2020 really opened up new avenues of working, living and hiring (esp. hiring remotely) for all of us.
The year has been a revelation for talent professionals in particular, as they had to suddenly transition from in-person hiring and onboarding processes to being suddenly remote. We have come to realize that a lot of processes that we came to adopt over the last year, work better and are far more cost-effective, remote hiring in particular.
A month into 2021, with vaccination drives picking up worldwide, it seems we will continue working and hiring remotely for a foreseeable future. So how do you do remote hiring effectively, to stay in the race for quality talent, when your candidates can’t experience your workplace and culture in person?
As a global talent technology company, we work with clients across the globe and help them build teams. These are a few things, we recommend to our client partners –
Be ready with your remote hiring plan
Most companies have hiring standard operating procedures (SOPs) with them. With remote hiring, however, you may have to tweak your existing SOPs to better fit the new processes. A few tips that can help you with this include:
- Make sure you have your list of job boards you will be posting your job openings on. You will need this even for your in-person hiring but if you are hiring for a completely remote position, there are different job boards for that, so be sure to include them in your hiring plan.
- Ensure the job description is clear and concise, stating all the requirements and expectations for the role. Be especially clear if the position you are hiring for is remote in some capacity or fully, if the person will be expected to work out of the office with the team or if it’s a hybrid arrangement. Make it a point to include all these details in the job descriptions along with the actual requirements of the role. This will influence your candidate pool, if the position is fully remote, you can look at talent from other countries and need not be restricted by local talent.
- Decide who in your team is going to own what part of the hiring process, the technology that will be used and test out the tech in advance and keep experimenting to find better options.
Be creative – rethink full-time positions, substitute with project-based remote hiring
As recovery looms and businesses start picking up activity and growing their operations again, manpower has become very important.
As a company, it is time to get creative and rethink the way you hire. Agility has proven to be the key to surviving business troubles over the past year. Agile teams tend to be built around project or business requirements and dismantled as soon as the objective is met. It would be useful to first plan out what key projects you would be working on in the short and long term and what kind of staff and skill set you would need for these projects. Then one should consider hiring staff on a project basis, this way the company can stay lean, keep their costs low, and if you are open to hiring in a remote capacity, you have access to global talent.
Create a thoughtful remote interviewing plan
While you are working on drafting a remote hiring and interviewing plan to ensure that it best allows you to evaluate the candidate, their potential and the culture fitment, it is important to keep in mind that the process is well-put and conducive even for candidates.
For instance, with multiple rounds of interviews being done remotely, it is important to document the questions asked to candidates and digital notes of the interview (questions asked, impressions on candidates, their responses, etc.) are shared with every interviewer who will be speaking with the candidate. This way, the candidate won’t have to answer repetitive questions, the interviewers can utilize that time to delve into other aspects of candidates’ profile and work experience. So this is a win-win situation for both – hiring managers and candidates, where the seamless candidate is also ensured. This level of thoughtfulness will definitely leave a good impression on the candidate about your organization.
Prioritize your candidate experience
Candidate experience has always been important, but more so now with the increase in remote hiring and interviewing, where the candidates cannot experience your workplace and culture in person. Small details matter – being sensitive to the candidates’ responsibilities (it is possible that video might malfunction, kids might barge in during interviews); maintaining good video etiquette (eye contact, test out your tech in advance).
During video interviews, ensure that you are focused on the candidate while speaking and don’t look spaced out. Make sure you have allotted time to answer any questions that candidates may have, and be sure to follow-up after the video interview on emails.
Fast turnaround time
A lot of people lost their jobs during the pandemic and they are looking to start working soon. As companies pick up their hiring processes again (to an almost pre-pandemic speed), it is vital to make your hiring processes more efficient. Streamline your processes to make sure you are not keeping candidates waiting for long, embrace digital screening to tackle high candidate volumes (we helped a leading video-on-demand service in India cut down their screening time by 75%, more here).
Keep the candidates engaged during the process with updates on their application, share materials about your company to help them understand your company and culture better.
Over the course of 2020, we have learnt that we can embrace new ways of working and hiring and they can be really beneficial for us. As we start getting back to business as usual in the new normal, remote hiring and remote working will be key to business success.
