The COVID-19 crisis has drastically changed the way that most businesses run. Rather than having open-plan offices crammed with staff, companies now more often allow employees to work from home, even enforcing it during stay-at-home orders from the government. Some people may still be resigning from their roles during this time due to family concerns or other responsibilities. So, how can you recruit successfully to replace these people during the pandemic?

Remote Recruiting

To recruit successfully during the pandemic, you’re going to have to be willing to begin a remote recruiting process. Flying people in for interviews right now is just not really an option, so you will need to do it all online. One Doodle study showed that only around 16% of HR staff were prepared to conduct recruitment and onboarding entirely online.

For as long as the pandemic lasts, you should be performing these tasks online with minimal face-to-face interaction, and that’s what remote recruiting is all about. It refers to completing the full recruitment process online via video interviews, digital contract signing, and more.

Did you know that the majority of candidates prefer to receive texts during a recruitment process as opposed to a phone call or email? It may be time to rethink your remote recruiting process and update it for the modern age. Recruitment, after all, is not only about finding great candidates but treating them well and creating an excellent candidate experience.

How to Recruit Successfully During the Pandemic

Encourage Remote Work

If you want some high-quality applicants, you need to make people in your organization feel safe. During the pandemic, one of the top ways you can do that is to encourage remote work. Tell your staff that they are welcome to work from home as much as possible, even once the pandemic is over. After all, if they are getting their work done, there is no real reason that people have to be in the office. This attitude towards remote work is appealing to many potential candidates who don’t want to be put in the difficult position of being asked to go into an office during the pandemic.

Creating a formal work from home policy can be a great start to encouraging remote work. For example, this policy could outline that staff can work from home unless they are expected to meet a client, attend a meeting, and other scenarios that are important to your business. This will make it clear when you expect people to be in the office or not.

Hire Remote Staff

If you’re going to encourage people to work from home, then consider whether you need to stick to only hiring people in your area. Have you thought about hiring permanent remote workers? These people may live in other parts of the country or even abroad. Deciding to look for permanent remote staff can vastly widen your talent pool for the more challenging roles and improve your quality of applicants.

Imagine if you could hire anyone in the world with the right skills and talents. You could find so many more candidates if you start looking outside your own country.

Build a Supportive Culture

Now more than ever, staff need their workplaces to support them. When was the last time you checked in on your team and asked them how they were really doing? Strong relationships amongst teams are an essential part of morale, productivity, and job satisfaction. Many of those who are currently looking for work are hoping to be employed by a workplace where they will feel supported. Building a supportive culture will not only attract applicants to your available positions but also lower turnover by keeping your current staff members feeling cared for.

Work on Your Video Interview Skills

Video interviews are likely to become a permanent fixture in our workplaces. They are easier to schedule, you don’t have to pay for a candidate’s transport, and they take less time out of the hiring manager’s day. So, if you haven’t already perfected the way you run video interviews, it’s about time that you did. Create an opening pitch that describes your company to the interviewee, refine your interview questions, and ensure that your technology works smoothly every time. This will enable you to run effective video interviews that help you recruit successfully.

Be Realistic

If a full-time role becomes available during the pandemic, it may be time to reconsider how you define that role. Do you feel that you can guarantee full-time, permanent work to a new employee right now? If not, make the job fixed-term or change it to part-time for the time being. Applicants will appreciate your honesty and that you do not promise something that you possibly can’t deliver on. It’s a very uncertain time for many businesses right now, but you will only make it worse for your staff by not being upfront about it.

Contact Your Current Candidate Pool

Do you have a candidate pool of excellent previous applicants or people who have expressed interest in working for you? When you’re having trouble filling a vacant position, reaching out to these people may be useful for you. These are people who you know are already engaged with the idea of working for your organization, so they could be ideal candidates for those hard to fill positions. You likely already have their details on file, so search for the ones who meet your ideal candidate persona for the job and contact them directly to ask them to apply.

Your vacant roles that are hard to fill might be even tougher to recruit successfully for while COVID-19 is in full effect. However, it’s not impossible to find incredible candidates during this time if you are ready to embrace the new technologies we are now using. Don’t expect these technologies to disappear once COVID is over, either. They can be of great use to you moving forward as well. Being on the front line of using technology as a permanent fixture in the recruitment process can give you an edge over other companies, attracting higher-quality candidates.