A Recruiters Guide to Virtual Recruitment

With a witnessable evolution in technology, there has also been a great shift in the recruitment process. Adopting virtual recruitment over the traditional hiring practice by several companies is surely reducing commuting and scheduling costs. But needless to say, this system of hiring fails to acknowledge the talent and efficiency of the prospective candidates. 

Now that virtual recruitment is breaking new ground since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations and companies have also been blessed to hire diverse talent across the globe. So, be it the face-to-face interview or the remote hiring process, HR always has a hard mountain to climb. 

With many integrated tools, multiple assessments, basic aptitude, personality tests, surveys, and other attributes, this process facilitates the recruiter to identify and filter the right applicant for the job role. It's just that you need to follow the right ways and opt for the best virtual hiring practices to make the recruitment process like a well-oiled machine. 

INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUAL RECRUITMENT

Hosted by the different technology tools to handpick the best and the most efficient candidate for the post, virtual recruitment is basically an online recruitment strategy. Unlike face-to-face interviews, this recruitment process undertakes all the tasks like screening and interviewing the candidates to hire them for the specific designation. 

Working well for recruiting agencies or firms by cutting down the cost of travel, staffing, accommodations, rent of the venue, unnecessary paperwork, and much more, this hiring system is also attracting a large number of aspirants. 

PRACTICE THE EXCITING IDEAS FOR A SUCCESSFUL VIRTUAL RECRUITMENT

With minimal effort, the virtual recruitment process can be of great benefit if you incorporate several solutions and creative tools to meet the objectives of your business. But what are the changes that you can adopt and experience a smooth transition if you start preparing for it today? As now we are done with introducing what virtual recruitment is, come, let's have a look at some of the proven ideas that promote a seamless recruitment process.

Plan out for a successful recruitment process with a robust tech stack

The success of every event or occasion depends on the entire planning that drives the candidates to apply for the specific post. Emphasizing some of the important tools and finding the right process can be a great savior to both the applicant and the recruiter. 

Implement the idea of getting your tech stack upgraded with tools like document applicant tracking systems, e-signing of documents, chatbots, and others. These tools not only give a boost to the recruitment process but also simplify them. Practicing this model is sure to speed up recruitment activity, reduce costs, and surprise you with a result that you have been looking for. 

1. Communicate your brand and work culture effectively

Online platforms are truly a blessing that maximizes the promotion of your brand efficiently. The increasing use of social media platforms is a smarter strategy to connect applicants globally. From Twitter and Facebook to Instagram, to LinkedIn, a simple post for the job or sharing the basic information, vision, benefits, and photos reflecting the culture of the company or the organization not only expands your reach but also creates positive approval among the applicants. 

2. Give a clear picture of the job

Another amazing step to make virtual recruitment successful is to clearly mention the expectation and summary of the specific job role which makes filtering candidates for the post. Reducing the burden on the team of hirers, communicating a clear picture about the designation, work experience, educational qualifications, and many more such details also gives clarity to the candidates to apply without any confusion. 

3. Go for one-way interviewing

Make a move towards practicing the idea of face-to-face interviews even for virtual recruitment which is one of the most insightful technologies that mirrors the candidate completely. Eliminating the time to read every single cover letter from the application, recruiters can save time and money with face-to-face conversations with applications like Skype, Zoom, Spark Hire, and VidCruiter. 

Furthermore, the HR teams can achieve higher productivity in recruiting candidates by accessing the videos of the re-recorded interviews. Make a list of the questionnaires that aren’t asked prior and get a recorded video of the answers of the same to avoid duplication by the applicant. 

4. Uncover the desirable benefits to attract the talent

An in-depth study and survey showcase about 62% of the candidates accept any job opportunity regardless of the salary only for high-end benefits or perks offered by several companies. Not only attracting the candidates to apply for the remote job, practising this strategy is a creative means for the workers to virtually explore new opportunities that promote their careers.

Besides salary, below are several attractive perks offered exclusively for remote employees.

- Coordinate flexibility in working hours with frequent breaks

- Basic health, mental, and wellness coverage

- Subscriptions for Amazon, Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar, etc. 

- Encouraging Paid Time Off

- Monthly allowance for education

- Children Care expenses for new parents

5. Keep no room for timezone challenges

Many times, planning and scheduling interviews can get messy if you have a huge pool of candidates from countries that share different time zones. Keeping no geographical barriers, the virtual recruitment procedure lets the recruiters conduct interviews during the day or night, standard working hours, by utilizing the ‘timezone conversion tool’. This process of hiring candidates opens the doors to conducting multiple rounds of interviews, thereby increasing the possibility of hunting multiple talents from several geographical locations. 

6. Ease the selection of the candidates with skill tests

No recruitment process is complete without personality tests or assessments that check the efficiency of the candidates and thereby make the screening procedure easy for the recruiters. Indeed it is not easy for any recruiter to determine the personality of the applicant, hence here is a list of the 6 best tools of assessment. 

McQuaig - This test is developed to measure the reasoning and speed of thinking in a short time frame with 15 minutes of a test featuring a long assessment that incorporates 50 questions. 

