Overview
iCIMS' Text Engagement (formerly TextRecruit) users can engage with registered candidates in virtual events scheduled for designated times via the Virtual Career Fairs feature. Candidates experience virtual career fairs as one-on-one chats with recruiters in a customer-branded web environment. Text Engagement users experience them as individual conversations with multiple candidates simultaneously in their Text Engagement inbox. Both candidates and recruiters can reap the same benefits of the informative conversations at in-person career fairs, with the convenience of messaging online.
Users create virtual career fairs in the Text Engagement web application, and they send or promote registration via system-generated links that allow candidates to complete a simple registration in advance of the event. Virtual career fair registrants receive a text to enter the virtual career fair via a web browser shortly before its start. They then enter a queue for recruiters to claim their conversation and message them in real-time.
This article is a guide for users to use the Virtual Career Fairs feature if it has already been enabled in their Text Engagement system. If you are interested in enabling virtual career fairs, reach out to your iCIMS account manager.
This article is composed of the following sections:
Understanding the Virtual Career Fair Candidate Experience
Candidates experience virtual career fairs as one-on-one chats with recruiters in a customer-branded web environment; candidates do not have the ability to view or engage with one another. This section outlines the candidate experience with virtual career fairs, including registration and entering the event.
Candidate Registration
Candidate registration for virtual career fairs is classified as either inbound or outbound depending on how candidates have accessed the registration link. Each type of registration is described below:
- Inbound Candidates: An inbound candidate means that the candidate has registered for a virtual career fair via a promoted public registration link. Inbound candidates can find registration links advertised in places such as billboards, storefront signage, print or video advertisements, emails, etc.
- Outbound Candidates: An outbound candidate means that the candidate has registered for a virtual career fair via a link sent to the candidate through either a direct one-on-one message or a campaign via the Text Engagement system.
Both types of candidate registration involve the same type of registration link generated by a Text Engagement user; for more information on generating the link for candidate registration, review the Generating Event Registration Links section below.
Regardless of how a candidate accesses the registration link for the virtual career fair, the steps below outline how the candidate can register for the event.
Note: These steps assume that the candidate has received a text from a recruiter with the link to the virtual career fair (i.e., this is an outbound candidate). The steps for inbound candidate registration are similar; however, an inbound candidate may have to manually enter the link in a web browser to open the registration page.
- Click the provided link to open the registration page.
- Review all available events. Click the applicable virtual career fair to open the registration form for that event.
- Complete the First Name, Last Name, and Phone Number fields (all required).
- Click Schedule to register for the virtual career fair; a confirmation message displays with a countdown of hours until the event. A confirmation text is also sent to the registered phone number.
- Click Got It to exit the registration.
Notes:
- Registrants who do not have existing Text Engagement profiles will have new profiles created in the system at the time they register for the virtual career fair.
- Registrants who have not been texted at the provided phone number from the Text Engagement system are sent an opt-out message.
- Once a candidate has registered for an event, they display in the Candidates section of the View Calendar Item popup in the Text Engagement system.
Entering the Virtual Career Fair
Once the candidate has received a reminder notification, they can click the URL in that SMS message to enter the virtual career fair. If the candidate clicks the URL prior to the scheduled start time of the event, a countdown timer displays to indicate how soon the event will begin.
Note: If a candidate attempts to enter the virtual career fair via the URL after the event has ended, an Ended message displays and no further action is available to the candidate.
Once the candidate has entered an active event, it is a Text Engagement user’s responsibility to claim the candidate for the virtual career fairand begin the conversation with a message. While candidates wait to be claimed after the start of the virtual career fair, a Waiting for recruiter to join the chat message displays in the web page, indicating that they are in a waiting period and a recruiter will soon start a conversation with them. The Text Engagement user experience at this time is described in the next section of this article on Understanding the Virtual Career Fair Recruiter Experience.
Understanding the Virtual Career Fair Recruiter Experience
Once the candidate enters the virtual career fair, a notification displays to users with access to these events in the Text Engagement web application to alert them to the candidate waiting to be claimed in the queue. Users can claim individual candidates or all available candidates at once. Once the user claims a candidate, they are brought to the candidate conversation view in the Inbox for messaging.
Tip: To ensure that there are not more candidates than available recruiters that can manage candidates for the virtual career fair, you can set a limit on the number of candidates allowed to register for each event. For more information, review the Creating a Virtual Career Fair section below.
Claiming Candidates
The steps below outline how a user can claim and message a candidate to start a conversation during a virtual career fair.
- From the dashboard, click the Notifications (bell) icon in the top right corner of the Text Engagement web application.
- Hover over the applicable candidate chat; then, click Claim to claim the candidate. The candidate conversation view displays in the user’s Inbox.
- Note: Users can click Claim All to claim all displayed candidates at once.
- From the candidate’s conversation view, enter and send a message to the candidate. The candidate’s communication channel at the top of their profile is set to VCF, indicating that the candidate is currently messaging in the virtual career fair channel.
Notes:
- Any user with Virtual Career Fairs access can view all virtual career fairs and claim any candidate who joins; virtual career fairs cannot be created or managed per team.
- Once a candidate leaves the virtual career fair in their web browser, their communication channel automatically updates accordingly from VCF to SMS.
- When an Automatic Text Response has been configured in the Text Engagement Profile Settings menu, that message will be sent in response to the candidate’s first message during the virtual career fair. For more information on Profile Settings, review the Understanding Profile Settings & Preferences article.
