How HRM can turn the Great Resignation into the Great Retention

 How to Hire Someone You’ve Never Met in Person?

Identifying the most suitable candidate out of the potential candidates is vital and challenging. The majority of HR Managers prefer to make the final recruiting choice only after spending sufficient time with potential candidates, preferably in person. What could be more vital to your organization than hiring and nurturing the best talent. Face-to-face interviews are structured interviews conducted by trained interviewers who use a standardized interview protocol and a standardized set of responses for recording participants' responses (B, 2023).  Before conducting a face to face interview a HR Manager should screen the candidate's résumé, learn about their job history, and most likely interacted with them over a call. But the matter lies in recognizing if that's "the one." Organizations would prefer to have someone with a positive attitude or someone who appears to be enthusiastic, focused, and sociable. In case what if you're hybrid recruiting? Or the position you're hiring for is remote, and the candidates who made it to the final round of interviews are located all over the world? Here's how to hire someone you've never met!

 

‍                                Figure 1: How to hire someone you've never met in person

1. Conduct Interviews on Different Platforms

Remote hiring doesn’t always have to be limited to a video calling platform. A HR Manager could always have multiplied ways. There are three main types of online interview (Jaffee, 2022). They are,

1.1        Remote Online Interviews

This is simply using existing technology such as zoom, Microsoft Teams to conduct interview where interviewer and interviewee are in 2 different locations and join together using online platform. Although, this saves travel costs and time this way is not much more efficient than a face-to-face interview. It’s always recommended to have the initial interview online and do the final interview physically as much as possible.

1.2        Pre-recorded Applicant’s Responses to Pre-defined Questions

This is a way where interviewer make all the candidates sit Infront of a computer and read or listen or see the questions to them while the web camera records the verbal, open-ended response to the question. In this case all the applicants get the same questions and hear the same information. Interviewer simply check and rate each interview question. In this way interviewer can save time by failing the candidates those who were unable to answer the prerecorded questions. In case if a candidate does poorly on the first few questions, recruiter can end the interview by not watching any more questions.

 

1.3        Blend of Remote Interview and Recorded Responses.

This interview is a blend of remote online interview and pre-recorded applicant’s responses to pre-defined questions which provides benefits of each. In this case companies create a script of pre-recorded interview questions and responses to the questions that are video-delivered to the candidate via the Internet.  Candidates are then able to answer using their keyboard, audio, or video, and based on their answers the “System” automatically branches to the most relevant information for that particular candidate, as well as the most appropriate next question. In this way candidates hear the employee value proposition that’s most relevant to them from the beginning of the recruiting process.  All of this is done using a video interview format so the candidate is engaged in a good experience. The questions also allow the company to do automatic pre-screening based on certain questions.  So, the company does not spend time with candidates that do not meet minimum requirements, are not interested in the job, and/or do not have the right experience and background.

 

2. Look beyond a cold reference check

 References are a great hiring tool for remote hiring. Interviewer could look up the candidate on social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter before hire them. One such emerging concept is social recruitment, the process of recruiting applicants through social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and other means like online forums and job boards.

3. Involve your team members in the process

The most reputed organizations/ companies use this as a tactic in their interview process and goes a level ahead with this while making sure to include at least one person from each of their departments throughout culture fit assessment of their interview process. The candidates will have a significant impact on the short as well as the long-term performance of their overall team. Thus, it's worth incorporating members of their future team, as many as you can feasibly fit, into the recruitment team  Allowing certain teammates to do a one-on-one interview with the possible hire is one example. Alternatively, you may establish a panel of a few members of your staff and conduct a single informational interview for remote hiring.

4. Assign a sample work

In order to gain a sense of candidates’ personalities and aptitudes many companies use tests, work samples or similar assessment tools which provides a chance for interviewer to interact and collaborate with an applicant. As an example, in education sector in Sri Lanka, when the candidates attend for an interview for Teaching vacancy in private sector, candidate is being given a time frame with necessary teaching materials, syllabus and etc to get prepared for a demonstration session. Work assignments are typically assigned after the first interview. After a candidate submit this assignment for review, they will invite the candidate to a second interview if the assignment was done well.

5. Challenge your company’s cultural biases

When recruitment process is ongoing HR Managers prioritize the concept “culture fit” to find the most suitable candidate. Although, it is more important as the others in the recruitment funnel, HR Managers should note that “fit” means that you are looking for someone who acts and thinks the same way you do. Seeking cultural additions of the organization with candidates who can potentially introduce new viewpoints to the table is a good way to look at this.

6. Create a standard onboarding process

HR Managers should define, restructure and establish a process to onboarding process when it comes to remote hiring. It is always good to have an onboarding training for the new employees when you feel that employees need. HR Managers need to identify the organization as well as describe how you go about your onboarding.

Conclusion

 HR Managers must define solutions from remote-friendly to remote-first choosing to work remotely as much as possible. Also, they should be tactical enough to do an evaluation of the employee and rectify all the abilities, skills and their attitude while they interview.

 

References

 

B, N. (2023, January 05). Hiring and Recruitment. Retrieved from How to hire someone you've never met in person: https://www.peoplehum.com/blog/how-to-hire-someone-youve-never-met-in-person

Jaffee, D. (2022, April 29). ALIGNMARK. Retrieved from 3 Types of Online Interviews: https://www.alignmark.com/2022/04/29/3-types-of-online-interviews/