Guide to prepare a R2B matchmaking event
This toolkit builds upon the experience gained through organising cross-border online Matchmaking Fair: Researchers2Businesses (REBECA Matchmaking Event) - one of the activities of the EURAXESS Hubs project.
REBECA Matchmaking Event was organised on June 20th 2022 via the B2Match platform. The aim of the event was to provide researchers with an opportunity to discover variety of existing career opportunities outside academia and for companies to facilitate the connection with this talent via thematically focused online event.
Before you start drafting the outline agenda of the event there are several questions that you should discuss and that would help you to define the aims and scope of the event. These questions include:
The more specific will be the thematic focus of the event the higher the probability that the participants will find the suitable matches. It also allows for a very clear communication about the event and better management of expectations.
On the other hand, it will be much more challenging to recruit sufficient number of participants or companies unless you are located in the institution with specific research focus or in the region with higher concentration of companies in the specific sector.
More generic approach will make your life easier when it comes to the recruitment of the participants, so maybe start with this approach and keep the specific events for later, once you have a strong network of partners beyond academia and solid contacts database.
However, more generic does not mean that there should be no boundaries. Defining some thematic scope is needed in order to develop the relevant agenda and clear communication messages. E. g. you can focus on the certain topic as defined by the missions of the Horizon Europe (e. g. health) or focus on the specific type of employers (e. g. consulting or public sector.
When organising a cross-border event you will lose the advantage of communication in the local language and relying on the local networks. Also, many companies might feel the stronger motivation to be part of something benefiting their local community.
On the other hand, cross-border approach can clearly broaden the scope of participants and therefore the range of opportunities to be offered. It will also benefit you as an organiser extending your collaboration networks.
Cross-border collaborations can take different forms. You can organise local onsite events together with partners form the neighbouring regions or, if your event will be online, you can open it to researchers from across the Europe and beyond.
Unless you have a team of colleagues with quite a substantial free capacity you will need to team up with other partners to organise such event.
There are many actors that can help you in achieving your goals and contributing to different stages of event organisation. Think about approaching:
- Other units at your institution such as technology transfer offices, career development centres for students etc.
- EURAXESS colleagues in your country or region. If you want to organise cross-border event then EURAXESS colleagues in other countries will be your natural partners.
- Enterprise Europe Network as they have access to the local business ecosystems
- EURES – The European Employment Service and EUROGUIDANCE – network linking together Careers Guidance systems in Europe
- Other partners such as a. g. cross-border chambers of commerce or international sectoral federations
Answer to this question will be essential for how you structure the agenda and set up the technical tools to support the matchmaking. It should also be highlighted in the communication of the event.
The main part of the event is clearly to enable networking between researchers and companies (or non-academic employers in general). But you can also allow for:
- Networking between researchers themselves
- Networking between companies and representatives of universities
- Networking between companies
- Networking between companies and other stakeholders
Encouraging other forms of networking may reduce the number opportunities for researchers. On the other hand, it can generate other forms of collaborations and other types of benefits for participants
Although the core of the event are the one-to-one meetings, you should add other activities that will help you frame the event. Think about the mix of activities that would:
- motivate researchers to think about their next career steps,
- help them explore career opportunities beyond academia
- and finally provide them with opportunity to meet potential employers di-rectly.
Additionally, the format of the events can also enable networking between companies and/or between companies and other stakeholders.
The following list summarises some suggestions for the possible building blocks of the matchmaking event agenda:
- Presentation or panel discussion can help you frame the overall event and provide interesting insights or tips for participants. As it is kind of “warm-up” for the day, make it interactive and use it to motivate the participants to engage in the activities of the event actively.
- You can invite e. g. PhD graduates working outside academia or HR professionals working in companies.
- Suggested duration of panel discussion is 45 minutes to 1 hour depending on the number of panellists.
- Preparing discussion panels or talks takes its time, start soon. In ideal case you should start two months before the event at latest. Define the goal of discussion or talk and think about who would be ideal speakers or what would be an ideal composition of panel members.
- Presentations of companies help participants gain an overview of the opportunities available and they are the pre-step for the one-to-one meetings.
- They can be organised in various ways. E. g. you can cluster compa-nies with similar thematic focus into thematic sessions or schedule the separate session for each company.
- You will need to schedule the parallel sessions. Consider recording the presentations and providing the participants with access to the session they are not able to join.
- Suggested duration of this bloc is 1-2 hours depending on the number of scheduled presentations.
