Astound’s key virtual career fair products are Milicruit and Unicruit. Milicruit allows US veterans and other personnel leaving the armed services to meet potential employers in an interactive 3D virtual setting. The career fairs offer virtual booths, job postings, company videos, company presentations, live chat with company representatives, video interviewing and resume and interview assistance. Unicruit is a university-centric job fair in which universities help students find employment after graduation. Unicruit.com partners with universities and corporations to create a digital environment in which students can meet multiple employers without having to leave the university campus.
By using virtual careers fairs, recruiters can reach many more of their targeted potential employee groups in less time, with less travel and using fewer resources than with traditional recruitment methods. Astound’s Fortune 500 clients include GE, Raytheon, CSX, Walgreens, Stryker, Verizon, Booz Allen, Amazon, Target, 3M, Accenture and FedEx.
The acquisition of Astound is a highly complementary addition to UBM Studios' virtual events business, providing a new customer base and further exposure to an emerging market, helping UBM Studios build on its existing virtual careers fair capabilities. UBM Studios' recent virtual recruitment fairs include:
Psychiatric Times Virtual Career Fair - the virtual career fair provided recruiters and hiring organisations with exposure to psychiatrists actively searching for positions. Interactive booths allowed companies to post available positions, while candidates had the opportunity to attach resumes and upload written or videotaped profiles as well as to take part in real-time chats with recruiters.
MBAwired APAC - the first international virtual event for future MBA students from Asia to meet global business schools. The virtual recruitment fair offered candidates and admission officers the opportunity to communicate independent of their location and time zone. The event drew prospective MBA attendees from across Asia, spending an average time of 100 minutes in the virtual environment attending presentations and visiting exhibitors' booths.
Housing Now - a virtual recruitment event which brought together the housing industry's leading figures to address the issues and challenges facing the housing sector. The event drew almost a thousand housing professionals who spent an average of three hours in the virtual environment.
Astound's founder and Managing Partner, Kevin O'Brien, will remain with the business with responsibility for sales and new business development. Astound is expected to generate revenues of around $100,000 in 2010.
Kate Spellman, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of UBM Studios, said: "I am very pleased to have brought the Astound business into UBM Studios and I look forward to working with our new colleagues. The acquisition of Astound fits perfectly into our strategy of building on the strengths of our existing products and services to expand into adjacent markets. Astound will strengthen our position as the leading global provider of virtual events and services.
"We are building on the strengths of both organisations to provide a best-in-class virtual careers fair solution that we can deliver worldwide. As we have already demonstrated in our careers fairs bringing together MBA candidates and business schools in Asia and facilitating housing industry recruitment in the UK, we can help recruiting organisations and their prospective candidates to interact online, overcoming the obstacles of geographical location, time zones and travel costs to deliver a cost-effective and time-efficient recruitment process."
