The University of Jyväskylä is one of the largest and most popular universities in Finland and hosts over 14,000 students from nearly 100 countries around the world.
The University of Jyväskylä aspires to educate "responsible academic experts who change the world" with top-quality education and engaging initiatives designed to connect promising talents with the right hiring companies.
That's why in February 2022, the university hosted a virtual career fair for students looking for jobs or internships in the IT industry: DuunIT 2022.
And what was born as a career fair, soon turned into a jaw-dropping success.
Here's the full story!
The challenge
Back in 2018, the university hosted its first DuunIT career fair with Brella as a full in-person event. However, to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the organizing team of DuunIT 2022 made the decision to go fully virtual.
For the team, this decision didn't mean giving up on the same immersive face-to-face networking of an in-person event. Quite the contrary in fact, as they were determined to step up their networking strategy and deliver a whole new level of engagement.
After partnering with Brella for their in-person event, they were captured by our competitive AI-matchmaking capabilities, ease of use, and in our virtual event platform, they found the perfect solution to engage and connect their audience.
"We found Brella easy to use and very intuitive." - Mikael Mengüs, Sales Manager of DuunIT
The solution
DuunIT 2022 was a 1-day virtual career fair with a session-packed schedule. The agenda included plenty of Q&As sessions, speaker sessions, and of course, a lot of networking time.
Almost 300 participants joined DuunIT 2022 (more than double the amount of DuunIT 2018) and the organizing team was determined to make every last minute of their networking time count.
Mikael Mengüs, Sales Manager of DuunIT at the University of Jyväskylä, summarizes their main event goals into:
- Bring businesses and students together with effective networking,
- Boost engagement and visibility for IT companies.
This is how Brella helped them achieve their goals with a fully virtual career fair!
Attendee networking
Quality networking was the North star metric at DuunIT 2022.
To start things off, the organizing team worked together with Brella's Customer Success Manager to optimize their attendee matchmaking strategy.
Together, they set up the best categories for effective intent-based networking, making sure students could select whether they were looking for a job or they simply wanted to discover what kind of career opportunities are there in a specific field nowadays.
Plus, the organizing team scheduled more quality check calls with our Customer Success Manager in preparation for the event. During the calls, they reviewed the status of the event planning and made adjustments.
Thanks to the time they invested into tailoring their AI-matchmaking strategy to their participants, the team saw nearly 300 intent-based 1:1 meetings between students and companies happen in only one day.
Bring businesses and students together with effective networking - achieved ✅
More engagement & visibility for hiring companies
The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the labor market, and the organizing team of DuunIT 2022 was well aware of the dire need for fresh talents in the IT market.
For this reason, they strived to give attending companies a one-of-a-kind opportunity to boost their visibility and hire from a promising pool of candidates.
A good part of their event strategy revolved around educating companies on how to make the most out of the event platform.
The team took time to instruct companies on how to create and optimize their own virtual booths. Plus, each company was given its own virtual breakout room for holding Q&A sessions with students.
And there's more!
"What we've observed is that career fairs in Finland aren't usually very interactive. Attendees approach the booths but they don't normally engage much with representatives," Mikael has said.
To prevent this, the team encouraged companies not to just wait for candidates to request meetings but be proactive instead. Companies were also asked to check their top matches and schedule a minimum of three 1:1 meetings with prospective candidates.
All in all, a lot of hard work was put into setting the right basis for boosting visibility and this is what Mikael has reported:
"The companies who made full use of their virtual booths and breakout rooms had a lot more success with engagement and conversion rate. Engaged companies received more meeting requests, and we noticed that even companies with no representatives still achieved a high meeting acceptance rate by just being proactive on the platform."
Boost visibility for companies - achieved ✅
"The companies who made full use of their virtual booths and breakout rooms had a lot more success with engagement and conversion rate."
The results
After the event, Mikael and Brella's Customer Success Manager went through the event data. The results were incredible!
Almost 300 1:1 meetings between students and companies took place in only one day, and over 1,170 chat messages were exchanged (out of these, 25 chat conversations converted into 1:1 meetings).
All this networking also translated into a spectacular average attendee engagement rate of 9.7 joined by a meeting acceptance rate of 86% (way above the average 36%).
Yet, the most phenomenal achievement was that 100% of the companies scheduled 1:1 meetings with an average of 14 meetings per company.
And Mikael's final comment couldn't make us any happier: "Brella made the difference. Our attendees felt they were really listened to and had real meaningful interactions thanks to Brella's networking capabilities."
"Brella made the difference. Our attendees felt they were really listened to."
Whether you host your career fair virtually or fully in-person, a lot relies on your networking strategy.
AI-powered matchmaking is the best way to guarantee your attendees get the best opportunities to connect with the right hiring companies.
Brella was designed to foster intent-based connections, and we're thrilled to help you supercharge your next career fair with all our networking and matchmaking capabilities.
Schedule your free call with our event experts today!
