Despite an uncertain economic situation, companies are still recruiting staff. Business Owners, Directors and Managers are still interviewing candidates, but nobody is shaking hands. Sometimes they are not even meeting face-to-face.
If you are thinking of taking on a new team member, how should you handle this? With 20 years experience in the recruitment sector and five months and what we can only term the New Recruitment Sector, I would like to give you some tips for getting recruitment to work for you.
There are simply hundreds of guides and articles about how to be successful at interviews, but as they are more than six months old, much of what they suggest is now out of date. We are now living in a world where the majority of job interviews are happening online. In this virtual world, depending on the quality of the computing kit, cameras and internet speed, you may get to see a fairly decent picture of the top half of the candidates. But what about the rest?
Back in the gold old days, you could assess so much in the first 30 seconds of a meeting: Is your candidate dressed smartly, have they polished their shoes, do they have good eye contact, do they have the all-important firm handshake! All of these things are so much harder on a Zoom or Teams meeting.
In this “working from home World,” normal office wear has been replaced by what is comfortable. You have probably done this yourself, can you mark down a candidate who does not wear a suit and shirt, or dress for a video interview? Does it matter that much anyway? Assessing eye contact is dependent on the alignment of the cameras on our laptops.
So, many of our conventional ways of assessing a candidate’s suitability for a job have disappeared. But don’t worry about it; the world has changed as well, and we need to get used to it.
The essential things you need to decide in your interview process remain the same:
- Can they do the job? (Or be trained to do the job?)
- Will they fit in? Here, we need to remember that the office environment has changed and also that they may be working from home some of the time.
- Will they stay? In a period of uncertainty, knowing that you have committed staff makes all the difference.
Having decided that your prospective candidate fits all of YOUR requirements, it is essential to remember; the interview is a two-way process. You need to sell your company and the job opportunity for a prospective candidate.
A summary of the points you need to cover:
- Following the crisis, what changes have you made to the business?
- Have you had to make redundancies in other areas?
- Is the business financially sound? Is it a safe company to join?
- Have you enabled staff to work from home all of the time/ some of the time/ not at all? How would that relate to this job? For a new employee, it is essential to spend at least some of their time in the office. Only by doing this will they build internal relationships, understand systems and absorb the company culture. Company culture is even more critical when people are working remotely. Feeling part of a team means a lot to most people.
- What have you put in place to ensure social-distancing in the workplace and reduce the chances of infection? These points will show that you care for your employees and see their well-being as a priority.
- What are the long-term plans for the company and the development opportunities for this position?
- Accept that people’s experience of the Covid-19 crisis and Lockdown may have been very different from your own. They may have been through very traumatic circumstances in recent months; physically, mentally, financially. They may be anxious about returning to the workplace. Take time to listen to them and offer reassurance.
If you are interviewing for a low or medium level position, then a single interview may be sufficient for you to make a decision. If you are recruiting for a higher-level or technical job, then a second meeting may be essential, and this should be in the place of work. Here is your opportunity to demonstrate all of the processes you have put in place to protect your staff and impress your potential recruit.
For now, this is how we will need to proceed. Don’t worry; everyone else is in the same position, and I can assure you that employers are managing to interview and recruit new staff using these guidelines.
Please get in touch with Tony if you would like more information.
