Ah. Life in a Post Covid world. Imagine! For the time being I’ll just take every small improvement and stop trying to visualise the big picture. The world’s media is full of stories about lockdown successes and silver linings and that’s what I wanted to focus on in today’s blog rather than all the doom and gloom.
From a recruitment perspective, the one thing that I hope we continue with post Covid is video interviews. I know! I’ve really had to eat my words on this one* but bear with me, I have reason! In the old days, I thought that anything that wasn’t a face to face meeting was a bit of a waste of time but in fact, in the last year since the market started to improve I’ve been hugely impressed with how candidates and clients have adapted to make interviews via Zoom/Teams/Hangouts work for them.
I think part of my love for the virtual interview is just the improvements it makes to the speed and process of interviewing. An initial 30 minute chat is pretty much sufficient between employer and interviewee to see if the fit is right. It doesn’t require someone to book time out of the office, come up with random unbelievable reasons why they need time off or to use up much cherished holiday allowances. It is much more amenable to interviews outside working hours and it allows employers to whittle down their shortlists for a final stage. From a recruiters perspective, often if a candidate is struggling to find time to attend an interview, they sometimes withdraw from the process - it’s stressful trying to do a full time job and then justify time out of the office. A quick Zoom (or equivalent!) is sufficient to see if it’s the right role and then they will be sufficiently excited and engaged enough to want to move forwards to the next stage.
Over the last year, all interviews have been virtual. However, since March we’ve seen a gradual introduction of face to face meetings with employers absolutely doing their best to ensure a safe and socially distanced meeting - but also indicating that they do genuinely value the opportunity to meet someone in person before making a hire. I think that employers also want to give potential new recruits a chance to see the work environment and to ensure that values are shared and the ethos of the business comes across. I think that in the future we’ll see a continuation of the virtual interview for first interviews and then the majority of second interviews will be face to face.
I can also say that in the past year, I’ve had only one candidate who didn’t get through their probation period and that was absolutely a random reason rather than a lack of robust interview so all clients who have made hires over 2020/2021 with full on virtual interviewing have had a superb success rate (of course, having a recruiter who presents the right candidates for the right jobs does help!). I’m genuinely impressed with how many of my clients onboarded new staff, went to huge efforts to make new-starters feel welcome and the innovative and creative ways I have seen of building teams remotely.
Clients are gradually returning to offices. Pretty much all my agency clients have run employee surveys to try to work out how to structure office life in the post Covid world. It’s going to be different that’s for sure but from my anecdotal experience, most people do want to be back in an office, sharing ideas and being creative together. Much as I’ve spent the last few words supporting video calls, I do think people are a bit fed up with all day every day on them! I can quite understand why ‘burnout’ has become a big phenomenon over the year with the relentless-ness of going from call to call. Every employer seems to have a different approach for their return to the office so I’ll be watching with interest to see how it goes. Employers genuinely have their work cut out making sure that the new ‘rules’ work for everyone in the business and the business itself.
Fundamentally the pandemic has been a major catalyst in making the interview process more efficient for everyone involved. Definitely an unexpected bonus.
*I still don’t like telephone interviews!