Adaface - Mostly used to optimize the first round of the interviews via an intelligent conversational chatbot, to check the ability to reciprocate to the tricky questions for software roles

Codility - This platform evaluates the skills of coding of the applicant and their decision-making skills. 

Aspiring Minds - Known to evaluate candidates for different companies and jobs, this online tool checks the ability to solve mathematical problems, reasoning, interpretation, and verbal skills. 

7. Feedback and response are must

However, virtual recruitment takes place, so it is a must to create the right response and feedback strategy to let things run smoothly. Make it a point to receive the feedback, be it good or bad feedback; from the candidates post-interview. 

This system will not only let you understand the loopholes that bothered the recruitment process but also will clearly reveal the areas where you have something to seriously work on. From badly described job descriptions, too many confusing questionnaires, and outdated recruitment methods, to complex application procedures and many more. 

Quite the reverse, communicating the response “whether selected or not, ” to the applicants through the mail, is to bring the brand, goodwill, and reputation of your company into the spotlight. Moreover, it also reflects a pleasant and positive aspect of the candidate.

8. Never compromise on legal considerations

To remove unconscious bias during the recruitment process and avoid any legal issues, it is quite necessary to abide by the laws of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EOCC). This law which promotes “blind recruitment” not only protects the identity of the person but also lets you take unbiased decisions from the very beginning to recruit the right and talented applicant. 

Aiding you to filter the candidates out of several applicants irrespective of their gender, national origin, colour, race, religion, sex, disability, age, marital status, and other protected identity, genetic information, etc, these laws simplify the recruitment procedure. Ensuring to reduce the risk of bias now, will let the process of recruitment go fair, a long way. 

GET UPDATED WITH THE TOOLS TO PROMOTE SUCCESSFUL VIRTUAL RECRUITMENT 

Whether you accept it or not, ‘Change is the only Constant’ is what will save you from many challenges. Changes don’t happen overnight, it is a process that takes its own time and neither there is a push button that creates magic. Many companies have witnessed an amazing improvement in performance by overcoming the deficiency in the hiring process. 

It is also noticed to cut down the expenditure that the HR teams make, thereby making the recruiting experience even more comfortable and faultless. Identify the area that seeks urgent improvement and emphasize every minute aspect and avoid employing efforts that create no obstacles in remote recruitment. 

1. Practice Virtual Onboarding

In simple words, Virtual Onboarding is basically the wrapping up of the recruitment procedure. Right from making the new employees know the culture of the company, their job roles, and responsibilities, to introducing them to the technology before getting hands-on training. Follow the steps below to make sure that the onboarding process is smoother. 

STEP 1 : Greet the employees with a ‘welcome mail’ and introduce them to their teammates.

STEP 2 : Browse and prepare the material that explains basic paperwork, job role expectations, training material related to the job, guidelines, policies and much more.

STEP 3 : Builds strong communication over time, updates on regular meetings aid the employee to boost their strengths and supervises their career growth.

STEP 4 : Monitor and review the progress of the employee over 2-3 years and plan for rewards and promotion or separation of the same.

2. Access the best softwares for virtual recruitment

It is always a good idea to make work lighter if it happens to be through any automation. Avoid engaging in any outdated and confusing software and instead go for User-Friendly (good user interface and user experience) virtual recruitment software. Here is a checklist of a few software for virtual recruitment. 

- Wide Noodle - Hires professionals in programming 

- monday.com - Is used to customize and scale the candidates 

- Pinpoint - Overviews the talent in-house and scorecards

- Recruitee - Tracks the number of applied candidates 

- Manatal - This recruitment solution works best for AI tools and social media

With no more scrolling and tedious clicking, you can simply reshape the recruitment criteria with the best solutions that work wonders in the long run. 

3. Upgrade modern video interviewing tools

With a more and more witnessable inclination towards various recruitment software, about 60% of the hiring teams have taken a step forward by upgrading many modern video interviewing tools and achieving their aim.

Have a glance over some of the best platforms for video interviewing. 

- Zoom - Connects remotely and allows recording the interviews for later reference 

- Willo - Eases the screening and recruitment of a large volume of candidates

- MyInterview - Reviews the video application and examines the ability through an interview 

- Harver - Evaluates cognitive ability, skills, and data-driven intelligence for simpler decision making  

- Jobma - Cutting down the expenses incurred on hiring, this platform improves the experience of the interview for both the employer and the candidate 

- SparkHire - Accelerates 5 times faster screening of the candidates and reduces the bias system 

- VidCruiter - Channels you to conduct live interviews and also pre-record them and eliminate the time-zone hassles

Even if a sown seed isn't instantly turned into a tree, then how can there be a magical revolution in accepting and updating any idea? So, just grow like a tree and enjoy the fruits. 

CONCLUSION

As a final point, with detailed guidelines, tips, and solutions alongside, virtual recruitment can be an effortless and hassle-free procedure for the recruiters and the result can be a win-win for the beneficiaries on both sides. So, let’s enthusiastically embrace the culture of a flexible technological system to achieve the company goals for a better and more successful business.