Coronavirus is creating havoc in the market. Apart from taking lives with its fatal biological effects, it is also crumbling down the market with its economic reaction. The disease is supposed to take out 10% of the annual revenues across sectors. Unfortunately, the recruitment industry is not unaffected. So is it the end of the road from recruiters in the near future? Not exactly.
Positives for recruiters during the Coronavirus breakdown
Even with the pandemic creating ruckus in the job market, it is not as if the world has come to a standstill. E-commerce companies like Amazon recently added 100,000 additional workers in the US to cope up with extra orders for home deliveries.
Other sectors like online learning companies, omnichannel grocery stores and remote meeting applications like Zoom have also ramped up their hiring effort. Ed tech companies like Simplilearn and Udemy; Gaming players like Zynga, 99Games, Moonfrog Labs, and GSN Games; as well as the Online entertainment sector including the likes of Star TV Network (Hotstar), Jio TV, and Amazon Prime Video are also seeing a visible growth in hiring.
However, the question remains, with one on one meetings becoming impossible. How can the recruiters continue to hire quality talent?
Here are a few tips:
Reach out to passive candidates:! With candidates bored and sitting at their homes, this can be a great time to reach out to the candidates who are sitting on the fence.
Use social media to hire: Guess what. Your candidates are bored and they are online 24*7 on their social media accounts. Never can you get a more accessible talent pool. Can you?
Pitch Job Flexibility: Candidates have been looking for WFH options and flexible hours for a while now. However, the recent pandemic has proved that not only are these options important, but, they are quite viable too. As a recruiter, this is a great time to show off your companies flexible leave and WFH policies. !
Schedule the interview confidently: Research shows that the interview turnups have grown from 68% to 84%. So you can go ahead and be confident about the candidate showing up on time.
Interviews:
Specialized platform for online interviews: Rather than taking traditional one on one interviews, candidates can be given online assignments to complete. Hacker Rank’s CodePair (for coding interviews) and Google Jam board are few of the solutions available at the moment.
Video interviews obviously have taken a much superior role now. However, interviewers must focus on the best practices to get the maximum out of them. Here are a few:
Setting up processes: One of the most sizable challenges when going remotes keeping everyone in the loop in an efficient way. Companies need to up processes for how interviews will be run and communicate clearly and thoroughly with your teammates and candidates.
Giving your technology a test run: A lot of video interview tools are available in the market, and given the current condition, many of them are available for a free run as well. Recruiting team needs to give these tools a good test run before the actual interview, in order to minimize technical glitches.
Communicate clearly: Clearly communicate the timelines, how to use the videoconferencing technology, and titles of each person they will meet, along with links to their LinkedIn profiles.
Pick the correct spot: Find a quiet, well lit space to conduct the video interview for zero interruption.
Be Professional: Remember, video or not, it’s an interview. For an important position. Ensure no disturbance, good body language, eye contact and every other good practice that you follow during a conversation in a regular interview.
Be patient: These are uncertain times, and new territories. The candidate is not only new to the virtual setting but is also often unclear about the near future. Showing more empathy during these trying times will go a long way in improving the candidate experience.
Speaking of which,
Candidate engagement
Once the candidate is offered a role, it is important to keep him engage even if virtually. Here are a few ways to do that:
Hiring teams can record asynchronous videos or give away informal e-letters on why the role is so important to the team or why they’re excited about this candidate joining.
Virtual office tours can create excitement amongst candidates, till the person can physically join the office space.
Let the candidates join a few virtual team meetings to get a better sense of the team culture and how it operates.
If the candidate is local and the hiring manager is supportive, depending on the regulations of your location, it might be possible to have the hiring manager and candidate connect 1:1 outside of the office.
On-boarding
First of all companies need to take care of the health and security. Many companies are checking the travel history (official and personal) of the past three months for medical reasons
Virtual ‘onboardind buddies’, in which an existing member of the team can share organizational details and culture can help in making the new joinee more productive.
New hire orientations are moving to virtual channels. Content is being recorded and facilitated through video conferencing tools like Zoom.
IT teams can ship laptops to new employees home so that they can start working virtually ASAP.
We hope the above guidelines will help you in recruiting quality candidates during the uncertain times. Skillate stands with the recruiting teams all over the world, who are facing significant challenges but are overcoming them with innovative initiatives.