The first step in organising a successful careers and higher education fair is to pin that all important date in the diary, selecting a date and location which can provide the widest range of guests so that students have the widest scope of opportunities to explore.
Organising a successful Higher Education Fair will enable your school or college to meet several Gatsby Benchmarks including Gatsby benchmark number 5 ‘Encounters with employers and employees’ and number 7 ‘Encounters with further and higher education institutions’.
When should you arrange your event for?
It’s that all important question: When is the best time to arrange a Careers and Higher Education Fair?
March, June and October are the busiest months for university outreach teams; on some days we have six or seven events a day, including fairs, talks and exhibitions. Therefore, our entire team will be attending events at multiple times across the day and may even be attending more than one event per day! If it works in your yearly timetable, it may be best to avoid these months, or if you can’t, try and avoid Wednesdays and Thursdays which tend to be the busiest days.
It may also be worth considering if any large exhibitions such as UCAS and UK University Search events (dates are available on their respective websites) are happening around the date you have planned, or at a similar time, to try and avoid hosting your event on the same date as any of those events, particularly the large ones such as London UCAS – as these events may mean less exhibitors may be unable to attend your event as they are already exhibiting at these exhibitions.
At City, we work with a lot of schools and colleges who tend to try and run their events on the same day or date every year, so working around these existing dates may help you to increase the number of universities who are able to attend your event as well. Please don’t be afraid to ask us which dates to avoid when you planning to organise an event of this kind, (especially if it is your first time doing so) or even ask us to vote on a few dates.
The earlier you can let universities, apprenticeship providers and employers know the date of the event the better, so it is planned into everyone’s calendars early! We have had some schools and colleges approach us only a couple of weeks before an event, which makes staffing such event difficult with little time to arrange the logistics and ensure colleague availability.
The timing of your higher education fair
The next most important consideration once you have decided which date to hold your higher education fair is the timing of your event. This may differ depending on your institution, whether you are a school, a sixth form college, a further education college and the age profile of the learners you have.
The most common time to hold a higher education fair is in the daytime between 11am and 2pm. This works particularly well in slotting into your school or college day nicely. The event obviously needs to fit in with your school day, but don’t feel they necessarily need to go on all day (we would rather work a shorter, busier event!). Many schools and colleges prefer to hold events in the evenings so parents and guardians can attend as well, and they work well and are often well attended.
Overall, it is up to you to decide what the best timings are for you and your institution but bearing in mind some of the above considerations when planning should make your event stand out from the rest!
Inviting Universities, Apprenticeship Providers and Employers to your event
Many schools and colleges have a list of university contacts and names who they invite to their event every year. But what do you do if you want to find new universities to invite, or you’re organising an event for the first time?
All Universities have a specific team that work with Schools and Colleges named ‘The Schools Liaison Team’ or the ‘Student Recruitment and Outreach’ team who attend higher education fairs, and we know which schools and colleges fall under which team if we have multiple teams that work with schools. Many Universities have two teams that work with Future students, one which usually focus on students aged between 16-19 as the next progression step in education would be higher education, and usually there is another team called the Pre-16 outreach team or Widening Participation team which works with younger students, and sometimes older students depending on the team structure.
When contacting a university for the first time, we would recommend avoiding general university-wide enquiries email addresses and spend some time on university websites looking for the specific team you want to contact. Visit the university website and look for a section called something like schools liaison, outreach, or working with schools/teachers.
UniTasterDays is a great platform to reach out to universities to see if they will attend an event such as a higher education fair, which you can do through the request an event area on the UniTasterDays website.
It’s best not to approach academic staff directly with invitations to higher education fairs, as they are not usually the staff that will attend such events. It tends to be schools liaison teams or current students (known as student ambassadors) who will attend higher education fairs. If you would like to have talks at your event in addition to the fair, let us know and we can work with academic staff and student ambassadors to facilitate these sessions for you. We know which academics can support with school events and so it’s still always best to come through us.
It’s up to you how many and which universities you invite – but our recommendation is to look at the destinations of your previous students to try and invite universities who your students most want to see (though we know some schools who invite others to try and increase the scope!). If you are planning to run an event for the first time a good number of exhibitors would be around 15 to 20. You can grow the event in future years if your initial event is a great success.
What information do exhibitors require before the event?
It is really helpful if you can send exhibitors all the information for the event in one go and with lots of notice before an event. Many exhibitors will need to arrange with external couriers up to a month, or even two months before an event, so if you can send us logistics information in advance it is a huge help. Ideally the pre-event information will include:
- Delivery information – for example, restrictions and where and when things should be delivered.
- Details of refreshments – we don’t expect you to provide refreshments, but it is helpful to let us know either way if this will be available
- If Wi-Fi is available and whether there are electrical sockets available – many exhibitors will have iPads or Laptops them to be able to play videos and for guests to fill out their details to sign up for more information – many schools ask universities to say if these are required as it may affect the floor plan if you have a limited number.
- Travel information – please include how to travel by public transport and driving instructions as your attendees will use both options, and parking information (or lack of) is useful to include too
- The schedule for the attendees throughout the day – if you have this information already, it is helpful to know this in advance, where possible.
- Structure of the room(s) the event is being held in – The shape of the tables if they aren’t rectangular – we will usually bring our own tablecloths, and these are rectangular, but we know not every school has tables of this shape!
- It is best not to assume that representatives do not have a DBS, so if your school specifically requires reps to possess them upon attending, please make sure you let us know so we can choose the attendee accordingly (and ensure the certificate is with them when they attend!)
University courier companies
Some universities will bring their own equipment to a higher education fair, but some of us (particularly in London) may need to have some or all our items for the stand couriered in advance.
Many universities use logistic companies who specialise in university event delivery and will deliver for many universities at one time. The nature of this means we don’t always know when they will deliver, so if you have specific requirements for this e.g., don’t deliver before a certain date, we need to know that with as much notice as possible to tell the company (a month can be too short notice as we may have already put the order in with the logistics company).
It is worth making sure that your reception staff are aware that deliveries will be arriving for an event, and for you to consider where everything will be stored in advance of the event as well. We have worked at a few events where reception teams have had no idea the event is happening and so our deliveries go missing! It’s never ideal to do an event without prospectuses, so anything that can be done to avoid them going missing is really appreciated. Usually schools then put the boxes on our individual stands or put them all in one place near the fair so we can collect them when we arrive.
Tips for your event
- It is a really good idea to prepare your students for how best to utilise a higher education fair before the event itself. We recommend doing a short talk that covers what the event is and what sort of questions to ask. I have seen schools create sheets which prompt questions (and have space to write answers) and produce guides and maps on the attendees and where their stand is – this is a great way to engage students.
- If you are inviting a range of year groups to an event it is best not to mix them in each slot; it’s quite difficult to jump from speaking to a year 7 to a year 12 and back again. Universities may also decide not to give prospectuses to younger students as so much can change before they apply. If you are inviting younger years, it’s a good tip to give them a document to work through with questions for the universities that are appropriate to them.
- It is up to you whether you put a plan in place of where each university’s stand will be in the room (most do). Alphabetical order makes it very fair way of allocating stands, but you may prefer to group by Universities in one room, and employers in another etc…
We hope that you have found this advice useful. Please do always reach out to us at schoolsliaison@city.ac.uk if you want to talk about running an event – we are always happy to help!