Here are our top tips for engaging students at a careers event
School career events are only effective if your students take action following the event; the action can sometimes be to rule out options. If you are organising a careers event at your school here are our top tips for creating an engaging environment.
Be social
Very often, queues can form around the popular stands. The last thing that you want is for one of your ambitious students to be standing near the back of the queue, become bored and then walk away from a visitors stand. Making the experience interactive should be your number one priority. Prepare students with a pre-event briefing and on the day elicit the support of members of staff who can welcome students to the event and encourage students to speak to the visitors.
Encourage your visitors to communicate their enthusiasm to students
If a student walks past a stand and sees a visitor who is sat down, scrolling through their phone, they’ll probably form a negative impression, and will move to a more popular, busier visitor. If by contrast, that representative spends the event on their feet, walks over to students and asks them if they’d be interested in checking their stand out, their enthusiasm will rub off on your students, who will then see that organisation as a vibrant, interesting organisation that is worth finding out a bit more about.
Ask exhibitors to bring attractive marketing materials
Pens, t-shirts, mouse mats, laptop covers and mugs all make memorable event mementoes which will direct students to the visitors brand and websites, where they can find out more about the opportunities they have on offer.
Pieces of paper and leaflets are likely to be lost at the bottom of bags, dropped on the floor, or simply discarded.
Equally, a laptop cover or mouse mat is likely to be used regularly and will sit on a student’s desk, reminding them every day of opportunities with any one of the organisations who visited your careers event awaits them.
How can the careers calendar help you to create more engaging events?
The careers calendar is a free event planning tool that will help schools to measure how effectively their events are engaging their students and will give them the information they need to make their events more successful as quickly and easily as possible.
Our unique calendar also allows schools to plan, manage and deliver their careers events from one platform.
The tool, which is free to schools, is already saving 50-100 hours of admin time per event.
For a demonstration on how to use the platform email us here.
If you would like to speak with me directly please email me here or call me on 0330 120 0628.