With remote working becoming a new normal in the post-Covid world, remote hiring has become a common phenomenon in the contemporary HR practices. Face-to-face interviews were the erstwhile norms of talent acquisition. But, Covid has disrupted that age-old practice and made virtual meetings with the prospective candidates as well as usage of online AI-enabled talent management platforms a common affair.
The initial purpose for which companies adopted remote hiring was to ensure safety of the candidates as well as recruiting staff amid pandemic. Although the times are uncertain, growth-focused companies require talent to drive growth and achieve targets. Hiring managers of those companies are always on the lookout for mid-level and senior-level positions. The remote hiring, as a matter of fact, has turned out to be a convenient, flexible, efficient, cost-effective and time-saving option for recruiters and candidates. It has opened a huge spectrum of talents cutting across geographies. As full-time remote work has become a reality, remote hiring is here to stay. A number of research reports have already indicated that a majority of the recruiting managers prefer to continue with the remote hiring mechanism. The recruiters or the hiring managers must ensure the effectiveness of the remote hiring to make it produce the desired results. Here are few ways one can make remote hiring result-driven.
- Develop a strong employer brand online reputation: Strong employer brand is critical for both remote and traditional recruitment processes. In fact, it’s even more critical for remote hiring because in that case candidates develop opinion on a specific company based on its online or digital presence. A strong and attractive online employer brand fuels the aspiration among the employers to join that company. A company can build a strong employer brand by projecting the culture of the company on its social media pages and website. The HR head of a company can post employee testimonials, achievements of various employees beyond work-sphere, acknowledgements at renowned employee experience platforms to send the message of inclusive work-culture, personal and professional growth and work-life balance.
- Leverage the right technology: The underlying theme of any successful remote candidate hiring and onboarding process is to offer a candidate a great journey and experience. A smooth talent acquiring and onboarding process can become a part of an effective employer brand of a company as well. There are a number of digital recruitment tools available to facilitate remote hiring and some of them are truly useful in acquiring some great talents. A hiring manager mandated to hire candidates in remote settings can go for an advanced applicant tracking system to streamline the hiring process, recruitment marking software to promote employer brand to attract talents, candidate assessment and testing software to evaluate the skillsets of the candidates.
- Intensify talent scouting on social media: Social media presence helps a hiring manager build the foundation for an effective remote hiring i.e., to identify quality talents and establish contacts with them. Online networking sites like LinkedIn offer ample opportunity for the HR managers to connect with the right candidates. However, one needs to have a targeted approach while building presence on social media. The hiring managers can use the right hashtag to target the candidates of desired profiles and locations. They can spark off discussions on social media on their companies’ unparalleled work culture and employee benefit programmes. Such visibility will help hiring managers develop positive opinions among prospective candidates.
- Evaluate candidate’s remote working compatibility: The hiring manager must structure the recruitment process in such a way that it becomes easier to assess whether the candidate is in the proper frame of mind to work remotely. Instead of a one-to-one online interaction, the hiring manager can set up a two-or-three-member interview panel to assess the spontaneity and body language of a particular candidate. The online interview must be followed up with an assignment to evaluate skillsets of the candidate.
The hiring managers need to adapt to the changed realities and the best way to adapt to the evolved hiring dynamics is to become empowered with new technologies and thought-process.