The Employer Engagement Guide: A Complete Guide on How to Run Your Recruitment Processes Virtually

Welcome to Part Six of the Employer Engagement Guide. The virtual recruitment process isn’t simple. Happily, though, we’ve pulled together some expert guidance on the remote recruitment process.

Arguably the most crucial aspect of any company is recruiting the perfect talent. If your virtual recruitment processes aren’t right, then you’ll only witness sub-standard results. Hiring strategies change each year.

Over the past 10 years or so, the work evolution’s been significant. Technology is taking the spotlight, so the way a company operates and adapts has always been vital. Yet one of the employment trends no one predicted was virtual hiring.

While this year has been less uncertain than the previous few years, the Covid-19 pandemic still means numerous companies need to enhance their productivity, scalability and stay afloat.

Recruiting top talent is no easy task. As a hiring manager or employer, you’re aware of the risks. You know how much time it takes, what it costs, and how many resources are involved. What’s more, the hiring process ultimately decides your firm’s fate.

You certainly don’t want to make any errors in your remote recruitment process. While the classic recruitment and selection process is old hat to all your hiring professionals and recruitment firms, the remote recruitment process isn’t quite as simple.

Happily, though, we’ve pulled together some expert guidance on the remote recruitment process.

Define your perfect candidate

That is to say, distinguish your wants from your needs. It isn’t a bad thing to outline every skill, ability, experience, and personality quality you want your applicants to have. But, the issue becomes apparent when all of these fall into the “must-have” category.

The best virtual recruitment approaches concentrate on sourcing and hiring candidates that surpass expectations. That said, firms that end up recruiting the best fit understand there’s no ideal candidate. Else, it would be hopeless to recruit. In which case, we advise separating must-have attributes from nice-to-have ones.

Below, we’ve put together a few questions to help you distinguish both ideas:

Must-have qualities and skills:

• What duties will the candidate have? What abilities do they need for these duties?
• Do applicants need experience for this position? If so, what kind?
• What defines your firm’s culture? What qualities must your candidates have that represent your organisation’s culture?

Nice-to-have abilities and talents

• What skills aren’t necessary for the job but would add value?
• What personality characteristics would your team appreciate most?

Write appealing job adverts

Naturally, you’re seeking top talent. But you can’t source the best fit by posting slapdash recruiting ads. Creating enticing and well-written adverts will engage candidates. Job ads are the first impression applicants have about your firm and the roles you’re recruiting. A recent survey reveals that 72% of recruiting managers create clear job adverts while only 36% think about the same.

Avoid writing lengthy, mundane descriptions about what your firm stands for and what kind of “guru” or “superstar” you’re seeking. And rather than writing a never-ending catalogue of skills, insert the ones most relatable to the position, including:

• Title of the job
• A summary about the position
• The job’s tasks and duties
• Requirements

Develop your candidate pipeline

The secret to recruiting top talent is developing a talent pipeline. You need to have a list of potential candidates who are experienced and willing to accept suitable positions within the company as soon as they become available.

This can involve internal staff as well as talent from external sources such as job boards, social media platforms, referrals, and recruitment companies.

Sure, job boards can effortlessly allow you to publicise your job advert and wait for top talent to apply. However, over the years we’ve been in business, we’ve discovered that headhunting is one of the most efficient ways to get the best candidates. Remote recruitment doesn’t always start with searching for candidates who are job-seeking actively. It occurs among candidates who are already working in another organisation. So, the secret is knowing what to offer them to coax them to your company.

Looking for talent passively (headhunting) occurs mainly through social media platforms like LinkedIn. And, in most cases, it involves contacting the talent with an offer they can’t refuse. In our experience, many candidates in the financial sector prefer flexible working options.

Vet candidates thoroughly

Screening your applicants is paramount – they’re much more than a mere CV. Having said this, we don’t advise considering every CV – that’s just ridiculous. This is especially so for larger companies. One of the best ways to hire remote talent is to set up a system that automatically screens applicants. Alternatively, have an applicant tracking system (ATS) in place.

Occasionally, candidates press ‘apply now’ without fully reading the job advert properly. They rapidly skim the job description, look for specific skills or the salary, and press ‘send’ without delay.

Many applicants fail to read a job advert properly, with many lacking the right skills for the position.

Rather than embarking on the lengthy, laborious searching through all the applications or taking time out to interview them, screen the candidates first. We recommend using an ATS to do this. Not only does it cut down admin time, but it also finds more experienced candidates.

In other words, the application guarantees that hiring managers only source the most qualified talent that matches the requirements and skills in the applicant pool.

Perform interviews and assess

So, you’ve picked the applicants you deem best suited to the position. Now, it’s interview time. It’s of the most fundamental ways to source top talent for your team. Interviews are a chance for you to understand the candidate more profoundly and listen to the answers they give. Interviews allow you to learn more about their personality and acknowledge how they react in a specific situation.

Bear in mind, though, that every interview depends on the kind of position you’re recruiting for. If you’re trying to source talent for a leading financial role, you’ll undoubtedly ask questions that lean towards this. The same applies to different areas. You can’t assess a credit administrator officer in the same way you can assess a senior risk analyst. For every position, outline the skills and how you’ll assess them.

If you’re in a virtual environment, this may seem harder because you’re not physically in the same setting. In which case, we suggest having the right tools in place to evaluate and interview remote applicants successfully.

Remote applications go beyond Google Teams and Zoom, though. We’re talking about tools that help you see if applicants can carry out the tasks they say they can.

Consider implementing the following tools:

• Codility (tech)
• HireSelect (personality tests)
• HackerRank (tech)
• The English Quiz (tests an applicant’s fluency and written ability in the English language)

Concentrate on offering a positive candidate experience 

Finding the right fit isn’t just about making sure applicants have what it takes. You also have to convince them that your offer’s just too good to decline – whether they’re actively job hunting or not.

Sure, you need to entice them with possibilities and offers, but you also need to provide them with a positive candidate experience – even before taking them on as staff.

Today, organisations need to strengthen and work on their digital presence to get clients and engage with potential talent. Before applying for a position, applicants do their homework on you to get a picture of your firm by reading reviews about you, speaking to people, and probing others about your application process.

Once you onboard them, it’s time to determine the right method to approach them, apprehend how the process works, and sensibly answer them. Making them feel at home and carrying out interviews professionally will help them feel welcome.

And finally…

And now it’s time for the final evaluation. Once you’ve conducted all the interviews and made your evaluations, you need to make the final decision. You’re a hiring manager, so you’ve experienced quite a few difficulties when selecting different applicants. This final step involves reviewing your interview notes and ascertaining which applicants you will add be a great culture-add to your team.

Be mindful of unconscious biases. Recruiting managers frequently reject candidates because they made a bad first impression and said something they disagreed with rather than the candidate lacking the skills.

So, when evaluating, consider whether you have a job-related or professional reason to reject the candidate. Why do you feel they’re unsuitable for the job?

And finally, when you’re assessing, we advise going over your interview notes and building scorecards – this may help calculate the applicant’s answer so you can assess different applicants using these scores.

Hire top talent with Market Talent 

Hiring the best candidates virtually is taxing, particularly when you’re clueless about where to start. Are contracts, paperwork, documentation, and the legal aspects getting too much to handle? Leave it in our hands instead.

Our team of specialised finance recruiters at Market Talent can help you source and hire highly skilled workers that’ll adapt to your organisation’s process.