If we gather 50 exhibitors and manage to attract around 800 visitors in the middle of the holiday season and the Jakobs Dagar -week to gather around jobs and employment opportunities in the Jakobstad Region, then it must be a topical theme. Although the autumn has brought a slight increase in unemployment and layoffs, we still have the lowest unemployment rate in mainland Finland. Many companies end employer’s are still looking for work force, developing and growing, just as the diverse and resilient Jakobstad Region has always done.
But you don’t get 800 participants without marketing. We have used both organic and purchased marketing on social media, visibility on radio, digital and print media and various collaborations to reach the target groups. We have also been sending out personalised invitations to former expats aged 18-44 for several years, and this year we sent out over 3,100.
How did we succeed this time? We found that the companies had an unusually large number of representatives on site and they seemed to have active discussions most of the time. Visitors obviously stay for different lengths of time, but we saw several who travelled around the fair for between 1-2 hours, which indicates quite a lot of interest. The companies that evaluated assess that they had anything between zero and 40 interesting personal cases and the average is around 10, which we see as positive during a 4-hour period.
The municipalities were also well represented both as employers and builders of quality of life and housing. Unfortunately, we did not manage to attract the private housing operators this time, which would be important for the whole of the move-in and move-back. And let’s not forget that education providers in the region at primary, secondary and third level are major employers, as are the public social and health care services.
Do we need Kom Hit? We say yes and hope to be back again in 2025!
Thank you to all the participants and feel free to watch our video from the event or on the website which is still up with the participating exhibitors and companies!
Fredrik Sandelin, fredrik.sandelin@concordia.jakobstad.fi 044 324 3435
