About IOM
IOM is a Related Organization of the United Nations, and as the leading UN agency in the field of migration, works closely with governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental partners. IOM is dedicated to promoting humane and orderly migration for the benefit of all. It does so by providing services and advice to governments and migrants.
The Challenge
In 2021, one of IOM’s priorities was to reach out to nationals of Member States (37 countries) that are not represented by any of their nation in the International Professional Category of IOM’s workforce.
“In order to reach out to qualified professionals from these target nationalities, we organized 3 online international career fairs in partnership with Highered, targeting specifically nationals of non-Represented Member States. Considering the objective of these events, it is very important for us to know the nationality/ies of the people who register for the fairs.”
Having organized their first virtual events, IOM faced a problem – not all participants included nationality in their profiles and that prevented IOM from achieving full success.
Solution
For the next IOM virtual event, we suggested using a private event feature that enables accessing the event with a special access code. As additional support, IOM used targeted social media and email marketing that supported sharing information about nationality requirements.
“The access code that was implemented for the third career fair organized last year (registered talent received the code needed to access the fair only if they mentioned their nationality in their profiles) was useful to increase the number of professionals who mentioned their nationality, considering that this field is not mandatory.
Moreover, out of the pool of pre-registered talent to these events, professionals of the target nationalities were invited to an online event about careers in IOM, providing them more insights on topics such as benefits and entitlements, salary simulations, and the recruitment process.”
Results
The feature proved to be a successful way of limiting access to the virtual career event only to talent who met IOM’s requirements. It also didn’t influence the number of participants. In the end, it positively supported IOM’s target by reaching candidates from the non-Represented Member States.
“The promotion of these 3 online events by both Highered and IOM led to more than 1200 professionals who visited IOM’s online booth, and 164 professionals who chatted with IOM’s HR representatives.
Social media promotion and the cooperation with universities part of the EFMD Global Network is useful in increasing the number of participants while having live events with existing staff during the fair is appreciated by participants.
In the future, having the possibility as an HR representative to start conversations with participants at the fair would be a useful feature.
Online career fairs are a useful and innovative tool to target and reach out to specific groups of professionals worldwide, and IOM will continue to organize such events in 2022.”
