Why Recruiters Need to Engage with Candidates at Hiring Events

It’s not the easiest feat to convince HR or executive team leadership to spend more money on hiring tools and functions, especially if you are supporting a small defense contractor. After exorbitant costs like an applicant tracking system, tools like LinkedIn Recruiter Talent Solutions, or staffing agency fees for those hard-to-fill roles, management may not be inclined to spend budgets on networking campaigns.

However, if recruiting teams are spending their time only in one area to find candidates, like sourcing from online talent pools or posting to their careers page, they are missing out on potential cleared candidates that perhaps are more engaged with in-person hiring events or job fairs.

As we have polled ClearanceJobs candidates and followers over the last few years, we have seen even as recent as this summer that almost 30% of candidates are ready for completely in-person events, with almost 50% ready for a mixture of virtual and in-person.

Hiring events are yet an additional touchpoint that recruiters can showcase their company brand, benefits, salaries, and job openings they are hoping to fill. There’s nothing like face-to-face, even if it’s virtual, to assess potential cleared candidates and different generational talent can sometimes only be reached through a certain medium (i.e., older generations may not be playing online as often, and only attending in-person job fairs handing out paper resumes).

Career or networking events are designed to bring contract / federal government recruiters, and highly qualified cleared talent together – even if the talent is only passively looking. But career events can also serve as a public relations affair. Organizations attending these will have their logo included in promotional materials with a huge chance to expand your reputation through public interaction.

Attending these events is an amazing way to bolster your hiring efforts, enabling you to meet candidates who are immediately looking for new work, and especially the current transitioning military talent who are eager to secure their first civilian security clearance role prior to ETSing.

Be sure to check out ClearanceJobs’ upcoming events – each one has a unique lineup of industry skillset focuses, and you can even book your own private event to reach cleared talent before the next recruiter.

THE CLEARED RECRUITING CHRONICLES: YOUR WEEKLY DoD RECRUITING TIPS TO OUT COMPETE THE NEXT NATIONAL SECURITY STAFFER.