With the current COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, many companies have adopted remote hiring strategies so that employee productivity remains consistent.

Remote interviews are different from face-to-face interviews. They are conducted without the candidate and interviewer meeting one another physically – the interview happens via voice call or often includes video and other tools.

Remote hiring is becoming universal rapidly, meaning you need to take practical steps to make sure your recruitment process runs smoothly.

With this advanced development in the hiring industry, many recruiters have to account for new factors. For example, they have to conduct remote coding interviews, technical assessment tests, virtual interviews, etc. Most recruiters struggle to implement such changes in their recruitment process.

But there’s good news. Here we will discuss some of the best tips to create successful remote interviews to improve candidate experience.

Review Your Current Recruiting Process

As the world is slowly shifting towards virtual hiring, it is crucial to identify your current process and what changes you can make to streamline the recruitment process.

For many organizations, hiring isn’t a dedicated process – it’s a bunch of meetings with potential employees. But you are a recruiter. Your work is to assess candidate skills and decide whether he or she is the right fit for your organization or not.

Therefore, by making some changes in the recruiting process, you will maintain consistency throughout the entire hiring process and make perfect and reliable hiring decisions.

Also, decide how to shortlist candidates for interviews. You can do this by using interview tools that combine online code editors or technical assessment tests to narrow down your candidate pool.

Choose The Right Tools

In remote interviews, having the right tools by your side is key to success.

You need to decide whether you want to conduct a video calling interview, phone call, or one-way video interviews.

Some of the most prominent video tools are Skype, Zoom, Go-to-meeting, etc. These tools offer basic functionalities video calling and call recording.

There are also tools like Intervue who integrate code editors, whiteboards and other recruiter friendly features. These tools help both recruiters and candidates have deeper and more productive discussions.

So, you need to analyze your requirements before you choose an interviewing tool thoroughly.

Communicate Your Processes Clearly

To make the recruiting process easy and straightforward, you need to ensure that your teammates and the ideal candidates are familiar with your remote hiring policies and procedures. They should be aware of the dos and don’ts of the recruitment process.

But how to do it? You can create a comprehensive document about your recruitment process, which you can share with your candidates and keep them in the loop. Let them know that the job interviews are going to get done by video calling. Additionally, you can also provide some specific instructions, such as:

• How to install and use the tool
• Who will be attending the interview
• Time and date of the interview
• How to fix issues (if any)

Show Off Your Company Culture

During the pandemic, your candidates will not come to the office and meet your team, so make sure candidates don’t miss out on finding all about your organization, such as work culture, environment, etc.

Give them background instructions about your company, share stories, give references to what you mean by your culture. Don’t just state the values that you endure. Instead, explain the behaviors you expect employees to manifest for each value, and give candidates best practice examples to help them understand what you mean.

Trying to understand a company’s culture when you can’t experience it firsthand is difficult for anyone, so build a picture for the candidate.

Provide And Ask For Candidate Feedback

After a successful interview, ask for the candidate's feedback. How was the interview? Did the tool work well or not? What did they feel during the conversation?

By getting candidate feedback, you can improve your hiring process easily. In return, provide candidates with constructive feedback. They will value your insight and feel more comfortable with your decision once they understand their areas of improvement. Remember to give positive feedback and highlight some of their strengths.

Treat them as you would an employee, and they’ll part ways with only good things to say about their experience.

As a recruiter, you are bound to make some common mistakes while conducting remote interviews, but that doesn’t mean you cannot prevent them. Here are 3 common mistakes to avoid while hiring employees remotely.

Not Having An Organized Interview Process

In remote interviews, it might be challenging to assess a candidate's skills whether he or she is a right fit or not. Having an organized interview process will help you assess the candidate’s skills accurately. To avoid this common challenge, make sure to:

• Create a virtual interviewing process that should involve 2 or more rounds. Try to consider at least one team interview to give prospective talent a better understanding of your company culture.
• Involve your team members and train them on interviewing techniques and questions to evaluate a candidate accurately.
• Decide how interviews should be scheduled and which tool to use.
• Decide how feedback is collected and solidified.

Failing To Properly Onboard Remote Employees

Proper onboarding is an essential part because it will help remote workers learn to do things independently. The best way to do this is to give them access to the tools they need to do their tasks.

Not Fully Integrating Remote Workers As Part Of Your Team

If you want to unleash the power of remote work and benefit from having a distributed team, you need to make your remote employees feel part of the business. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Introduce the new hires to everyone
• Assign a work colleague that they can reach out to socially
• Schedule regular team meetings for everyone
• Organize virtual catch-up, so your employees get to know each other on a personal level.

Remote interviews are great as they save time, money, and effort towards hiring an employee. However, it is not easy to shift from in-person interviews to remote recruiting. Still, with the tips mentioned above, you can improve your recruiting process and candidate experience.

Also, with having the right tools by your side, you can make a lasting impression on your top candidates.