated planned activities to meet new demands. Many individuals have lost their jobs or have decided to change professions. The normal ebbs and flows of job hunting and job opportunities have changed – at least for the remainder of the year.
Here are two ways to optimize your career center in the coming months as we continue to navigate these irregular times:
Offer an online career fair.
In typical years, fall is when we often see a wave of hiring. With summer vacations behind them, job seekers are eager to begin searching for their next career opportunity before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, members often look to their associations to provide career advancement opportunities and resources at their annual conferences. Typically, many of these conferences happen in the fall, making it one of the best times for an onsite career event, hosted by your career center in conjunction with your conference.
But if your association had planned an in-person annual conference this fall, it has likely been cancelled, postponed, or moved to a virtual event. So, this is the perfect opportunity to offer a virtual career fair.
Virtual career fairs offer members a convenient, dynamic, low-cost way to network and engage with employers when attending onsite events aren’t possible. These types of online events offer many of the features of an onsite career fair without the need for employers, job seekers, and your organization to travel. Members and recruiters can meet one-on-one, online, in the comfort of their office or home.
Gear up for a hiring wave.
As businesses begin reopening and looking toward 2021, many will be looking to fill job openings. This fall and winter are a great time to prepare for an increase in your career center traffic and engagement.
Make sure your online career center has functionality to help you help employers fill their job openings with your members. For example:
- Job postings and distribution – Allow employers to pay a fee to easily post job opportunities and distribute them to the right audience based on skills, certifications, geography, and more.
- High ROI employer products – Provide employers with additional paid options, such as job emails and promotions on your association’s social media feeds, that maximize exposure of their job postings and improve their return on investment.
- Candidate screening and management – Give employers the functionality to attract, screen, and manage applicants online.
Take your career center to the next level
These are unusual times, but with the right career center technology solutions, you can adapt and continue to deliver great career experiences for your members year-round.
