For employers, recruiters, and HR professionals, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way new hires are recruited, interviewed, and onboarded. With a large portion of the workforce conducting their jobs from home, recruiters and hiring managers are now faced with the task of vetting candidates remotely.
For many, remote hiring will remain the best option for moving forward. In fact, 80% of the workforce recently said they would rather work outside the office.
So if the hiring process is going remote, how can recruiters and employers adjust to the new normal of virtual interviews? Here are some important areas businesses of all sizes will need to address:
Understand Who You’re Hiring
Before you can hire the right person for your remote position, you need to understand what the right fit looks like. Carefully map out what qualities the ideal candidate should possess. Think about how you can best evaluate remote employees in relation to experience, cultural fit, collaborative abilities, communication skills, adaptability and self-motivation. Fitting into the corporate culture is just as important for remote hires – if not more so.
Create a Remote Job Description
Write the job description, making sure to include key terms to identify it’s a remote job. Provide a clear job title that accurately represents the duties of the role. To help find jobs easily on job boards, include keywords like “remote” or “virtual” or “work from home” in the job title.
Screen your Initial Candidates
Remote interviews are more convenient, cheaper, and easier to schedule, but you don’t want to overdo it. Use a project management tool or recruiting software to manage and screen initial candidates, saving those who make it through a pre-screen for interviews with the team.
Say Hello to Virtual Interviews
In a perfect world hiring managers would be able to sit across a desk from a candidate to judge personality, interpersonal skills, and team chemistry. However, current technologies such as skype or zoom are now a common solution. Setting up and conducting interviews is easy by simply following the prompts. Whatever platform you use, confirm that everyone has access to it as well as an adequate internet connection to prevent frozen and/or pixelated viewing.
Debrief and Decide
Interviewing candidates remotely and making a decision without meeting them could be a challenge for some hiring managers. So it’s important to have a team debrief to discuss the pros and cons of each candidate. One solution is to create interview scorecards to facilitate a discussion among internal team members. Once this happens, a hiring decision can be made.
Onboarding
Of all the hiring processes, onboarding is possibly the most important as well as the most overlooked when transitioning to online. In fact, 67% of remote workers say they need more work-related training. Before COVID-19, less than 30% of employees were onboarded via an online delivery method.
Provide employees with tools to understand the organization quickly—organizational charts, directories, descriptions of functional areas, and cheat sheets for acronyms that may be unfamiliar. Schedule one-on-ones with key team members. And be sure to set a regular series of check-ins so your new hire can feel like part of the team.
Lanmark Staffing provides over 40 years of combined human resources, recruiting, temporary placement, remote hiring, sales and management, and temp-to-hire services. Visit our website and learn how our team of local, experienced professionals can help you find the right employee for the job.