Virtual recruitment: taking your remote interviews to the next level

Virtual recruitment: how to take your remote interviews to the next level

Introduction

The recruitment landscape has undergone a remarkable transformation in a world that has increasingly embraced virtual interactions. Virtual recruitment has become the new norm, even as the world emerges from the pandemic. This article explores the cutting-edge technologies and strategies that power virtual recruitment, enabling recruiters to conduct interviews, assess candidates, and make informed hiring decisions from anywhere in the world. Get ready to unlock the secrets of remote interviewing success!

What is Virtual Recruitment?

Virtual recruitment refers to a remote hiring process that eliminates the need for in-person interactions between recruiters and candidates. According to Indeed, virtual interviews have become employers’ go-to choice, with 82% adopting them during the pandemic. But here’s the tricky part: even as the world returns to normal, a staggering 93% of employers are planning to stick with virtual interviews in the future too. From small businesses to large enterprises, everyone is recognising the benefits.

Why the virtual interview hype? Per Indeed, 74% of employers find it streamlines their hiring process, making it faster than ever before. And that’s not all! 79% of employers love how easy it is to manage the entire process and leverage modern technologies. These stats clearly show that virtual interviews are here to stay.

But what are these modern technologies virtual recruitment relies on?

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP):

VoIP is a technology that enables voice calls using an internet connection instead of a traditional phone line. Popular applications like Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, and Facebook Messenger utilise VoIP for internet-based calling.

Video interviewing software:

Video interviewing software is gaining popularity as more individuals opt to work from home. Apart from expanding the candidate pool, it allows for pre-recorded interviews, saving time for candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers. It also creates a comfortable environment for introverted candidates to showcase their skills.

Recruiting chatbots and communication apps:

To effectively reach job seekers, utilising text messaging and popular apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp is crucial. Recruiting chatbots can handle communication on these platforms as well as on websites. They can answer frequently asked questions, guide job seekers, suggest suitable positions, encourage applications, and even schedule interviews.

As the future of work embraces dispersed teams, remote employees, flexible schedules, and hybrid work arrangements, these virtual recruitment solutions play a pivotal role in facilitating interviews and evaluating candidates, regardless of their location or work setup.

How to be a good interviewer?

The question every recruitment consultants ask themselves at some point in their careers is how to be a good interviewer. We gathered some useful advice for you on how to improve your interviewing technique in general, which can form a solid base to get better at remote interviewing too. Also, as virtual interviews are getting the new standard, several digital tools can aid you throughout the hiring process.

Arrive well-prepared

Start by carefully examining the candidate’s resume and keep the file open on your computer during the interview. Take the time to review any work samples they may have submitted, especially if you’re hiring for positions where this is highly relevant: designers, developers or copywriters. Additionally, revisit the job description to ensure you have a clear understanding of the role and its requirements. To facilitate a smooth interview process, prepare a set of thoughtful questions in advance. Squire can be an invaluable asset to you in this regard. By selecting the job position at the start of the interview, our tool generates a comprehensive list of relevant and general questions for you to ask. These questions not only guide you throughout the entire interview but also serve as a framework for our AI, which automatically extracts the answers from the conversation transcript, providing you with seamless access to the information you need. Finally, take a moment to refresh your knowledge about the client company, including its mission, structure, and the specific benefits and perks associated with the position you’re hiring for. This preparation will ensure you are well-equipped to engage with candidates and make informed hiring decisions.

Structure is key

Carefully select your interview questions to make them more effective and avoid generic questions that have been overused as they tend to be ineffective. Instead, prepare a concise list of questions that are specifically tailored to the role you are hiring for. As previously mentioned, Squire is a valuable tool that can assist you in this aspect. In addition to providing a default set of questions for each position, it offers the flexibility to incorporate your questions into the list. This allows you to include your insights and consider the perspectives of the hiring manager too. While note-taking is essential for maintaining a structured and meaningful interview, Squire eliminates the need for you to worry about this task. Our tool effortlessly transcribes the entire interview and automatically extracts the essential information based on the predetermined questions. This information is seamlessly integrated into your ATS or CRM, ensuring that you have all the necessary details to make a submission and provide comprehensive updates to your clients.

