5 Ways COVID-19 has Driven Remote Recruitment Innovation

 

While everyone is talking about the best ways to manage remote employees and teams during the COVID-19 pandemic, not enough people are focusing on those poor business owners and entrepreneurs who first have to recruit remote employees before they can start running a productive digital workplace. After all, not everyone has employees on standby, as many business leaders out there are just starting out and first need to employ the best recruitment tactics to acquire the top talent in the industry – even if just to supplement their existing human resources.

 

Whether you are in need of new remote employees or if you’re trying to bring together a brand-new remote team, it’s imperative that you redefine your recruitment strategy for the remote applicant and optimize it for the COVID-19 world. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the five ways COVID-19 has driven innovation in recruitment and how you can attract the best remote workers from across the globe. 

 

1. Optimizing the job ads for the remote applicant

First things first, it’s important to note how the remote work culture differs from traditional in-house recruiting in terms of job postings and what attracts the right applicants. While it’s still true that the best job ads contain practical and functional information as well as storytelling elements and rich narratives, the remote work culture driven by the COVID-19 pandemic now places greater emphasis on performance and concrete, project-based tasks. 

 

Before you start painting a picture for the applicant with a great narrative, and before you start selling your brand’s culture, you first need to tell them about their duties and what you offer in terms of salary and perks. After all, the remote applicant will be skimming through job ads looking for the best deal first, and a great company culture second. This should come as no surprise, as they won’t be working in a physical office space with other people, instead, they will be communicating with them via digital channels.

 

If you want to attract the best and the brightest remote workers, lead with the benefits you bring to the table and wrap it up with stories of your culture, your brand, and how your employee collective operates. This will show the applicants that you offer material value along with a thriving work environment. 

 

2. Screening and testing the applicants

 

Many entrepreneurs, HR specialists, and business gurus will tell you that the resume is a thing of the past and that it no longer contributes to the quality of the selection process and recruitment as a whole. In reality, though, the resume is still a valuable indicator as to the type of person you’re dealing with, and whether or not their experience, skills, and values align with your company’s needs and brand identity. That said, selecting a resume out of the lot is only the first step.

 

You have to screen and test your applicants rigorously, especially if you’re hiring remote employees, in order to verify the truth behind the claims in their resumes. This will require several online interviews, each serving a specific purpose. Your main goals should be to ascertain their level of productivity, their communication skills, their internal organization, what motivates them, and how they approach the unique problems of the job.

 

3. Communicating through different recruiting stages

Given the fact that your top applicants will be going through numerous interviews and testing stages, it is important that you have the technology necessary to communicate with them efficiently, effectively, and with zero interruptions. On the other hand, you also need a cloud-based communication system like VoIP to manage remote employees and integrate them into your company’s network, so it’s safe to say that your old phone system won’t cut it anymore.

 

COVID-19 has produced a real spark in digital transformation around the world, and most notably, companies have begun adopting better communication technologies such as VoIP. That said, there are many VoIP vendors out there, so it’s important to compare the best VoIP providers to find a phone system that will bring the right digital features to help you manage remote recruiting and ensure seamless business-wide communication. These features should include low-cost calls, video conferencing and call analytics, transcription, and full mobile optimization.

 

4. Running a short but paid trial project

 

People don’t want to work for free and you don’t want to attract people that do – simply because the most talented job-seekers know their worth. Now that you have attracted some quality applicants and that you have gone through the initial interviews, you can start with the paid trial run to really check if they’re worth their salt. 

 

This doesn’t have to be a complex project, but it should encompass a few key elements like productivity, organization, specific skills, collaboration and communication, and general reliability. If the applicant is able to tick all of these boxes during the trial project, you can move on to the last stage of the hiring process.

 

5. Welcoming the applicant into the brand and its culture

Remote workers might think that they don’t need to concern themselves too much with company culture, but in reality, it is the culture in a remote team that lowers the company’s turnover rate and helps retain the best talent over the long term. This is why it’s important that you conduct a final interview with the team that the new applicant will be joining as well as the team leader and the upper management depending on the importance of the job position. Ideally, the applicant will fit perfectly into the brand culture and the rest of the employee collective.

 

Wrapping up

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies to adopt remote work and change the way they do business, and it has definitely influenced the way we approach recruiting. By optimizing your recruiting process to accommodate the needs of the remote applicant, you should have no problem sourcing the best remote workers for your company from around the world.

 

Find out more about Smart Recruit Online and how our platform will transform your recruitment strategy by booking a demo with one of our consultants.