The (new) Virtual World of Recruitment

The (new) Virtual World of Recruitment

Corona Virus has caused upheaval across all areas of business and recruitment is no different.  I am delighted to share with you this guest blog by Caroline Hunt from Emerald Starfish who explains the new world of virtual recruitment.

From February to April 2020 the UK has seen a 30% decrease in the number of job vacancies, but this doesn’t mean that recruitment has stopped at all.  In this brave new world, companies that are still recruiting are focusing on their business-critical roles.  Where companies and organisations are actively recruiting, they do need to get good quickly at recruiting remotely and virtually to ensure that they are still able to engage with the best candidates and continue with their growth plans.

Much of standard recruitment is conducted remotely – advertising, CV sifting, application form filling, making job offers and negotiating packages and start dates have traditionally been done remotely.  Is it much of a step change to move interviewing to an on-line interviewing platform?

Since lockdown, all bar one of the interviews conducted and arranged for our clients here at Emerald Starfish have been using zoom or teams.  They have been well received on both sides. Recruiting Managers have found that they have taken up less of their time and we have had a much quicker turn round of candidates.  In the past, the delay between a good candidate being identified and meeting the recruiting managers could be up to a fortnight as rooms needed to be booked and getting the right people in the same place at the same time just took longer.  We have suggested that to ensure that our clients still get great engagement with their candidates that they put in some extra information around the recruitment process.  We have worked with our clients to ensure that there is better online information available to help candidates make the right decisions.  Adverts and job specifications need to work harder and can include information such as the vision, mission and values of the company.  Some companies have got very creative and are now including virtual tours on their website to help individuals get a real flavour of the organisation and what the buildings that they operate from look like.

Candidates have been nervous about using this medium for recruitment – but this is usually around broadband width and connectivity rather than video interviewing as a method of assessment.  Candidates have talked about it being more difficult to “read the room” and therefore having less of a sense as to how it went.  However, candidates have also spoken about how much more relaxed it has felt, how the tech hasn’t let them down and how much more personal the process felt.

As a Recruiting Manager, you should expect, and plan for more questions around flexible working practices, how much of the role can be done from home and general work: life balance questions.  Don’t take these as negative, they show candidates imagining working for you for the long term and making an effort to understand your current and future likely work practices.

We would also recommend arranging a virtual meet up before the start date.  Starting a new job can seem like a leap of faith, and this seems larger if the candidate hasn’t had a chance to visit the site, or meet their work colleagues.  A check-in before they start gives another opportunity to answer any final queries that may have arisen.  If you can get a few of the team members together on the call too this helps to build communication channels and give the new starter a feel for the culture of the organisation too.

This new world of remote working is here to stay and therefore if you are looking at growing your business through taking on new staff you need to be prepared to do the whole recruitment process remotely.  The technology is there and we have all quickly adapted to video calling and meeting people remotely, it will become the new normal.  If you have vacancies, or business-critical positions can you afford to wait to see if/when life returns to the old office environment, or should you use this opportunity to bring new talent into your organisation?

Caroline Hunt is the Managing Director of Emerald Starfish.  Emerald Starfish celebrates its 10^th anniversary this year and specialises in working with SMEs as an Outsourced Recruitment Provider.  They work with companies that typically don’t have any in-house HR or recruitment function.  They work as an outsourced recruitment department, eliminating placement fees and the need for recruitment agencies.