Article Gold Open Access 2025

Virtual vs. in-person career fairs: the impact on search activity and diversity

GD
Goller, Daniel
 GC
Graf, Chiara
 WS
Wolter, Stefan C.
Applied Economics Letters
Journal
Abstract

Career and job fairs are frequently used instruments to improve the matching between employees and employers as well as between employees and professions. Despite their importance, however, their impact has been under-researched. Using an innovative dataset that measures searches on the largest platform for apprenticeship vacancies in real-time and the necessity that some fairs had to switch from in-person to virtual during the COVID-19 phase unexpectedly, we can show that virtual fairs not only had a stronger immediate positive impact on the number of searches for apprenticeship vacancies but also expanded the search radius for different professions. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Career choice career fairs Job fairs virtual versus in-person

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations
Centre for Research in Economics of Education, University of Bern, Bern, BE, Switzerland, Swiss Coordination Centre for Research in Education, Aarau, Switzerland, CESifo GmbH, Munich, Bayern, Germany, IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Centre for Research in Economics of Education, University of Bern, Bern, BE, Switzerland
Funding & Acknowledgements
No funding information
References 10 References
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