- The presentations should focus on the activities of the companies with emphasis on R&D and innovation and on the opportunities avail-able to researchers.
- Preparing the content block with company presentations can be han-dled in 2 ways: You can allow companies to indicate their interest to deliver presentation in the registration process (however in such a case, you cannot anticipate how many companies will be interested and available for presenting and the agenda is rather dynamic until the end of the registration process; the pilot experience shows that only 17 out of 38 registered organisation were interested/available for delivering the presentation). Alternatively, you can approach some typical companies in the area/sector with a specific request to deliver a presentation.
- In case of REBECA Matchmaking Event these presentations were or-ganised in parallel sessions, each 1-hour long session including the presentations of 2-3 companies. See an example of the agenda of REBECA Matchmaking Event
The core activity of the whole event are the one-to-one meetings that participants can schedule in advance. In preparation for this agenda point – you basically define the matching options, time and duration. The key questions that you need to consider are:
- For how long should the individual meetings (in the matchmaking system) be possible? 2-5 days would be a preferred duration according to the feedback from the participants of REBECA matchmaking event.
- How long should the individual meetings last? 15-20 minutes should be enough. The average duration of the meeting during the pilot even was 17 minutes.
- Who should be able to meet whom?
- What does your online tool allow to do?
- Define the registration period well ahead of the event, so there is still time (at least 1-2 weeks prior to the event) for scheduling 1-to-1 meetings.
In case you only have a limited time, or do not have the platform allowing for meeting scheduling you can also consider
- One-to-many meetings. This is similar to company presentations with providing more space for questions from participants.
- Many-to-many meetings. In practice it can be e. g. simply creating the breakout room for each company and allowing the participants to join anytime (within the indicated timeframe) to ask their questions.
- There are also tools that allow for the less structured online networking of the group of people. Applications such as Wonder.me or Gather enable participants to approach any participant or join the group conversations evolving around certain topics.
To host an online matchmaking event, you need to select the proper online tool. Currently there are several commercial event management platforms available allowing one-to-one matchmaking. Check with your institution, whether there is any institutional subscription available. You can also buy the license for the single event. In case you do not have resources to pay for the license you can still organise the matchmaking event using the common communication platforms – in such case you will probably have to give up on one-to one functionality and offer one-to-many possibility instead.
Let´ s first have a look at the commercial matchmaking platforms. Some of them you probably already know from the events and conferences you participated in. Examples of those platforms include:
- B2Match: https://www.b2match.com/
- Marcom: https://www.marcom-connect.com/
- Eventtia: https://www.eventtia.com/en/b2b-matchmaking
- Brela: https://www.brella.io/event-matchmaking
To explore those tools, you can usually request a demo session.
The functionalities you need to organise a matchmaking event are usually part of a broader package of features related to online event management. The key features necessary to organise a matchmaking event include:
- Create the event website
- Manage registrations
- Create and manage different types of profiles/groups of participants (researchers, companies, organisers, speakers)
- Define the agenda and create sessions available directly from the platform
- Host and manage the sessions directly within the platform (Online audio-video conferencing tool should be optimally integrated, record the sessions, control audio/video of participants, share screen/presentation, chat during sessions for Q&A
- Host and manage the individual meetings directly within the platform (scheduling tools should be integrated)
- Send mass email to participants and set the automated email notification
- Ask for the feedback directly via platform
- Access the data about the event and its participants
- Create company/organisational profiles and/or individual profiles
- Share their collaboration offers via marketplace/wall/discussion forum
- Create personalised agendas
- Have a possibility to view profile of other participants
- Send private messages to other participants
- Request and accept/reject 1-to-1 meetings
- Have access to the event content/contacts after the event ends
When selecting a commercial matchmaking platform also have in mind the number of participants, their engagement and different participant types/profiles you expect per event. The platform licences typically apply some pricing limits in regard to:
- total number of participants per event,
- number of administrator/organiser accounts,
- number of embedded audio/video conferencing participants in one session,
- number of company booths/stands.
To explore more about the functionalities, have a look at the overview of functionalities of matchmaking platforms
What if a do not have enough budget for the event management tool?
Then explore how you can work with the tools available to you. Common communication platforms such as Zoom, MS Teams, Webex and other allow to create the breakout rooms that you can use for one-to-many matchmaking. Each company can have their own session and researchers can join in and ask questions. With your institutional communication platform check beforehand also the licence limits related to the number of participants in one event, co-hosting rights, recording rights and storage place, etc.
