The American College of Greece is the oldest accredited institution in Greece and one of the oldest institutions in Europe. For the last 45 years, Deree – The American College of Greece has held their annual career fair. The Career Services team spends a lot of time preparing for this annual career fair as it typically draws in 300-400 students as well as 130 companies. Even before the pandemic forced a virtual pivot for higher education institutions around the world, Marina Perantonaki, Senior Manager of Career Services, was investigating a virtual career fair platform back in 2018. “We were investigating virtual career fair platforms long before COVID-19 because our career fair was starting to outgrow our venue. We loved the growth we were seeing in attendance and we didn’t want the physical limitations to stop that growth,” Perantonaki said. “The problem at that time was that all virtual career fair platforms were entirely text-based, and we were really looking for something that would provide a similar experience to an in-person event with video and 1:1 chat.”
Fast forward to 2020 and the need for a virtual career fair platform was no longer optional, it was a requirement. Much like universities and colleges everywhere else, The American College of Greece closed its campus back in March of 2020 and immediately started planning to host its annual career fair in a virtual capacity. Perantonaki was pleased to discover that Symplicity CSM would include a brand-new Virtual Career Fair offering that would deliver the exact experience they were looking for in a platform years before. Perantonaki noted, “We’ve been using CSM since 2012 and when we heard about the offering, we were thrilled!” The timing of the new Virtual Career Fair made it even more perfect for Deree – The American College of Greece with its August 2020 release, right before the fall semester began.
“The research we had been conducting on virtual career fair platforms since 2018 was very useful after our campus closed in March 2020. We explored other platforms and we were really happy when we discovered Symplicity's Virtual Career Fair was the best one since we were already CSM clients.”
Marina Perantonaki,
Senior Manager of Career Services,
Deree - The American College of Greece
From November 18-20, 2020, Deree – The American College of Greece held their 45th Career Days job and internship fair. Over 100 organizations registered for the virtual event and over 500 students and alumni were registered. The feedback from both employers and students was positive, noting that participants were most pleased with the video chat capability. There were many benefits to hosting a virtual career fair, such as ease of use or the ability to include international organizations as attendees. Perantonaki added that another great benefit is the fact that their existing students became more engaged with the Symplicity CSM platform as a result of hosting a virtual career fair.
The support received by the Symplicity team was especially helpful for Perantonaki and her team as they were planning for their virtual career fair. “We had a very specific vision for how we wanted our virtual the career fair to go and sent a lot of special requests to the Symplicity team. All of the support was personalized to meet our needs and we were able to schedule lots of meetings and trainings leading up to the event because of the incredible support team,” Perantonaki noted. The Symplicity support has always been fantastic and Deree - The American College of Greece was very appreciative that the support team provided even more insight and support during the transition to virtual.
For more information on virtual career fairs, email info@symplicity.com or schedule a conversation.