SEC & ACC Virtual Career Fair Fits Emerging Job Market Trends

SEC & ACC VIRTUAL CAREER FAIR FITS EMERGING JOB MARKET TRENDS

By Stuart Esrock, Ph.D. 

UofL is getting ready to take part in a big, virtual career fair with 28 other universities across the country.  And most experts think this type of event and virtual/remote hiring will become even more common in the future.

The SEC & ACC Virtual Career Fair is on April 6, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. More than 150 employers from across the nation are registered to participate in this virtual event, offering students full-time and part-time opportunities as well as internships.  Some of the participating companies include BMW, Hershey Entertainment, Morgan Stanley, Universal Studios, and the U.S. State Department to name just a few.   

Virtual career fairs like the upcoming event parallel the increasing prevalence of online technologies in every aspect of the global economy.  The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that just as remote work is becoming more normalized, so too will virtual hiring.  SHRM cites a recent LinkedIn survey in which 70% of respondents indicated hiring increasingly will combine virtual and in-person activity in order to achieve cost and time savings.  

SHRM also cites the work of Brazen, a virtual hiring platform that helped organizations streamline the process during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Brazen president Ryan Healy said, “…Virtual recruiting has earned its place in the ongoing talent acquisition strategies of nearly every industry across the country, and employers will continue to use virtual recruiting alongside more traditional in-person recruiting and interviewing.”

Offering further support for online hiring practices, job market consultant Isiah Hankel writing in Forbes magazine said, “Companies from every industry across the globe are increasingly interested in skills and characteristics that are difficult, if not impossible, to assess from resumes. But these qualities can be readily examined through virtual interviews. Further, because virtual interviews are now the norm and are easy for companies to conduct, the virtual interview seems to have displaced the resume as the first step of candidate screening.”

The SEC & ACC Virtual Career Fair on April 6 is a great opportunity for UofL students to move through this virtual screening process. Students can register here free of charge, start researching employers, and sign up to meet individually with employers.