How to Manage the Recruitment Experience Effectively

Candidates will want to know how it is going to work, how they will onboard, and what help you will provide to help them build relationships with the rest of the business. As most of us are working from home now, this also means some hiring and onboarding processes are happening remotely too. As a recruitment consultancy, part of our role is ensuring that the candidate is well-informed about the process they are entering and what to expect. This is beneficial for all involved, as it means better preparation and more confidence in the next steps. CTO Craft works with CTOs, engineering managers, teams and entire businesses to build strategy and leadership skills through organised and bespoke coaching, mentoring, workshops and training. The interview process isn’t just about a company assessing a candidate; judgements are being made the other way around too.

For instance, with video interviews, if you save about two hours per candidate when screening about 10,000 people annually; you could potentially save 20,000 hours a year. When it comes to developing hiring managers to deliver great candidate care, ensure they’re comfortable with the process and with conducting interviews virtually. Job adverts can be vague sometimes, relying on hyperbole and marketing-speak to attract a broad pool of talent. While this strategy may work in a traditional recruitment setting, when it comes to remote hiring, clear statements about the role and company are essential.

Remote interview preparation

With myriad online communication channels available to us these days, you have the ability to convey your company culture before a candidate even applies for a role. We spoke to five of our recent technology candidates to find out exactly how their organisations have approached these new challenges, from application to onboarding, so we can share their insights with you. You will want to focus on high level questions, to fully qualify a candidate and remote interview process make sure their skill set is a good match before you decide to invest further time in them. Not being on the same page with your hiring team is an absolute disaster, particularly in the event of remote recruitment. The chances of good remote recruiting are slim if the members of the hiring team are not aware of who should be doing what and when. Live video interview is necessary for a flowing conversation and to observe the candidate’s body language.

• For example, connectivity issues may end the call suddenly, or phone batteries may die.
• As mentioned above, align on where this is tracked and make this part of your post-interview process.
• Basil was recruiting a Director of HR for a major UK education charity when we went into lockdown.
• Therefore, it is crucial to take the time to really get to know your future candidates in a virtual setting.
• Often during the remote interview process, further testing is required to confirm the skills and level of competency that a candidate has in a particular area.
• Put timelines in place to ensure expectations are correctly set – both with the candidate and your hiring team.

Sam Jones, Engineering Director shared how ”Pollen really stands by its culture and takes actions in alignment with its values, which is quite unusual. It is strongly recommended that you allocate a specific time to the task to find out their working ability under pressure. Work tests have proven to be one of the top indicators of job performance because they are highly valid and reliable assessments of the candidates’ skills and knowledge.

Covid19 – The catalyst for positive business change?

When conducting a video call, it may be that there is a delay between the parties speaking and hearing each other. To avoid missing what the candidate says, interviewers should try to pause for a few seconds after answering questions.

Another positive of this approach, it avoids wasting your time, the companies time and saves your company money, all while improving the candidates experience throughout the process. Before inviting any employee to be interviewed remotely, it is important that employers set up efficient, and easy to use, software. Not only can getting this wrong cause issues in their ability to fairly interview a candidate, it can also call into question the professional nature of the business to promising interviewees. When making video calls, it is highly advisable to use software that candidates are more likely to be able to easily access. For example, Microsoft Teams is available on internet browsers free of charge, while Skype can also be downloaded for free. Deliberately picking a more well-known piece of software is also likely to make the process run smoother. A key part of the interview stage is testing someone’s punctuality and how they conduct themselves in the interview.