Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

Employers attended an average of 38 career fairs during the 2017-18 recruiting year and expected that number to climb slightly this year, according to results of NACE’s 2018 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey Report.

Overall, employers anticipated attending an average of 40 career fairs during the 2018-19 recruiting year. This number has held relatively steady for three years.

By company size, the biggest changes in the numbers of career fairs attended came among the largest employers. Those with 10,001 to 20,000 employees saw the biggest drop off in number of career fairs attended in 2017-18, while employers with more than 20,000 employees had the biggest gain. (See Figure 1.)

The average number of career fairs employers attended differed based on company size and industry. The largest companies—those with more than 20,000 employees (77 career fairs)—and those in the finance, insurance, and real estate industry (71) attended the most.

Companies with 500 and fewer employees attended far fewer career fairs (11), although this is expected as smaller companies have fewer employees to hire, meaning they need to attend fewer career fairs to meet their goals.

Employers were also asked to project the number of career fairs they planned to attend for the 2018-19 recruiting year. By industry, those in finance, insurance and real estate (71) and computer and electronics manufacturing (52) anticipated attending the most. (See Figure 2.)

Data collection for NACE’s 2018 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey Report took place from June 20, 2018, to September 10, 2018; 218 firms participated. The 2018 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey Report is available free to members through MyNACE. An executive summary of the report is available through the NACE Store.

Figure 1: Number of career fairs attended, by company size: 2015-19

Figure 2: Projected number of career fairs to attend, by industry