Almost two years back, the pandemic had brought about a complete change in the field of recruitment (almost overnight)—forcing talent acquisition teams and recruiters to come up with an alternative.
Of course, many organizations started a hiring freeze, but the show must go on in the end!
Remote hiring was seen as an alternative approach at the beginning of 2020, but today, it has already taken over as the “new normal” for hiring teams globally.
According to a study by Hubstaff, only 15.5% of businesses intend to return to 100% office work. The remaining 84.5% will stay fully remote or offer flexible work options, investing more into building a virtual business.
It’s safe to say that remote hiring isn’t leaving any time soon. However, the process can be challenging to adapt to, especially if you’re new to the system.
To help you on your remote hiring journey, here is a guide to assist you in acing your recruitment game.
To begin with, here are some benefits of remote hiring—
Why Should You Adopt Remote Hiring?
1. Reduced Hiring Time & Cost Per Hire
Top talent stays in the job market for an average of 10 days, and if your hiring process takes up to 30-40 days, chances are, you are missing out on high-quality candidates.
Remote hiring effectively reduces time spent on hiring and cuts down on overhead costs.
By automating recruitment processes, recruiters can significantly reduce their expenditure on resources and save time. Travel time and costs are also saved with commuting out of the picture.
Read more: How to choose the right recruitment automation software for your agency?
2. Increased Productivity
Studies repeatedly prove the improvement in productivity while doing remote work.
77% of remote workers say they’re more productive when working from home.
Ultimately, when recruiters work more productively, the entire recruitment process becomes much more effective—delivering better results.
Productive recruiters also lead to a better candidate experience.
Read more: 16 amazing tools that’ll help recruiters master the art of productivity.
3. Expands Your Talent Pool
With remote hiring practices, employers are no longer restricted to the talent of a specific geographical area.
Today, remote hiring significantly expands the talent pool by giving recruiters the flexibility to attract job seekers from places they would not even think of considering.
In addition, with a broader net for attracting top talent, remote hiring opens the door to a far more diverse workforce.
4. Better Employee Retention
A whopping 95% of employers believe that remote working positively impacts retention.
With more flexible options and increased productivity, employers can keep employees on board for longer—making it easier to attract top talent.
Better employee retention also means a reduced talent turnover rate!
Major Remote Hiring Tips for Recruiters
If you log in to LinkedIn on an everyday basis, you’re bound to witness some major WFH movement.
Most of the companies are considering a remote work model and with that recruiters have started contemplating innovative ways to hire talent remotely.
This is good news! You (finally) get to be creative!
1. Define Your Remote Hiring Process
a. Create a Step-by-Step Game Plan
Working in a remote environment can often feel cluttered and undisciplined.
To combat the feeling of disorganization, make sure you have an in-depth recruitment plan and goals.
With a structured plan, remote hiring becomes more manageable and keeps hiring teams more prepared.
Create a robust set of recruiting goals for a well-functioning recruitment plan, including your recruitment strategy, assembling your hiring team, and what kind of recruitment tools you will use.
Other than constructing a remote hiring plan, it’s crucial to establish a solid foundation that your hiring team can rely on.
For starters, use a common platform for sharing any data.
In addition, maintain your communication processes through a common communication channel like Google Hangouts, Slack, Skype, or Zoom. Finally, coordinating weekly meetings is also a great way to stay in the loop and track activities.
Read more: A recruiter’s etiquette guide to remote hiring.
b. Collaborate!
Employers can significantly accelerate the remote hiring process through collaborative efforts.
Collaborative hiring efforts reduce the burden by bifurcating tasks within the hiring team. In addition, collaborative hiring positively impacts work culture by improving employee retention, reducing staff turnover—building a strong employer brand.
To make collaborative hiring easier, invest in a centralized cloud-based hiring software to easily monitor and track all hiring activities.
Applicant Tracking Systems are a great way to provide complete visibility to the entire team and manage the same without relying on long meetings or email exchanges.
c. Take Advantage of Technology
Technology is a massive part of what drives remote hiring. Recruiters and hiring teams will majorly rely on technological tools like Applicant Tracking Systems and Recruitment CRMs to accelerate their hiring process.
Cloud-based recruitment software is crucial for remote recruiting as it helps manage all tasks and data under a single platform that the rest of the team can access.
Other than intelligent recruitment software, incorporate the use of pre-screening tools, chatbots, online evaluation tests, and questionnaires to identify ideal candidates from a pool of applicants effectively.
The remote hiring process is solely based on robust technology solutions that can be relied on. Therefore, take the time to select high-quality tools (such as ones that help you send text messages from your computer) that will deliver quality results.
2. Your Candidate Sourcing Game Needs to Be on Poin
t
a. Identify Traits of a Strong Remote Worker
By now you’ve clearly understood that hiring remotely is far more different than conventional hiring practices.