Interview questions that should be asked

Behavioural and situational questions are particularly useful for assessing a candidate’s soft skills, such as problem-solving and critical thinking abilities. Strive to ask the same set of questions to all candidates to ensure consistency and equal chances for all.

Decision-making interview questions

To effectively assess a candidate’s capability of solving real-life problems, it is essential to ask targeted decision-making interview questions. These questions delve into specific scenarios to uncover the candidate’s decision-making abilities and their approach to challenging situations.

Seek examples of tough decision-making: Encourage candidates to share a time when they had to make a difficult decision, elaborating on the factors that made it challenging and the eventual outcome.

Explore instances of misjudgment: Inquire about situations where candidates misjudged a scenario and made a wrong decision. Ask them to describe the circumstances, the consequences, and the lessons they learned from the experience.

Assess their ability to make quick decisions: Request candidates to describe a situation where they had to make a significant decision on short notice. Have them walk you through their decision-making process and discuss the outcome.

Evaluate their reflection on past decisions: Pose a hypothetical scenario where candidates have the opportunity to change a major decision they made at work. Ask if they would make the change and inquire about the reasons behind their choice.

Probe into weighing risks and rewards: Prompt candidates to share a time when they had to carefully consider the risks and rewards associated with a decision. Explore their thought process and the decision they ultimately made.

Determine their inclination for seeking advice: Present a scenario where candidates are required to make a crucial decision and can only consult one person. Inquire about whom they would choose to consult and the reasoning behind their selection.

By incorporating these decision-making questions into your interviews, you can gain valuable insights into a candidate’s problem-solving skills and critical thinking abilities.

Poor interview techniques to avoid

By being aware of biases and implementing strategies to mitigate their impact, recruitment consultants can make more objective and informed decisions during the interview process.

Social comparison bias is a natural tendency to compare oneself to others. During interviews, recruitment consultants may unconsciously feel threatened or competitive towards candidates they perceive as better than themselves. This bias can result in negative feelings and a reluctance to hire highly qualified candidates. Overcoming this bias requires self-awareness and recognising that hiring decisions should be based on the candidate’s potential and the value they can bring to a company, rather than personal comparisons.

The effect heuristic can influence judgment based on personal familiarity or shared experiences. For example, if an interviewer and candidate attended the same school, a sense of familiarity and nostalgia may arise. This emotional connection can cloud judgment and impact decision-making. To counteract this bias, it is important to introduce objective criteria and structure into the interview process. Multiple interviewers can provide different perspectives and reduce the influence of subjective judgments, while a structured interview format focuses on objective evaluation criteria.

Confirmation bias is a common pitfall in the hiring process. It occurs when a recruitment consultant forms a positive perception of a candidate before the interview and selectively seeks evidence to support that belief while ignoring any contradictory information. This biased approach can lead to poor decision-making and proposing the wrong candidate for the job.

The halo effect is another cognitive bias that can cloud judgment during interviews. When a candidate excels in one particular area – let’s say, a hard skill, it can create a halo effect where the interviewer’s positive perception spills over into other aspects of the candidate’s evaluation. This can lead to overlooking deficiencies in other important skills like communication or teamwork, resulting in a mismatch between the candidate’s abilities and the job requirements.

How to excel in remote interviews – our guide for Recruiters

In today’s dynamic hiring process, a well-structured video interview serves as a powerful tool for recruitment consultants, allowing them to uncover the best-suited candidates while granting top talent the opportunity to showcase their achievements in real time. With the ability to share screens and documents seamlessly during live video interviews, recruiters can now delve deeper into candidates’ skills and experiences. Are you ready to enhance your remote interviewing skills? Let us walk you through the essential strategies.

Preparations

Before the interview, provide candidates with detailed information, including confirming that it will be a video interview. This might sound trivial but we have seen candidates personally showing up to a video interview, and it is awkward indeed. Ensure the candidate has access to the necessary equipment. By addressing technical issues beforehand, you can avoid wasting valuable time during the interview.

