• Only 16% of HR professionals say they feel ready to become fully virtual with hiring practices.
• To start your recruiting process, make sure people know you are hiring. Ask your employees to spread the word on social media.
• Recruiting new employees remotely is a challenge, but companies must develop plans, prioritize remote work skills, and consider passive recruitment strategies.

If your company is hiring, the process may seem a little different from what you are used to, the in-person interviews or the conversations having to go to video chat. You will also need to adapt your recruiting practices to keep your candidate pipeline full. This guide will provide you with five strategies you can implement right now to help your business effectively recruit, hire and integrate new employees as a remote team, which will help your business continue to recruit the best talent who can meet to your personnel needs.

Is your company ready to recruit and integrate new employees remotely?

A new Doodle study found that only 16% of HR professionals in the United States said they were ready to become fully virtual with their recruitment and integration programs. The study also found that remote meeting tools tend to be a low priority item in HR budgets despite the large increase in remote meetings, which new employees who have been integrated have had a hard time finding themselves. feel part of the team and that human resource managers had difficulties with employee engagement and integrate them effectively into the corporate culture.

The future of businesses and the hiring process associated with the COVID-19 pandemic are uncertain, so small businesses will need to be flexible and adapt their usual practices until face-to-face business is again possible. Here are five steps you can take right now to adapt your hiring practices.

1. Let people know that you are hiring

Many qualified candidates who were looking for work before the pandemic may assume that most companies do not hire during the crisis, so be aware that your company is actively looking for new employees.

“Companies must first let the public know that they are always open, that they are still hiring and that they are moving forward,” said Chris Vennitti, president of the Atlantic region amid Addison Group. “The pool of available candidates will gravitate towards companies active in raising awareness.”

Make sure all of your current job openings are listed on your company website, and call attention to your open positions on social media and other marketing channels to help find the right candidate.

“Companies should update and clean up their job postings online – new ones will receive the most appeal, and those published even a month ago will be considered potentially irrelevant,” said Vennitti.

You can also hire your current employees to help spread the word by leveraging their own social media, said Clair Kim, CEO of wowessays.com. “Encourage your company’s staff to share the job posting on their social media. The more shares, the greater the reach. Bonus points for any staff member who can explain why love working for this company as part of the job offer! 

2. Have a detailed procedure for recruiting employees

If you are hiring during the coronavirus pandemic, you need a detailed and well thought out procedure or a recruitment plan in place before you begin the process. Hiring completely remotely will be a very different experience from hiring in person, and it is your responsibility to the company and potential employees to make sure that you have a process that will work.

“Make sure you have a system in place to test your technologies in advance, and ask the interviewer to do the same,” said trainer and real estate agent Chantay Bridges. “Anything you can do in advance to make sure everything is going well is a good start.”

Much of the preparation for hiring a new employee will be the same as if you were hiring in person. You will compile a list of candidates, refine them and choose the ones you will interview.

When issuing the invitation for a video interview, be sure to detail exactly how the process will unfold and what the candidate should expect.

• Include all necessary information, such as time, date and who will call whom.
• Provide a link to the video conference.
• Tell them if this position is permanently or temporarily removed.

“Remote recruitment must involve providing a lot of information to potential candidates and checking the applications received,” said Jennifer Walden, director of operations at Wikilawn. “There is bound to be a sea. Set strict standards for what you want in a candidate, explain it clearly on the job offer and remove all those who do not meet them. It is essential to be able to follow this remote process. “

3. Be realistic in your offer

This is a very uncertain time for companies and employees, so when you hire, make sure that your company can support a new employee without reservation or modification.

“When you hire during a crisis, I think you should be very aware of what you can offer,” said Walden. “Make sure it is a long-term, permanent position – to the best of your knowledge – with competitive salary and benefits.”

If you think or know that circumstances will change after the crisis ends, such as moving the employee to a job, expose all of this when you offer the job.

“Whether it’s a permanent position or a temporary position, make sure the new recruit and the company are on the same page,” said Kim. “Things are different now and will be after the crisis. Business leaders must have clear plans.”

4. Prioritize remote work skills

Because many Americans work remotely indefinitely, it is in your best interest to put special emphasis on skills for remote work when you hire. Effective communication, organization, awareness and self-direction are all useful skills in working at a distance.

Although your business may not be completely distant forever, finding specific job skills among job applicants can ease their transition to your business and increase their initial productivity, as there may be less learning curve for adapt to remote work.

You can also consider making certain roles you hire completely distant.

“Remote recruitment allows organizations to access more applicants than ever from the comfort of their own homes,” said Kim. “Many companies that recruit during the coronavirus recruit specifically remote or independent positions.”

5. Use your existing pool of candidates

Many companies have pools of candidates who have previously submitted applications and may be seeking a job during the crisis. If you’d like to avoid an active recruiting campaign, you can shift your focus to this existing pool of candidates and hire from there.

“We’re focusing more on passive candidates – i.e., existing candidates, potential candidates we’ve been keeping an eye on, unsolicited applications,” said Kim. “Optimizing an existing talent pool [gives companies something] they can tap into as they are executing their crisis exit strategy.”

Kim said that this approach can give companies the space and time to recruit the right employees who will go full force on new initiatives once the crisis has passed and businesses have resumed their normal activities.