Employer branding is a term many companies use but few truly understand. It isn't about a slick 'working here' video. It's about the sum of all the experiences people have with your employer brand. And a recruitment event is the most concentrated version of that.

In two to three hours you show potential candidates what it's like to work at your company. Not by telling them, but by letting them experience it. The atmosphere of your space, the energy of your team, the way you treat your guests.

That's why recruitment events are more effective than traditional recruitment channels. An Indeed advert tells someone you have a vacancy. A recruitment event lets someone feel whether they fit with you. Employees recruited through personal contact stay longer on average and become productive sooner.

Not every recruitment event looks the same. The format depends on who you're looking for, how many people you want to reach and what fits your company culture.

Open evening / meet & greet: a low-threshold event where candidates drop by, walk around and get talking with employees. Works well when you want to fill several roles at once.

Talent experience day: a full-day programme in which candidates attend workshops, take on challenges and work alongside your team. More intensive, but it yields deeper connections and better matches.

Sector-specific event: aimed at one specific audience, such as IT professionals, engineers or healthcare professionals. Your programme is substantively relevant to that audience.

Campus recruitment event: aimed at graduates and young professionals. Informal, energetic and focused on getting to know each other.

The key with every format: have candidates do something, not just listen. Let them feel what it's like to work with you.

Organising a recruitment event is one thing. Making sure the right people turn up is another. You need a promotion strategy that goes beyond a post on LinkedIn.

Start with your own network. Your employees are your best ambassadors. Give them the tools to share the event: an invitation link and social media content. Plus a personal story about why they work at your company.

Run targeted campaigns on the platforms where your audience is. For IT professionals that might be GitHub or Stack Overflow. For marketers, LinkedIn and Instagram. Match your channels to your audience, not to your own preferences.

Plan your promotion at least 4-6 weeks before the event. Build it up: first teasing and concrete information. Then urgency. Repetition works: on average people need 5-7 touchpoints before they take action.

Organising a recruitment event costs, depending on format and size, between €3,000 and €25,000. A compact meet & greet at your own venue with 30 to 50 visitors can be organised for as little as €3,000 to €5,000. A talent experience day for 100+ people at an external venue with a full programme quickly runs to €15,000 to €25,000.

Set that investment against the cost of traditional recruitment. A recruitment agency often charges 20 to 25% of an annual salary. If your recruitment event delivers three hires, you've already earned the investment back.

The single most important step comes after the event: the follow-up. Get in touch with visitors within 48 hours. Every day you wait, conversion drops. Candidates who go home inspired but hear nothing cool off. Acting quickly is crucial.

A recruitment event isn't a standard staff drinks with a vacancy board. It's employer branding in its purest form. And that calls for an approach that goes beyond logistics.

At Live Impact we don't start with the question of how many people should come, but with what they should feel when they leave. That's the heart of it. From that emotion we build an event that translates your company culture into a tangible experience.

We work with companies in engineering and IT. Plus food, logistics and business services. We know the challenges: hard-to-fill roles and fierce competition. And an audience that isn't actively looking. That's exactly when an event is the answer.

We arrange everything: concept and venue, programme and promotion. Plus registration, production and follow-up. So that your HR and recruitment team can focus on the conversation with candidates.