Recruiting events simplified: A recruiter’s perspective on using the Greenhouse Events app

2 mins, 59 secs read time

As someone that’s incredibly familiar with the typical career fair experience from all angles (attendee, host, employer), I know how energetic and hectic they can be. Attendees have a list of employers they’d like to visit, while also leaving time for others that catch their eye. Employers meanwhile are busy making sure they’re presenting their company and job opportunities in a compelling way.

The last thing anyone wants to worry about are resumes. Attendees are often worried they didn’t bring enough copies, stressed about making sure each copy remains crisp and clean in the hustle and bustle, and most importantly, that the employers actually keep track of them. On the flip side, employers have to deal with figuring out how to collect and organize resumes during the event and then have the tedious task of physically sorting through all of them afterwards.

Thankfully, during a recent trip representing Greenhouse Software at Denver Startup Week, I used our own Greenhouse Events App which completely changed the on-site experience. With the Events App, you’re able to eliminate the need to collect physical copies of resumes, organize your prospects in a CRM for a single source of truth, and make the process of reviewing resumes much simpler and more efficient. Here are a few tips I learned from my experience:

1. Follow up with customized email campaigns

One of the best features about the Events App is the ability to label candidates by the specific event you met them at and send them customized email messaging when they submit their information.

2. Pre-event prep

Prior planning is key! Be sure to create the unique source and customized email templates for the event before starting the process of setting up the event within the app. That way, all of the information you need is ready for you!

3. Create tags

Tags are a very useful way to mark prospects for specific roles/departments. This is super helpful for filtering through potential candidates after your event.

4. Create custom questions to get the information you need

When entering their information in the Events App, prospects will be able to provide their name and email address. Using Custom Questions is a great way to gather any additional information that you’d like (e.g. graduation date, coding languages, etc.)

5. Set up auto-replies

Prospects will also be able to snap a photo of their resume to upload to their profile. In case they don’t have a physical copy, they can still enter their information which will trigger an automatic reply email with a link to upload their resume at a later time.

6. Lighting for better resume photos

During the event, consider having an additional light source in case lighting isn’t the best in the venue. This ensures that your prospects are able to take well-lit, easy to read photos of their resumes.

Using the Events App made my experience at the career fair so much easier than at previous in-person recruiting events. Instead of being preoccupied, and let’s face it distracted, with the task of keeping track of physical resumes, I got to focus on having fun and engaging conversations with prospects. An extra treat was getting to see people’s faces shift from confusion to excitement when I handed them an iPad instead of taking their paper resume. Not only did they really appreciate the ease of use, but word of mouth started to spread that we were using an app to collect information, drawing more prospects in to chat with us and test it out for themselves.

Discover all the ways the Greenhouse Events app can help you streamline in-person recruiting.