Organising one-to-one meetings would be too complicated with those tools, but you can still think about way how to support participants to get in touch on the individual basis, e. g. through providing a database of CVs available to employers or creating the LinkedIn group for the participants of the event.
The specific steps will depend on the platform you choose. Let’s take the REBECA Matchmaking event organised in the B2Match platform as an example. To set up and manage the similar event you need to:
- Set up the event . Define the basic parameters of the event (this might also be done by the contractor who will create the event based on your requirements)
- Manage organisers ´accounts, their profiles and list their contacts.
- Create the event page. Prepare the information that should be available to all visitors and feed them into the event page. Based on the license this might also include possibility to customise graphical layout of the event page.
- Define participants’ profiles. You will need to create profiles for researchers, speakers, companies and organisers. Various group of participants can have access to different functionalities (with regard to e. g. ability to present, share screen, view content, join/register for different sessions, meet other type of participants, build up an organisation profile – add various users to one organisation) – you will need to choose and set the functionalities for each group.
- Develop the agenda. Create the sessions and define their characteristics such as who can join, how many participants can join, time of sessions, define if the embedded audio/video conferencing tool will be used. Define the agenda points, that should participants choose from during registration (e.g. parallel sessions, or time slots indicating their availability for one-to-one meetings). You should also add description of each agenda item and add moderators to it.
- Set 1-to-1 meeting rules (types of users that can interact, who can request a meeting, if the meeting is accepted automatically, or needs an approval by the other partner, if there shall be a possibility to a reschedule a meeting). Set the time-frame for scheduling 1-to-1 meetings (e.g. starting 1- 2 weeks prior to the event, ending towards the very end of the event).
- Define the forum/market place topics/areas and posting rights (what type of participants can post and if the posts can be displayed automatically, or need a review/authorisation prior publishing).
- Set the registration forms. The platform provides the predefined forms, but you will probably need to add more fields to them.
- Choose/set if the registrants will be automatically allowed to join the platform, or you will accept them manually. If so, based on your participant´s criteria check and accept the received applications/registrations and provide technical support to registered participants.
- Prepare and distribute pre-event information and instruction to participants (via the integrated e-mailer tool).
- Assign speaker/presenter accounts/rights. Invite speakers/presenters to share their bios with you to upload them in the platform, or encourage them to do so themselves.
- Prepare the evaluation tools. The platform provides the predefined forms, but you will probably need to add more fields to them.
- Continuously monitor the progress of the event in the tool, make necessary adaptations and respond to the requests of participants
- There are plenty of online tools available to host your event. If you have a chance to participate in the event hosted in some of them, use it and explore its features from the participants point of view. If you don´t have such possibility, request a demo.
- Take some time to list all the functionalities you might need to deliver the planned agenda before getting the license.
- If you don´t have access to the event management app allowing scheduling of individual meetings, check the possibilities of the common online communication platforms and consider organising one-to-many or many-to-many matchmaking session.
Since you are going to work with new tools and approaches dedicate some time to testing everything. Also make sure that all participants involved know the essential information about how the event will be run and how to use the platform.
- Organise testing call for speakers and presenting companies Hold these meetings within the platform so they can try out its features. It is also a good opportunity to remind them, that they registered for the event (yes, the experience is – some forget).
- Prepare the information e-mail summarising basic tips on how to work in the platform. Explain how to set up the one-to-one meetings. You can also include suggestions on how to elaborate the profile so that is informative and increases the chance of being requested for the one-to-one meeting. Send this information to all registered participants a few days before the event. If possible, tailor this information to different groups of participants (as they might have access to different features of the platform).
- Encourage participants to fill-in their profiles thoroughly, share their input via forum/marketplace functions and to schedule 1-to-1 meetings.
- Check with the organiser team control functions of the audio/video conferencing tool to prevent disturbing noises from participants and test the session recording.
- Communicate with presenting companies on what is expected from the presentations.
- Be prepared that with the relatively high numbers of participants you might expect quite a few questions and requests for assistance. Make sure you have the capacity for replying to those requests. If there are many questions you can also create Q&A summary and send it to all participants or publish it on the project website.