The same applies to the skills and traits of a remote employee. As remote work continues to expand globally, the demand for remote working traits is rising too.
So what should you look out for in a potential remote employee?
To begin with, look out for self-motivated individuals who can work independently and are highly resilient. The ideal remote worker should also be an excellent communicator as remote work will require extra communication and collaboration.
To make this easier, create a personality questionnaire or an online psychometric test to pinpoint the personality traits you are on the lookout for.
Read more: 6 Top skills you should look for in your remote new hires.
b. Perfect your Job Description
In remote hiring, a well-crafted job description is what attracts more interested job seekers. On average, job descriptions that mention the nature of the remote work environment receive much higher applicants.
Make sure your job descriptions showcase your culture and values and mention any perks. In-office perks like free meals are irrelevant for remote workers; therefore, pay attention to what remote workers want, such as flexibility.
Ultimately, you must optimize your job description to attract the ideal remote employee. Most importantly, be realistic and avoid setting unrealistic expectations.
In the end, a job description advertises your workplace. Therefore, give a reason for job seekers to apply to your organization.
c. Leverage Social Recruitment Tactics
With most of today’s job seekers actively engaged on multiple social media platforms, social recruiting is your best bet for sourcing remotely!
Glassdoor states that 79% of job seekers use social media when conducting job searches.
Remote job seekers (primarily millennials and Gen Z candidates) are active on career sites and social media searching for remote jobs.
Moreover, one of the first things job seekers do when coming across an organization is run a social media search.
Consequently, if your organization isn’t active on social media—it’s time to change that!
Staying active on social media is a great way to attract potential job seekers as it allows recruiters to showcase their work culture.
Make sure you leverage social recruiting to your advantage by staying active on relevant career sites like LinkedIn and CareerBuilder to target your relevant audience.
3. Conduct Better Remote Interviews
a. Use Skills Assessment Tools
Don’t miss out on online skills assessment tools and psychometric tests for practical candidate evaluation.
Online skills assessment tools can significantly raise the probability of hiring top talent as they provide a more objective judgment than conventional interviews.
Through these tests, recruiters can quickly identify candidates’ hard and soft skills. Moreover, with pre-set questionnaires and automated evaluations, online assessment tools help reduce a ton of time and any form of bias.
b. Assign Tasks to Candidates
Assessing a candidate’s skills can be a difficult task while hiring remotely. To make this easier, create a time-constrained task or project relevant to the applicant’s job title.
As an employer, be mindful of the project as it should not be too time-consuming or difficult. The project’s primary purpose is to get insight into a candidate’s approach and skills.
Keep in mind that these tasks should only be for candidates who have made the final round of screening and any other form of testing.
Finally, use this short task as a topic of discussion for the final interview round. This is a great way to understand a candidate’s attitude and see if their approach resembles your organization’s values and standards.
Read more: 10 ways to make remote hiring a cakewalk!
c. Keep Your Candidates Informed
Maintaining clear and consistent communication should be your top priority when hiring remotely.
According to Glassdoor, 58% of job seekers put clear and regular communication at the highest priority.
Keep your candidates well informed throughout each stage of hiring.
Candidates often complain about a lack of consistent communication or a lack of information provided by recruiters. Also, remember to follow up on candidates after each stage.
Fortunately, in the era of recruitment automation, maintaining candidate communication is as easy as pie!
Share automated reminders and updates regarding the candidates’ status and any next steps. Moreover, keeping candidates informed is a great way to prevent no-shows.
Always remember consistent communication is key to a stellar candidate experience and employer branding.
Read more: Are you doing remote recruiting correctly? Check out its do’s and dont’s.
d. Be Well Prepared
In the end, an essential tip for remote hiring is always to stay prepared.
In a remote working environment, you are bound to come across several issues as things do not always happen as planned.
Stay prepared by maintaining a checklist of pending tasks, interviewing questions, and keeping tabs on candidates. You can also set a meeting agenda for the interview in advance.
At the same time, stay prepared for any issues a candidate may come across so they can be dealt with promptly.
As digital interviews replace in-person interviews, you will likely face technical issues throughout the interviewing process. Therefore, do not let these issues get in the way of your judgment.
Also, create a backup plan for such situations.
Ensure you have—
- A backup interviewing platform if one is not functioning correctly
- Your audio and mic functioning correctly
- A stable internet connection
Don’t forget to keep your candidates informed about solutions to technical issues. Most importantly, be mindful of your candidate by providing an extra few minutes before interviews in case of connectivity problems.
Read more: What should recruiters look for in CVs when hiring for remote work?
As remote work gains momentum in the recruitment and staffing industry, the need for recruiters who excel at remote interviewing will grow as well.
Expect the best possible outcome by creating a positive and productive remote experience for candidates, and th
e results will speak for themselves!
