At Arm's Length: 5 Things You Must Think About When Undertaking Remote Recruitment

In a world changed by COVID-19, we look at some essential cloud software tools for helping agencies perform and manage the remote recruitment process effectively, while working from home.

Recruiting at arm’s length

The list of major COVID-19 job losses continues to grow. Aviation and airlines seemed like those most vulnerable to the economic turmoil. But retail, fast food and the building trade, to name but a few, are all feeling the effects as well.
For the recruitment industry, this means the release of a large amount of talent, and for many candidates, the emphasis is going to be on reskilling and maximising opportunities to sell transferable skills.
For recruiters, this means there are likely to be an awful lot of candidates to interview. This has to be done while maintaining infection control measures. Like many others, the recruitment industry is trying to keep people at arm’s length as much as possible, with agency staff working remotely, from home.
This places a great deal of importance on having the right cloud technology tools to give you independence from a centralised office location, so that we can interact with others the way we used to in the pre-COVID-19 pandemic days.
Here we highlight 5 things that you really need to think about to help your agency effectively perform its recruitment process remotely.

1. Video interviewing

For recruiters, video offers many of the characteristics of in person interviews without the risk of exposure to the virus. It also offers significant efficiency benefits. Our phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers are alive with video apps… Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Skype are all taken for granted today.
However, such general purpose, real time video apps are not always the best solution. For remote recruitment purposes, specialist apps offer features such as pre-recording interview questions for you to put to candidates, reviewing recorded candidate responses at your convenience, and sharing them with your clients. One example is myinterview, or you can take a look at a wide selection on Capterra’s video interview listings.

2. Tracking your applicants

Specialised recruitment Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are widely available. However, some agencies may be using local CRM apps, which are not enabled for remote working. Cloud CRM systems overcome this, allowing remote working with access from any place. HubSpot CRM is one example of a conventional CRM app that recruiters can use.

3. Doing the office basics in the cloud

Despite the use of specialised recruitment industry cloud apps, the general functions that underpin today’s busy working environment are not going to go away. The basics of productivity, such as email, word processing and number crunching are all likely to be required at some point.
The major player here is Microsoft Office 365. Office 365 is the market leader and has been a significant driver of Microsoft’s revival in recent years.

4. Team and client video calling

When you work from home, eventually you’ll remember all that day-to-day communication that you used to share with co-workers around the office. What ever became of those working lunches and client meetings? You’ll wistfully recall those water-cooler moments… Whether it’s scheduled team meetings, ad-hoc, spur of the moment inspired brainstorming, or just chit-chat that you need, video calling is a great tool.
We have already talked about video interviewing. But for talking with clients and internal agency purposes, there is no need for a recruitment focused video app. Microsoft Teams and Zoom have probably been the two most talked about video apps of recent months. They have been powering a whole range of online activity besides meetings, including such diverse and varied activities as exercise, martial arts coaching and music projects and lessons.

5. Onboarding self-service for candidates

Whether it’s for a permanent hire or a contracting candidate, onboarding is a critical part of the remote recruitment process. Quite simply copying and verifying passports and immigration documents, permissions to work, academic qualifications and industry certifications is a compliance issue, so taking shortcuts is not acceptable.
Scanning and filing original documents for significant numbers of candidates is a time consuming business. A good cloud onboarding app enables candidate self-service. This makes candidates responsible for uploading and maintenance of their documentation, saving a heap of time for back office agency staff. ETZ Comply is purpose built to let candidates take care of this simply and easily, as well as providing the tick box statements where candidates signal to agree to be bound by policies, terms and conditions of employment.

Perform your agency operations remotely with ETZ

ETZ is a cloud platform that lets agencies easily perform back-office operations, remotely. To find out more about how ETZ lets you operate effectively in the post COVID-19 pandemic world, simply contact us today. Call us on 0800 311 2266 or book a demo.