Your members are the lifeblood of your association. You’re constantly designing programs during the member lifecycle, looking for smart ways to provide value at the right time. Some great times to connect are when:
- A member experiences a career transition.
- A recent graduate with a student membership seeks his or her first position in the professional workforce.
- An up-and-comer takes a timely course to become better qualified for a particular job board posting.
To keep their engagement flowing, you need to find ways and opportunities to get them to and keep them on your website, interact with you, and network with each other. You also will want to reach out to potential new members and show them enhanced and tangible value.
One way to achieve both is to organize and host career events.
Remember that one of the top reasons members join your association is for professional development and networking opportunities. Career events, such as onsite career fairs, virtual career fairs, online networking events and open houses, bring both of those value propositions to your members and are great ways to engage them.
These events provide opportunities to connect with companies looking to hire someone specifically with their skillsets and interests. Events like these aren’t ones your members can simply find around town. And, nowhere else can you bring together so many employers with such a targeted audience.
Value for employers.
Employers value career events because it directly connects them to your members—those who are looking for a career change or new job. Your association also provides employers the opportunity to get in front of passive job seekers. Virtual and online career events deliver great opportunities to passive job seekers, simply because it doesn’t involve a lot of effort on their part. Instead, career events bring the opportunity to passive job seekers and align any opportunity with their professional interests and skills.
Value for your members.
Members find value in career events, too. That’s because now they don’t have to hit up every connection associated with a desired destination—like a third cousin once removed who at one time dated someone who knew a person who used to work at the company.
Rather, members can come to your online or onsite event and then reach out to the employers they are interested in without talking to several other people along the way. As a result, those seeking jobs can openly access someone with authority and talk to that company’s representative. The rep can then share what things are really like in the organization today and what they have to offer.
We know hundreds, even thousands, of companies that find great success with online events. All of that comes about from those associations working with a top-notch career services team to implement good planning, great marketing and stellar service.
And, what if your association is too small or too bogged down to plan career events? Then, reaching out and partnering with a career services team is the next best thing. You get everything covered, from logistics and marketing to sales and service.
Whatever the staff size and current workload at your association, you can boost member engagement and grow your association by bringing careers to your members, who may be just the perfect fit to fill them.
