A Guide to Managing Your Remote Employees: Recruitment

Working remotely is no longer just a new idea, it’s a reality for many of us. A reality that is bound to continue trending post the COVID-19 pandemic.

The importance of business transformation

Transforming your organization to run partially or fully remotely will certainly take time. However, it is important to understand the various economical, social, and business contexts of this change. Understanding that various operations and processes in organizations can be adapted faster or slower, is important to keep a competitive advantage.

The same goes for talent acquisition and recruitment of new employees.

Remote recruiting has already been a reality for many organizations that others can learn from. It enables organizations to source, engage, interview, and hire new talent, which otherwise would be unavailable in a fixed location or region.

Adapting your recruitment efforts for remote talent is important now that the majority of international organizations are transitioning to remote work, following the impact of COVID-19 and employee expectations.

Main challenges of remote recruiting

Managing job advertisement and employer branding. With more organizations transitioning to remote work and remote talent acquisition, developing and implementing a clearly targeted and accurate branding strategy is essential. Formulating a clear employee value proposition and emphasizing the unique company culture helps candidates visualize themselves as members of your organizations.

Having a trustworthy presence online will attract only the best candidates. Managing to portray accurate information of work methodologies, job descriptions, and scope of work in job ads has several positive impacts on the recruitment process. From cutting time to hire to attracting the right profiles and lowering the chance of recruitment mistakes.

Having a structured recruitment process supported by technology. Defining the steps in your recruitment process and the goals gained from them guarantees to stay organized and keep things running smoothly when recruiting, especially remotely. Once defined, utilizing video calls, conferences, real-time assignments, and online testing guaranteed consistency across candidates, and lowers the risk of biases. Implementing tools that support the decision-making process, enables better results across hiring efforts.

Aligning the hiring team. Focusing on team alignment throughout the recruitment process should be one of the main goals if you are transforming recruitment (online or any) efforts. Understanding what role everyone plays and what they should be doing in each step of the recruitment process makes effective remote hiring possible and lowers the stress of the team.

Managing the candidate experience and engagement. Interviewing and changing jobs is never easy or stress-free. Developing your hiring teams empathy, increasing market awareness, and explaining business impacts that organizations and candidates are facing should result in a better candidate experience and representation of your organizations image.

Keeping candidates engaged through an explanation of the recruitment process, timely communication, and updates increases their engagement.

Helping candidates with new technology during the recruitment process and tailoring communication with a single point of contact builds trust and increases candidates goodwill.

Taking care of compliance and data privacy. Understanding the different laws and exposures organizations face when going remote should not be underestimated. Protecting the candidates privacy and lowering the risk for your organization and managing data might be different between countries and regions.

To lower the risk, choosing trusted and specialized recruitment technology providers greatly reduce the risk. Laws and regulations might not be adapted to the business environment created in the last couple of months. Choosing to go beyond the minimum regulation and choosing to go the HR high road pays off in the long run.

The main message for managers

Adjusting your talent and recruitment strategy should be a constant process, there to support the wider business goals of your organization. Relying on just what you know and underestimating the outside influences your organization and talent are facing lowers your business competitiveness.

Business and HR leaders should align over hiring needs and recognize influences that are important for talent acquisition. When opportunities for change arise from outside influences, it's best to embrace them and maximize benefits for your organization. Implementing remote recruitment can solve key talent challenges and give a competitive edge to your organization.