Creating a Virtual Career Fair
Before candidates and recruiters can participate in a virtual career fair, the calendar item must first be created in the Text Engagement system. The steps below outline how to add a new virtual career fair to the system.
- From the dashboard, click Calendar on the left sidebar to open the Calendar page.
- From the Calendar page, click the Add Event button in the top right to launch the Add Calendar Item popup.
- From the popup, enter a Title for the virtual career fair; there is a 50-character limit.
- Select Virtual Career Fair from the Type dropdown.
- Enter the following required details on the Details tab as follows:
- Date: Enter the date for the virtual career fair in the Date field. By default, Date is set to the current date.
- Start: Enter the virtual career fair start time in the Start field. By default, Start is set to the start of the following hour. For example, if the user is adding a calendar item at 12:05 PM, the default Start is 1:00 PM.
- End: Enter the virtual career fair end time in the Start field. By default, End is set to the start of the following hour plus one hour (i.e., a one-hour time slot). For example, if the user is adding a calendar item at 12:05 PM, the default End is 2:00 PM.
- Optionally update the following fields, if needed:
- Recurrence: The virtual career fair recurrence is set to Does Not Repeat (i.e., the virtual career fair is scheduled only for the date and time selected) by default. Select a recurrence, if desired:
- Repeats Daily: The virtual career fair is scheduled every day of available working hours at the time indicated in the Start and End fields, described above, starting on the date indicated in the Date field and continuing indefinitely.
- Repeats Weekly: The virtual career fair is scheduled every week on the same day of the week determined by the Date field. For example, if the Date field is set to 02/08/2021 (Monday), then a weekly recurrence will be scheduled every Monday at the time indicated in the Start and End fields, described above, starting on the date indicated in the Date field and continuing indefinitely.
- Repeats Monthly: The virtual career fair is scheduled every month on the same day of the month determined by the Date field. For example, if the Date field is set to 02/08/2021, then a monthly recurrence will be scheduled on the eighth day of every month (e.g., 03/08/2021) at the time indicated in the Start and End fields, described above, starting on the date indicated in the Date field and continuing indefinitely.
- Users: Enter any Text Engagement users who should be invited to attend the virtual career fair. The organizer is added by default. The organizer can be removed; however, at least one user must be added to the virtual career fair.
- To remove yourself from the Users list, click the Clear (X) icon next to your name.
- To add a new Text Engagement user, click into the Users field and type the user’s email address to select them.
- Note: The Organizer is the user adding the virtual career fair; this field cannot be modified.
- Candidate Limit: If desired, enter a different total number of candidates that can register for this virtual career fair; the default is 50 candidates.
- Add Description: If desired, add a description of the virtual career fair to be sent to users and candidates; there is a 160-character limit.
- Click the SMS Reminders (Candidates) tab. By default, two candidate reminders are selected. If desired, update the number of candidate reminders for this virtual career fair to only one reminder. Review the SMS reminder(s) on the tab, and update the reminder time and/or reminder text, if needed.
- Note: The reminder must contain a link to the virtual career fair for candidate access.
- Click the SMS Reminders (Users) tab. By default, two user reminders are selected. If desired, update the number of user reminders for this virtual career fair to only one reminder. Review the SMS reminder(s) on the tab, and update the reminder time and/or reminder text, if needed.
- Click Save to add the virtual career fair.
Accessing and Editing Virtual Career Fairs
Virtual career fairs are a type of calendar item in iCIMS' Text Engagement; therefore, they can be accessed and edited similarly to meetings and events. This section describes how to access virtual career fairs from the Calendar page, edit virtual career fairs, and generate URLs for inviting candidates.
This section is broken down into the following categories:
Editing Virtual Career Fairs
The steps below outline how to edit an existing virtual career fair in the system.
- From the dashboard, click Calendar on the left sidebar to open the Calendar page.
- From the Calendar page, click the virtual career fair name from the calendar or list view. The View Calendar Item popup displays.
- Click the Edit (pencil) icon in the upper right corner of the popup.
- From the popup, edit any virtual career fair details as applicable.
- Once the desired changes have been made, click Save to update the virtual career fair.
Note: Virtual career fairs that have ended cannot be edited.
Generating Event Registration Links
Once a virtual career fair has been created, users can generate and share registration URL links for candidates to register for virtual career fairs and events. Users can generate links for multiple active virtual career fairs and events or individually for a single virtual career fair.
Note: Links cannot be generated for virtual career fairs/events that have ended.
More information on registration can be found in the previous
Candidate Registration section of this article.
Generating a Link for Multiple Active Virtual Career Fairs & Events
The steps below outline how to generate a link for one or more active virtual career fairs and events at once.
- From the dashboard, click Calendar on the left sidebar to open the Calendar page.
- Click Link to Active Events. The Link to Events popup launches and generates a link to all virtual career fairs/events available on the Text Engagement calendar.
- Click the Copy Link button within the popup to copy the link to your clipboard; the link can now be pasted where applicable.
- Click Done to exit the popup.
- Paste the link wherever applicable to promote the virtual career fair(s) and event(s) (e.g., via social media) or directly invite candidates to join (e.g., via an SMS message).
Copying a Link for a Single Virtual Career Fair
The steps below outline how to generate a link for a single virtual career fair.
- From the dashboard, click Calendar on the left sidebar to open the Calendar page.
- From the Calendar page, click the name of the virtual career fair from the calendar or list view. The View Calendar Item popup displays.
- Click the Copy Link button within the popup.
- Exit the popup.
- Paste the link wherever applicable to promote the virtual career fair (e.g., via social media) or directly invite candidates to join (e.g., via an SMS message).
