Speed dating with employers

Speed dating is intended for students who want to gain job interview experience in a safe environment by talking to a representative of a potential employer. It can also be used for arranging an internship, holiday work, employment or just simply for expansion of someone’s network. For students it means an activity, where they can make contacts that will benefit them in their career path.
On the other hand, employers also benefit from this activity, as they gain insight into what sort of candidates will soon enter the job market. Through this activity they can obtain CVs and contacts of the candidates and can even make them their future employees.
Representatives of employers are invited to the faculty or to the event taking place online (as they mostly do during this time). Career Centres organize a prep workshop for students, where we educate them about speed dating and give them useful tips for preparing a good CV and personal presentation. If speed dating is meant for internship or student job search, this prep workshop could be followed by employer presentation(s). Students can apply on several different speed dates, but each time they have to be with different employers. We match each student with their employer and givehim/her an available term. Each speed date lasts 6 minutes. During this time, the student has the opportunity to introduce him/herself, the company asksquestions and vice versa. Because 6 minutes is a very short time, both the student and the company representative must be well prepared to make the most of the allotted time. It often happens that the company invites the candidate to an actual job interview or asks for their CV.
With Covid-19 situation happening we transferred the speed dating to a virtual environment. Even in this different situation the whole process went smoothly and professionally.