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2020 Virtually Unimaginable – Our experience at our first Virtual Recruitment Conference

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2020 Virtually Unimaginable – Our experience at our first Virtual Recruitment Conference

If you told me 12 months ago that I’d be sat in my living room, moving my avatar around a virtual conference hall to try and find the AB Tasty ‘virtual stand’, I would have asked you if you wanted a sit-down and glass of water. However, that’s exactly what I found myself doing last Friday.

About two months ago myself and my fellow talent team colleague, Sofia, were contacted by Pole Emploi (French government agency helping people to find work) about the ‘Village Numérique’ job conference that they were putting together. It was a chance to meet developers from lots of different backgrounds and find the candidates that we’re looking for, so we jumped at the chance. 

We’ve participated in ‘virtual job dating’ before, so nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I was expecting a waiting list and a one-to-one video call with candidates who might be interested in speaking to us. The particularity of this event only dawned on me after having downloaded the necessary software and being asked to create an avatar. As the software plastered my face onto a Sims-like mannequin to create a being that slightly resembled me, it dawned on me that this would be ‘me’ for the conference and I would have full control over this avatar like in a video game. 

We were able to kit out our stand without lugging any heavy marketing materials across Paris, and struggling to put them up as I always do. We simply dragged and dropped our content into the poster spots and there were even a few digital house-plants to spruce up the place.

It all seemed a bit silly at first, but as the conference got started and I explored the digital hall that the team had created for us to network I realized that it brought down a lot of barriers. Sometimes at job conferences, people feel nervous to approach you and vice versa and networking is a skill that not everyone has. The digital aspect stripped away the shyness and acted as a sort of leveller where it seemed everyone was confident.

What was great about the day was the ability to meet so many people and chat to them about what they were looking for, transfer URLs to our careers pages directly, be able to consult their LinkedIn pages and have a cup of tea all at the same time. We currently have several candidates in process from the conference.

Apart from the great candidates we met, it was also fantastic for us to exchange with other recruitment professionals, Sofia took part in a digital round table about recruitment in the French sector along with Openclassrooms and Humind, and exchanged some really interesting points. It was a full (digital) house!

We also met a fantastic number of training providers who were able to talk to us about potential candidates and partnerships.

In short, I have to admit I was sceptical about the virtual aspect of this conference and felt it might be a gimmick, but it was one of the most successful recruitment conferences I’ve ever participated in. So there you have it, a positive in 2020!

We hope that the candidates we met at this conference will join the AB Tasty family shortly, but we still have several other roles open. Take peek at our careers page for an up to date list of openings: Jobs @ AB Tasty

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