Additionally, create a suitable environment by preparing your surroundings, informing others in your household about the interview schedule, and selecting a quiet, well-lit space. Dress professionally (at least on the top) to align with company culture, and consider using the company logo as your background. Lastly, share the video conference link with the candidate and any colleagues who will be joining the interview.

The virtual interview itself

Creating a positive candidate experience and enhancing your employer brand are crucial aspects of the interviewing process. Regardless of whether a candidate receives a job offer, their perception of your agency can be influenced by how they were treated. To ensure a positive experience, consider the following:

Begin with a warm welcome, greet candidates on time, and offer a friendly smile. You might not be a huge fan of it, but get down to that small talk. It will make your candidates feel more comfortable and lets them truly shine. Maintain eye contact throughout the interview – which means that you will need to eventually look directly into the camera. Make sure you are not looking at a monitor which is different from the one where your camera is situated.
Start by introducing yourself and any other interviewers present. Briefly explain your roles and the reason for the hiring process. This personal touch helps humanise the experience for candidates. If applicable, allow candidates to introduce themselves or present their portfolio or work samples.
Stay engaged in the conversation, avoid distractions and give candidates your full attention. Being fully present during the interview demonstrates respect and fosters better communication. And yes, note-taking can very much prevent you from doing so. We highly recommend using Squire, so that while the tool takes the notes for you, you can fully concentrate on engaging with the candidate.
Address candidates’ questions! Candidates are eager to learn more about the company and the open role. Encourage them to ask questions and provide honest and direct answers. This not only helps candidates make informed decisions but also prevents any misunderstanding leading to bad position fits.
Whenever possible, avoid scheduling another call immediately after an interview. Some candidates may require more time to discuss their concerns or seek clarification. Rushing candidates out can leave a negative impression. Instead, allocate sufficient time to ensure a thorough and respectful conclusion to the interview.

By implementing these practices, you can create a positive interview experience that leaves candidates with a favourable impression of your agency, regardless of the outcome. This ensures that if you find them a better fit later on, they will likely be open to applying for it, meaning less work and easier placement.

Our recommended toolkit for virtual interviewers

Recruiters are always seeking ways to enhance the efficiency of their hiring procedures. Collaborating with candidates and hiring managers through meetings plays a vital role in the recruitment process, but arranging, coordinating, and conducting these meetings can be complex and time-consuming.

Luckily, numerous tools for conducting meetings are readily accessible, offering a range of benefits such as streamlined recruitment processes, time savings, and enhanced communication channels. These tools prove invaluable in optimising the efficiency of recruitment operations.

Squire

Naturally, we start this list by recommending Squire, our AI-based conversation intelligence tool for recruitment. Our product assists recruitment agencies and consultants by recording conversations between recruiters and candidates, transcribing the recordings and generating a write-up of key information for future use. This information is seamlessly pushed to any ATS of choice, immediately updating records on candidates, requiring no manual work from recruitment consultants.

Squire is designed to allow consultants to speak with more candidates and make more placements. By eliminating the burden of memorising information and taking notes during calls, our solution significantly enhances the capacity of recruitment consultants, enabling them to handle tasks more efficiently and provide a significantly better candidate experience.

Olivia

Paradox, a US-based company, has developed Olivia, a conversational AI assistant for recruiters. The concept behind Olivia originated from the question: “If we had an assistant to aid us in our work, what would be the ideal tasks for that assistant?” Positioned as an “always-on partner ready for any task,” Olivia serves as an invaluable resource for recruitment consultants.

With a wide range of capabilities, Olivia can handle tasks such as resume screening, addressing candidate inquiries, and scheduling interviews. Seamlessly integrating with your existing tools, Olivia ensures candidate data is synchronized effortlessly and operates discreetly in the background, simplifying the hiring process for everyone involved.

eSkill

eSkill offers highly precise pre-employment tests that are designed to assist in the selection process and address skills gaps, ultimately minimising hiring errors. Their comprehensive range of assessments includes general aptitude tests covering subjects like English and Mathematics, as well as specialised tests tailored to various professional fields. For instance, they provide the MS Office Skills Assessment Test and the Call Center Assessment Test.

