This was going to be Amrita’s fifth year working as a Hiring Manager. Almost a month back their CTO had given notice. Coronavirus was being talked about in the news, but it was mainly overseas. She had put out an ad regarding the position and received a lot of applications and had shortlisted a few candidates and scheduled interviews. But, everything changed in the next few weeks. The number of cases rapidly increased and countries took drastic measures to reduce the spreading of Coronavirus by enforcing lockdown procedures. Her company had decided to advise all employees to work remotely. She still needed to recruit a CTO for her company.
Like Amrita, there are a lot of Hiring Managers facing issues regarding recruiting at this time. In this blog post, we will be discussing how recruitment is also going the virtual way because of COVID-19.
Recruitment during COVID-19
The first thing to do would be to get in touch with the candidates who are already in your pipeline and send them a personalized message informing them what your company’s next step is regarding recruiting. Trust us, this will always be remembered by them. Technology is much more advanced than before. Now, you have an option to virtually onboard candidates for different positions you are hiring. There is video interview software which you can use to conduct virtual interviews. You can use either a live video interview or pre-recorded video interview where you can share questions beforehand. Below are certain tips for recruiting virtually :
- Check your Wi-Fi connection. Make sure that both the sides are comfortable for the interview. It is understandable that candidates would be more nervous during a video interview.
- Get familiar with the video conferencing tools you would be using for the interview.
- Ask relevant questions. Especially when you are hiring during a lockdown, it is important to ask competency based questions which help you understand a candidates learning ability.
- Choose the right location for the interview.
- Dress appropriately.
- Communicate your company’s policies regarding remote onboarding properly.
- Once onboarded, make sure you introduce the new employee to current employees via virtual meeting platforms and also help them in managing teams remotely if their job description involves it.
Future of Recruitment
Times have forced us to change the way companies function. Not only are companies forced to recognize that working remotely doesn’t hamper productivity, but they are also forced to go virtual with most of their processes. With technology advancing rapidly, there are innovative solutions to solve all these problems. And the future of recruitment looks great for predictive hiring with the help of AI. Platforms are coming up which can build behavioural patterns of candidates from their video interviews.
These platforms will be able to provide real-time matches for the available positions based on the resumes received using AI. Not only does this look good for the recruiters, but it is also good for candidates as they can be matched with the best positions based on their capabilities and future potential. During the recruitment process, the platforms can help recruiters create, launch and track recruitment campaigns from a single dashboard. Post recruitment, these platforms can help recruiters contact candidates based on priority. This can be applied not only to hiring in companies but also for job fares and recruitment events.
Conclusion
Times are forcing us to embrace change in a lot of aspects of our life. It is doing the same in our work culture and also our hiring processes. It is making companies experiment with changes which would have otherwise taken a long time. With the advancement of technology, people like Amrita have solutions to help them with unforeseen situations like the ones being faced now. Just like most of the other processes in companies, we will see hiring processes also evolving into a more virtual environment. And it looks like the future for hiring/talent management is filled with intelligent platforms which can provide real time end-to-end personalized solutions.
We hope you are all safe in your homes and practising social distancing. Let’s hope for a better future where we are more prepared to face unforeseen challenges. Stay healthy. Stay Safe.