- See the examples of instructions prepared for the rebeca_by_euraxess_mentoring_programme_calendar.pdf
To ensure the smooth running of the event:
- The team of moderators is necessary to make sure that everything runs smoothly. Number of people involved depends on how the agenda is structured. Taking the REBECA Matchmaking Event as an example, at least 6 people were needed (1 experienced moderator for the panel discussion, 5 moderators - time keepers for the parallel sessions with company presentations, 2 persons providing a back-up assistance and technical support to the rest of the team and event participants).
- In case that each company will have a separate presentation session it is not necessary (and most probably feasible) to add the moderator to each of them. In such a case, dedicate more time to briefing the companies before the event, so they know how to work with the platform and what is expected from them.
- Organise the test call for moderators and other members of the team involved and brief them on what is their role. Ask them to connect at least 15 minutes before the event start to make sure that everything works well.
- Start the session(s) with introducing the basic rules for the event (rules for using microphones and cameras, explaining when and how can the questions be asked).
- If you are going to record the session(s) do not forget to inform the audience about it.
- Explain the structure of the event.
- Conclude the plenary part of the event with the summary of information on one-to-one meetings.
- Allow participants to ask questions.
- Be available for the questions throughout the whole time of one-to-one meetings block. If those are distributed over several days, you do not need to be available 24 hours but check the event in the platform regularly.
Platforms might allow for providing and instant feedback to all activities including 1-to-1 meetings (e. g. rating through number of stars). They also usually offer you the predefined evaluation forms and possibility to add your own questions to those forms. You only need to consider what you would like to find out through the survey and when to distribute it (at the end of the plenary part or after the period for one-to-one meetings is closed).
See examples of questionnaires used in r2b_evaluation_form.docx .
Send the participant “thanks for your participation” message. Use it also as an opportunity to remind them of feedback questionnaire if necessary.
Invite the participants to follow your profiles on social networks. You can also invite them to follow the EURAXESS REBECA LinkedIn site.
- You will need a team of people to run the event smoothly. Plan those capacities well ahead of the event.
- Test everything beforehand. Provide you collaborators and speakers with the possibility to try out the platform functionalities. Organise short testing sessions for them.
- Keep in touch with participants after the event. Invite them to share their feedback and follow you on social networks.
Unless you have a network of contacts that you can easily approach, organising such event will take its time. In case of organising the pilot, you also need to plan some time for adaptations in the process. But the main reason for starting soon is that the companies have their processes that often do not allow them to respond to the last-minute and short-notice invitations. Especially in large companies, the invitation has to go through the formal process and it can take several months from the moment they receive invitation until the moment they decide about their participation. Small companies can be more flexible.
On the one hand you want to provide the companies with enough time to decide whether they are going to participate. On the other, if you open the registration to soon some participants might register but later change their plans as more urgent activities pop out. This is a challenging dilemma and our suggestion to solving it would be to keep the registration for the last month before the event but start the communication about the event well before (you can e. g. sent out the “Save the date” message.)
Since the event is targeting two (or even three) very different target groups, single communication message is not enough. Since EURAXESS is focusing on researchers, we naturally tend to tailor our communication to this target group. But why should the companies be motivated to join the event that benefits the researcher’s careers? Make sure that you highlight the benefits for different target groups in the general presentation materials. Also, even though you want to “sell” the event, do not promise too much and create realistic expectations. E. g. in case of event organised within the Hubs project it was important to explain, that the event was not a recruitment fair and therefore we emphasised that they could explore the opportunities but did not promise that they would find a job.
To make your communication message toward companies effective, take the opportunity to ask two or three companies that you can reach through your existing networks what would motivate them to join. Even better, if you have a possibility get in touch with Enterprise Europe Network or some umbrella organisations. Do companies seek for the talents at the first place? Or are they motivated by the opportunity to meet other stakeholders and companies? What could encourage their participation? What could discourage them?
Unless you organise an event with the narrow thematic scope and manage the match-making process very closely, you will probably not achieve that all participants engage in one-to-one meetings in the online format of the event. Some only join the event out of curiosity without an intention to actively participate others might not find a suitable match. Don´t be disappointed when this happens. On the other hand, keep on searching for the ways how to increase the number of interactions as much as possible.
One of the possible ways of increasing the engagement of researchers is to invest some time into preparing the participants for the meeting and share with them the tips on how to have this type of conversations. You can find the short summary of tips for the researchers on how to network. r2b_tips_on_how_to_network.docx
If you have a time and capacity, you can also consider organising a short webinar on how to network with companies. You can also prepare set of recommendations for companies.