VentureBeat

Unisfair is launching online virtual job fairs for businesses as an extension to its virtual trade show business. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has created an online recruiting tool that allows recruiters and job seekers to interact live.

The company says that, like its virtual trade shows, the job fairs can eliminate expensive travel and improve the productivity of searching and recruiting for jobs. Unisfair’s own survey of more than 100 human resources managers says 64 percent of HR people believe they could improve hiring through virtual job fairs.

Unisfair uses the 3-D rendering of virtual worlds to replicate a convention-center atmosphere with a main hall, exhibit floor, resource center and a job center. Managers can post jobs, screen applicants automatically, and track job seekers. Those job seekers can track positions they have applied for an communicate via chat, instant message and e-mail.

Unisfair’s backers are Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners. It has staged more than 400 virtual events for the likes of Cisco, IBM, and Quest Software.

Unisfair is trying to get businesses to take virtual trade shows as more than a curiosity. On Monday, the company will announce version 2.0 of its Virtual Events for Business tool, VentureBeat has learned.

The Menlo Park, Calif., company helps businesses stage trade shows online so they can cut the costs of phsyical trade shows, yet reap the same benefits of gathering for talks and exhibitions. The new version delivers capabilities such as e-commerce, multiple-language support, and professional networking.

“The improvements are aimed at improving the stickiness of the virtual events,” said Guy Piekarz, CEO of Unisfair, in an interview.

A survey from the Factpoint Group says that virtual events attract an average of 1,587 attendees (42% of which are international). Thanks to increased attendance and the availability of detailed marketing data, such events deliver 348 qualified leads per each event sponsor.

Unisfair’s environment lets attendees create avatars, or 3-D characters, that they can use to browse through the virtual trade show. They can interact with text or voice chat. And the environment integrates with online business tools such as Salesforce.com or the Webex online meeting tool.

Clients such as Cisco and Forbes have used Unisfair to hold 415 events since the company debuted the virtual events . More than 500,000 people from 2,000 companies have attended the events. Over time, Piekarz said the virtual events will move to more of a self-serve model where companies can stage their own events without too much hand-holding.

The company closed its second round in December with $10 million (our coverage) from Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners. Sequoia invested $15 million in the first round. Unisfair has 65 employees. The company will compete against the larger all-purpose world, Linden Lab’s Second Life, as well as Forterra Systems‘ custom corporate virtual worlds. IBM has also given its own endorsement to virtual worlds as useful beyond entertainment.

Unisfair, a company providing virtual hosting for events with attendance running into the thousands of people, has raised a round of $10 million from Norwest Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital, VentureBeat has learned.

Unlike most other virtual-world technologies, Unisfair runs entirely in the browser, and focuses only on events like global sales meetings and job fairs. Like real-world conferences, events on Unisfair typically run at set times for a day or two, and are sponsored by large companies or institutions.

Although it launched its product four years ago, Unisfair has only really seen significant demand in the past year and a half, according to CEO Guy Piekarz. Piekarz says they’ve hosted about 400 events in that time period, with an average attendance of 1,500 people.

Like another business-oriented virtual world we recently wrote about, Qwaq (coverage here), Unisfair has some very recognizable clients, including Cisco, Cognos and Nielsen. In general, the company running the event pays for it, but it’s also possible for event organizers to charge end users an attendance fee.

Although it’s had the advantage of being early to the game, Unisfair will likely pick up some competition in the near future. Corporations like IBM have already tried to hold meetings and conferences in Second Life, but those meetings have generally been failures — Second Life requires a large download and some prior knowledge to use, which is a turn-off for many potential users.

The advantage Unisfair has is ease of use and low computing requirements. When we tried a demo of the platform, it worked very smoothly with almost no learning curve required to navigate a virtual conference (screenshots below). However, other companies are quickly picking up on the need for an easy-to-use interface.

The $10 million funding was led by Norwest, with Sequoia participating. Unisfair’s first round, for $5 million, was provided solely by Sequoia. The company is based in Menlo Park, Calif.