BAYCO Job Fair 2025
How to organize large scale events in 2025
The annual BAYCO Job Fair was a huge success! 500+ students attended, exploring opportunities with 20+ businesses that offered jobs, internships, and volunteer roles. Additionally, 100+ students participated in mock interviews and resume reviews, gaining valuable career insights from professionals.
My experience organizing this event was very rewarding, especially when seeing the immense amount of passionate learners, striving businesses, and supportive volunteers. But how exactly does one actually host these large scale events nowadays?
When it comes to events with 500+ attendees, being careful about every step you take is important, and the way I see it, having a team is key to doing this. In my experience, I had organized action items for each member of the BAYCO team, and set up weekly meetings to follow up on them. This way, you wont have a large workload on your head, and you can trust that work will be done when giving deadlines.
Once a team is set, you must decide on the event plan. Think about things like what the event will be about, who the event will be for, how the event will be held (in person, online, etc), and what is the style of the event. Knowing these details early on will help streamline more complicated logistics later on, even if they are changed in the future.
The next step is to reserve a location and time. This may seem to specific, but once a timing and location is set, you now have a deadline, meaning this event will take place. I would recommend setting a deadline with all logistics and details covered by one week before the event, to make sure that everything is ready and there are no problems on the day of.
Once a date/location is decided on, it all comes to marketing and specific logistics. Logistics wise, you must ask yourself: what specific resources would be needed for this event? This includes tables/chairs, projectors, candy for prizes, or anything like that. When it comes to marketing, you must know who and how to market. In my case, I had to market to students to sign up and attend the event, businesses to set up and offer high school opportunities, and volunteers to conduct mock interviews and resume reviews. I also had to market towards connections and sponsors to present during the event. For your event, just think about your target audience, and who you would need for the event to take place.
For the marketing and logistics, you must make sure to allocate action items for your team. This means you must have your colleagues bring different items to the event, or email different people for resources. Also, have all members of your team market towards any of the target audience they know of, and allocate specific people to market towards people that are needed for the event to take place. In my case, we had everyone market to their respective schools, one person reach out to businesses, one person reach out to volunteers, and three people reach out to students in any other way they could.
When following these steps, organizing events like the Job Fair becomes easy! When amazing events take place, the organizers dedication and persistence show up. Leading events with 500+ people is not simple, but when persevering, your goal will be made visible.