How to attract and recruit top talents in the remote era

Although the pandemic affects companies, industries and economies in unbelievable ways, business owners should think about the opportunities this crisis might create for their organizations and beyond. 

Many businesses are laying off workers and downsizing or their hiring processes have declined drastically at the time of working from home. Suddenly, the pool of available talented people is expanding, and business leaders can benefit from it, preparing their strategies for post-crisis growth. 

According to the International Labour Organization, this year’s pandemic will lead to more than 300 million jobs lost around the world. Furthermore, it is estimated that lockdown measures are impacting 2.7 billion workers (81% of the global workforce) in some way.

Now, it’s more than ever important to adapt the company strategy to the changing economic environment, while having a remote-ready model in place as a competitive advantage to attract talent and get ready for hiring amid a recession. In this article, we have gathered several key tips to help you with remote hiring.

1. Pay attention to the changes to the labor market

The pandemic has an impact on every person, company, and industry around the globe, but each has been affected differently. Some industries like hospitality and travel have been collapsed. But other industries, such as healthcare, information technology, logistics and community services, are booming and have seen strong demand for candidates.

Knowing where your industry lies is the first step to rebuilding your strategy and hiring during a recession. It is important to stay on top of news about the labor market developments to know how they are going to impact your recruiting process in the post-pandemic time.

Reports claim that the demand for skilled tech employees is increasingly growing and is expected that this demand to increase even more after the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of skilled developers and tech experts that are looking for a new job may not grow at the same rate, making the market even more competitive.

2. Foresee your hiring needs

The main point of hiring during a recession is to analyze and foresee your short-term and long-term needs. The organizations should quickly adapt and adjust their recruiting plan to reflect appropriately to the state of the workforce, know how to fill in the skills gaps at the organization now and later. Before starting the hiring process, it is still important to continue putting candidate quality first and making sure you are choosing the right candidates for the roles in the project. Define who the best candidate is for you before you start receiving applications and review it once you get the resumes in. In fact, it will help you to maintain a strong company culture and keep engagement levels up as during a recession as when it ends.

Review the solutions facilitating the hiring process that you use right now and see how they will help your company to fulfill the current and future hiring needs. Companies that adapt will have the advantage and become magnets for the best talent.

3. Adjust your hiring process

It is a great opportunity to modernize the old hiring process to meet the perfect candidates. Generally, the number of people that is possible to interview remotely is more than what we could do in person. Make job interviews and screen candidates at scale using online communication tools, video calls. In this case, asking for references before the first interview will be important. Such video interviews fit more potential candidates as well as they do not require personal presence, take less time and are more convenient. Besides, it helps to showcase company culture with virtual team meetings and office tours. It will be good if you send your candidates a guideline before the video interview and make them aware of what is expected so they do not just frighten.

To make the remote interview successful, you will need to:

• Send your candidates a guideline before the video interview and make them aware of what is expected so they do not just frighten. It can include the details on who will participate, what platform you will use and log-on details if needed.
• Make a test run with the technology and let the candidates know what the plan is in case if it fails.
• Let know the candidates if there will be any test tasks during the interviews.

4. Create a talent pool and stay connected with quality candidates

Invest efforts in having a wide talent pool that gives an advantage comparing to competitors is playing a more important role in the recruiting process than ever before. Build a talent pool of those that you were not able to hire previously and maintain relationships with them through relevant communication. Once you need it, you can contact them immediately instead of starting from scratch.

5. Focus on maintaining an employer brand

One of the important and underrated reasons why people work at a certain company is a sense of community and belonging. And its unseen force is just as powerful in our work lives as it is anywhere else. It also about turning your company into a place where top talent wants to work.

An employer’s brand comprises the values, mission, and culture of a workplace as updates on team achievements, showing your company culture and organizational values communicated through all channels. Thought, maintaining a good employer brand integrated with your recruitment strategy will help to attract and retain qualified professionals.

The pandemic impacts the way how we do business nowadays.  As the workplace adjusts to the hardships caused by the coronavirus, business leaders are finding new ways to attract potential candidates and maintain talented staff on board.

Regardless of the global crisis caused by the 2020 lockdown, many Ukrainian tech companies kept recruiting new employees and posting new vacancies. Among those leading Ukrainian IT companies – AllStars-IT Ukraine, that has coped with challenges that have come the way and managed to continue the recruitment process throughout the quarantine.

“Step by step we compiled new solutions which gave us results and stabilized the situation. Everyone in our management team worldwide worked very rapidly and accurately, with energy and motivation. As a result, we managed to attack the challenge and achieve a good productivity level,” shared Solomon Amar, Founder & CEO of AllStars-IT Ukraine, a subsidiary of Israel’s AllStars-IT Group.

After all, finding, interviewing, and hiring new employees will also be much different than it was just a few months ago. But thing remains true: you must be agile and ready for what is to come in the future. By making these small adjustments to your recruiting process can go a long way to helping your organizations attract the right candidates even in the constantly changing environment.