In addition to traditional testing methods, eSkill allows you to incorporate video questions into skills assessments. This innovative feature enables you to assess a candidate’s job fit, evaluate their verbal communication and problem-solving abilities, verify their identity, and uncover any hidden talents they may possess. By leveraging video questions, eSkill enhances the assessment process and provides valuable insights into a candidate’s capabilities.

XOR

In 2017, Aida Fazylona established XOR, an innovative platform that leverages a customisable chatbot and workflow automation to effectively engage, screen, and hire candidates. XOR’s conversational AI capabilities allow for candidate screening, scoring, and interview scheduling, all seamlessly integrated with your calendar. This empowers recruiters to spend more time directly interacting with talent and expedite the hiring process.

The conversational AI chatbot is an integral part of XOR’s sourcing database and automated scheduling system, significantly enhancing the candidate experience throughout the recruitment process.

PandoLogic

This innovative platform serves as an on-demand recruitment automation solution that effectively increases the bandwidth of recruiters. By automating task-driven recruitment processes such as sourcing, screening, and recommending qualified and interested candidates, PandoLogic enables recruiters to provide a more personalised and human candidate experience.

Wade & Wendy, the original AI-powered recruitment chatbot was acquired by PandoLogic, a programmatic job advertising platform in May 2021. This strategic acquisition allows PandaLogic to offer a comprehensive bundle that defines the quality of applicants “without the inherent bias from human intervention.”

Conclusion

Virtual recruitment has revolutionised the hiring process, offering efficiency, flexibility, and a wider candidate pool. With the adoption of modern technologies like VoIP, video interviewing software, and recruiting chatbots, recruiters can conduct interviews seamlessly and evaluate candidates regardless of their location or work setup.

To excel in remote interviews, preparation, structure, and engagement are essential. Utilise tools like Squire, Olivia, eSkill, XOR, and PandoLogic to streamline your virtual interviewing process, enhance the candidate experience, and make more informed hiring decisions.

Are you ready to embrace the future of recruitment? Try out Squire for free today, cancel anytime! If you want to know more about what our tool can offer, feel free to request a personalised demo.

We hope that you found this blog post useful! Do not hesitate to follow us, so you won’t miss interesting stories in the future either. This blog post was provided and formed into this article by Melinda Havas. Rory O’Doherty revised the content.

Sources:

Anon 2022. Virtual Recruiting & Virtual hiring – process & strategy FAQ. [online] iCIMS. Available at: https://www.icims.com/glossary/virtual-recruiting/ [Accessed 12 Jun. 2023].

Bika, N., 2022. How to be a good interviewer. [online] Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better. Available at: https://resources.workable.com/stories-and-insights/how-to-be-good-interviewer [Accessed 12 Jun. 2023].

BrightHire Team, 2022. 17 interview questions to gauge decision-making skills. [online] BrightHire. Available at: <https://brighthire.com/interview-questions/decision-making/> [Accessed 12 Jun. 2023].

Bika, N., 2023. Interviewing techniques: 10 mistakes experienced interviewers avoid. [online] Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better. Available at: <https://resources.workable.com/stories-and-insights/job-interview-techniques-mistakes-avoid> [Accessed 12 Jun. 2023].

Anon 2023. Recruiters: How to conduct a video interview to ensure the Best Remote Hire. [online] Recruiters.ie. Available at: <https://www.recruiters.ie/blog/video-interview-for-employers/> [Accessed 12 Jun. 2023].

Keell, O., 2023. The top 5 meeting tools for recruiters. [online] HeroHunt.ai. Available at: <https://www.herohunt.ai/blog/top-5-meeting-tools-recruiters> [Accessed 12 Jun. 2023].

Spanjaart, J., 2022. 5 conversational AI assistants that are taking over recruitment’s simple tasks (and more). [online] Recruitmenttech.com. Available at: <https://www.recruitmenttech.com/5-conversational-ai-assistants-that-are-taking-over-recruitments-simple-tasks-and-more/> [Accessed 12 Jun. 2023].