Eight smart reasons to sponsor a job fair

Sponsorship is one of the fastest growing forms of marketing. It is the perfect opportunity to increase brand recognition, attracting visitors to your business before, during and after an event.

Sponsorship can achieve any number of business objectives, such as improving visibility, heightening awareness, enhancing a brand’s image, and customer or candidate affinity.

Sponsorship, if done correctly, allows a business to target a large proportion of its target demographic quickly, and more efficiently.

If you’re considering sponsoring a job fair, here’s our top eight reasons for why you should. We’ve also included a list of questions you should be asking the event hosts to ensure that you’re equipped to maximise the success of your sponsorship.

 

Brand visibility

Exhibiting at job fairs is a great option if you’re looking to recruit top talent, particularly in industries where talent (or experience) is in short supply. However, if you want to get ahead of your competitors, sponsorship opportunities can help you achieve this.

Sponsors (particularly headline sponsors) will usually benefit from months of promotion in the run up to the event. Event organisers will be creating emails, social posts, blogs and press releases in the run up to the event – all of which you could be part of.

During the pre-show promotion, you’re also reaching a pool of potential candidates that don’t physically attend the job fair for whatever reason. On the day itself, 1,500 might walk through the door, but the event may have been marketed to over ten thousand people to get those numbers in attendance. If you’re a headline sponsor, your logo will be used across all the relevant marketing materials in the run up to the show, so your brand will be directly in front of these candidates.

Ask the host:

• How are you marketing the event in the run up to the show?
• How many people will the event be marketed to?
• What types of jobseekers are you trying to attract?

 

Targeting is key

If you’re looking to sponsor a job fair, being targeted in your approach will be the key to success. For example, if you’re an airline looking for experienced pilots, you should be looking to sponsor an aviation based job fair. Industry specific job fairs will naturally attract relevant, qualified and experienced people, who you will most definitely want to speak to. If you’ve found worth in exhibiting at the event, why not take that extra step to maximise your presence?

Another thing to look out for at an event is the quality of footfall. Events that have 10,000 visitors may look great on paper, but in reality, only 20 of those visitors might be suitable to your business. Smaller events often adopt a qualit over quantity approach, and will structure their marketing efforts in accordance.

Ask the host:

• How many people do you expect to visit the event?
• How qualified are they?
• Would they be a good match for what we’re looking for?

Candidate perception

By sponsoring an event, your brand is standing a little taller than everyone else in the room, positioning you as market leaders, and the best in the industry.

Branding isn’t just a buzz word thrown around by marketers – it’s all the elements that come together  to build up a perception of a business in a consumer, or jobseeker’s mind. Your brand identity defines your business – and more importantly, it’s what separates you from the crowd.

Jobseekers will be looking for clues about what it would be like to work for you, through what your brand is saying to them. If your brand is benefitting from more exposure, candidates will naturally gravitate towards what they think is the best company to work for within the room.

Ask the host:

• Where will my stand be located?
• What exposure will my brand get during the show?

 

Expand your reach

Sponsorship, even in simpler forms, such as featuring in an official show guide, can have a huge impact on your return on investment. If you’re exhibiting at a job fair with 1,500 visitors attending, it’s unlikely that you would get the chance to speak to everybody throughout the course of the day.

By featuring in a show guide, you have the opportunity to reach even more potential candidates, and provide further information on why jobseekers should apply for your jobs.

Ask the host:

• Is there a show guide?
• How many will be printed?
• Will there be an online version?
• How can I be involved?  

 

Optimised lead generation

Headline sponsors will naturally get the best stand location and maximum exposure leading up to, and during the event. You should expect to experience more interest and website traffic from visitors during the job fair.

Event organisers will usually provide data about attendees in advance (job titles, experience, etc…) so make sure that you take advantage of the information available to you. For example, if you find out that more pilots are attending than originally thought, you could send more exhibitors who deal with pilot recruitment specifically.

Ask the host:

• Will I get the best stand location?
• Can you provide me with more data about who’s registered?

 

Supporting the industry

Every industry has its own recruitment bugbears. Often there’s a shortage of a particular job role, so if you’re sponsoring an event which encourages new talent to come into the industry, it will not only strengthen your brand’s image for prospective employees, it will boost loyalty with your existing employees. The new wave of ‘millennial employees’ have a social conscience, and are increasingly more aware about how their business can support worthy causes.

Linking your business with a worthy cause can also attract positive media attention, which can have long lasting effects.

Ask the host:

• Does the event support the industry?
• How does it do that?

You can track return on investment

Businesses will often struggle to measure a return on investment from sponsorship if they haven’t set any key objectives beforehand.

Say for instance, it usually costs you £1,000 to hire a B1 Licensed Engineer, and your objective is to halve that cost (to £500 per hire) by exhibiting at the job fair. If the event cost you £2,000 to exhibit, you’d be looking to employ four engineers from the job fair to meet your objectives.

If you were to sponsor the event for an additional £2,000, you’d have heightened exposure, and thus expect to generate more applicants. If sponsoring a job fair gained you an additional four hires, your objective of halving your recruitment costs would still have been met. Any more hires after that would bring your cost per hire down, and push up your return on investment.

You should also check with the event hosts that your goals are achievable before any money changes hands. If the hosts only anticipate to attract 5 B1 Licensed Engineers, you’re unlikely to ever meet your key objectives.

Ask the host:

• Are my goals of [insert goals] achievable?

 

Emotional connection

The modern wave of ‘millenials’ are now looking for more than just a job – they’re looking for a purposeful career in which they can align their hopes, dreams and aspirations with.

Similarly, recruiters want to ensure that they have found the right fit within their business – for a start, staff retention will be higher if an employee is suited to the company. Furthermore, an employee is more likely to work harder and do a good job if they feel a strong connection to their work and employer.

Job fairs are the perfect way to meet numerous potential employees in a relaxed environment. The ability to shake hands and share stories can help establish great relationships early on between employer and employee.  

By sponsoring an event, not only will you get the chance to speak with jobseekers during the day, but you’ll also have the opportunity to do some ground work (via emails, blogs etc.) in the run up to the event. Job fairs, by nature, are fast paced, and jobseekers will only have a five minute window in which to speak to exhibitors. By sponsoring a job fair, you can make time spent on the day more productive, as jobseekers will already have the background knowledge on your company before the event begins.

Ask the host:

• Who will the event me marketed to, and how often?

 

Expanding your reach

Event hosts will often have a network of partners in which to promote the event through. As headline sponsor, your business should be included in all the pre-show marketing leading up to the show. By sponsoring an event, you’re also tapping into new audiences which could potentially lead onto other opportunities.

Ask the host:

• Which partners do you work with?
• How will the event be promoted?