| Q & A 07.02.09 8:26 AM |
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| Monster's Phil Cavanagh on Taking Things In-House and Managing the Crowds at Career Fairs |
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One of the newer elements to Monster's touring career fair is a presentation in which recruiters offer tips to job seekers about being competitive candidates in the rough market.
Photo: Courtesy of Monster.com
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FROM NEW YORK The demand for jobs has been particularly high in 2009, and to accommodate the need, online job placement service Monster.com decided to revamp its touring career fair by producing it in-house and making 140 stops in the U.S. alone throughout the year. Monster Worldwide Inc. senior director of global events Phil Cavanagh oversees all of the company’s corporate events and trade shows and worked with his team to launch Keep America Working. He spoke with us about what Monster did to make the tour's rigorous schedule go smoothly and how career fairs seem particularly rewarding in this economic climate.
How is the Keep America Working Tour different than previous Monster.com job fairs?
Our old model was a straightforward career fair. Job seekers would come in, present resumes to recruiters and then leave. It used to be managed through a third party, but this time we decided to do it all in-house by our global events team.
We looked at people's needs this year, and we found that they're really just looking for information and a sense of empowerment. So we created the event with three components. It does have the recruiting area where employers interact with the job seekers, but we've added a theater presentation that has our career experts telling people how to stand out in the market and a kiosk area that shows attendees how to use the different career tools on Monster.com.
The tour is going through the U.S. and Europe. How are you transporting all of the build-outs?
The idea when we were creating our U.S. tour was to make it totally portable, so the logistics of moving it from city to city weren't difficult and we could use some of the same components and pieces overseas as well. It was a challenging element in the beginning, but I'm happy with the job we've done. The kiosks, for example, stand on a base area that people are walking on when looking at the LCD monitors, but the whole unit folds up, so that base is also the interior of the unit's shipping crate. Everything can break down quickly and go right into the trucks.
Crowd control has been a major issue facing career fairs this year. What have you done to beef up security and organize attendees?
We allow folks to preregister online, so for those who went out of their way to commit to coming, we can quickly check them in at a separate station. The walk-ins still have to wait in lines, but breaking the groups up has been effective in getting more people in quicker. We also looked for venues that have ample foyer space, so that if the line does get long, we don't have people stuck out in the elements.
What are the challenges of ensuring a variety of employers from different industries in all of the markets?
The real challenge is keeping the mix of employers on site representative of the job postings on Monster.com. There are actually companies hiring right now, so it's the availability of jobs that dictates some of the metropolitan areas we went into. Our sales representatives work on engaging individual employers, and we identify hiring companies from the site.
The dates have changed a little based on need. When we first went to Boston, we were downtown, which was great, but when we started talking with employers and our sales team, we decided we'd be better off along the 128 Corridor, which is a suburban area. There was a need there and more positions specific to that local area.
Which vendors have been most valuable to the series?
We use our trade show installation and dismantling team—Teamwork Inc., based out of Easton, Massachusetts—so they've been on site making sure that all of the components are there and fitting together. They travel with us.
How are you measuring the success of the tour?
The official launch was March 5 in New York, and in about four months, we've already brought through 36,000 job seekers and 1,028 employers. It gets hard for us to fully track all of the confirmed jobs once candidates go into other companies' HR systems, but we know we've placed almost 25,000 people with jobs already. It makes it seem a little more optimistic out there.
—Michael O'Connell
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