Katherine Wiid Recruitment and Retention Coach comments:
With most of us now working remotely, recruiting has taken on a new form. Interviewing, hiring and on-boarding, all now completed via video call over the powers of the internet. Unsurprisingly, it’s been my most talked about and coaching subject in 2020 as people grapple with technology and how to make connections and hiring decisions from a distance.
For many, the hardest initial thing was getting to grips with the technology itself. Dodgy wifi, unstable connections, unknown video call settings all putting our hiring practices at risk.
Now we’ve had almost 10 months to learn and adapt to the technological basics of recruiting remotely, it’s time to take a step back.
MYTH NO.1: The most important element of remote recruiting is the technology.
Everyone I speak to is fixated on the technology - both the interviewer and the interviewee. Will it work?! We tend to think of the recruitment process as evenly split between humans and process / platform, a 50:50 responsibility split if you like. But that’s not the case.
THE TRUTH: Two thirds of remote recruiting is down to humans, not tech.
Actually, we should be thinking of it as having three participants:
1. Hiring Manager
2. Candidate
3. Process / Platform
Two are human, fallible, emotional, messier. The third is logical, black and white, right or wrong. Given this split, we need to spend more time on getting the human to work and function efficiently than the technology!
In the coaching and mentoring I do for hiring managers and recruiters, we focus on how they can help themselves to make confident, objective decisions when recruiting remotely. There are three core areas to be aware of:
- MINDSET: We all have pre-conceptions, regardless of how open minded and impartial we think we are. When we see, hear and meet people online, their personal characteristics will set off our unconscious bias. We make unwarranted assumptions about people based on their personal characteristics. These unconscious assumptions can unintentionally influence recruitment and selection decisions. Things such as the school a candidate went to, their degree subject and so on. We need to very actively take steps to not fall victim to our biases to ensure our selection processes are fair and do not adversely impact any particular group.
- VIDEO: Whilst video is the best of all the virtual communication channels to allow us to get some sense of hour our candidates are responding, it is by no means a perfect solution. Virtual communications lead to sensory deprivation (more on this later), so we need to work harder to make up for what’s lacking. It’s important to get the candidate to relax and feel comfortable, perhaps by discussing the challenges of remote recruitment, and best to do so through example. Pick up your coffee cup, take a sip, smile, lean forwards! When recruiting remotely we need to communicate more frequently, because there is none of the unintentional communication you get from a face-to-face situation.
- LISTENING: When recruiting via video there are a lot of visual distractions. From online chats, to email notifications, camera lights flashing… how often have you found yourself on a video call nodding, repeating back what they’ve said but not really taking it in? Multi tasking is hard to avoid and leads to surface listening - listening to what’s being said and taking those words at face value. You could be missing an important message that could mean the difference between making the right / wrong hiring decision! With all this visual over stimulation going on, I recommend ramping up your listening levels.
MYTH NO.2: Remote recruiting is the same as in person.
I recently heard someone saying that now they had got to grips with the technology, remote recruiting was no different to recruiting in person. According to them, you can do everything you normally do face-to-face online, once you know how!
THE TRUTH: Remote recruiting will never be the same as face-to-face.
On the one hand, we’re more connected than ever. Our processes and work has all moved online. No longer do we catch up around the office kettle, or have a quick chat at the printer. Working remotely means we lack the human sensory feedback that ‘normal’ office life provides. We miss out on emotional knowledge that helps us to understand context, which leads to misunderstanding and misinterpretation. We tend to ‘fill in the blanks’ and make our own assumptions.
In an interview situation, this is more important than ever. Those subtle body languages and nuances that a candidate gives off in a face-to-face situation are often now cut off by the camera, or obscured by a pixelated web cam.
When we rely on virtual communication we don’t get smells, touch, sounds, sights and tastes. The brain is a multi-channel analysis machine - and it doesn’t like being deprived of any of those channels of information.
What happens when we don’t have all information our senses and brain need? Our natural response is to make up data to keep the information flowing - using memories, hints, anxieties… Our brain’s job is to keep us alive, and therefore it responds to a lack of information by quick logically assuming the worst.
How often have you misinterpreted a colleague's instant message or email whilst working from home? Typed messages often sound hostile when no hostility is intended. Why do you think emoticons were invented? To take the sting out of the tail, to add a more emotive element to virtual communications!
When a candidate’s image is pixelated, or they suffer from sounds issues, we often assume the worst (not about the tech, but about them personally!). We may all believe that we make decisions logically, but we don’t. We make decisions based on memories, which are based on emotions. How often have you been reviewing a candidate and said - “I think they could do the job, but there’s just something about them that reminds me of…”.
These assumptions lead to a lack of empathy. We don’t receive the body language clues that face-to-face recruiting offers us. And this can lead to an inaccurate analysis of how others may be feeling or thinking.
Don’t let technology trip you up or distract you from your primary goal - making confident and successful hiring decisions.
Remote recruiting is only successful when we realise that we are operating in a sensory deprivation chamber.
With that understanding, we as hiring managers are able to take steps to mitigate our unconscious biases, encourage candidates to relax despite the technological barriers, listen more closely for the implications of what our candidates are saying, and communicate more frequently to make up for the unintentional communication we miss out on when recruiting remotely.
Katherine Wiid is a recruitment and retention coach and mentor working with hiring managers and recruiters. Allowing them to interview, select and retain with confidence by understanding themselves first and ensuring they have the tools to make the right hiring decisions - whether recruiting remotely or face-to-face.