Rise Of Virtual Interviews/ Hiring Amidst Covid-19

Welcome to the Vantage HR Influencers Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Vantage Circle, the leading employee benefits and engagement platform.

During the pandemic, employers are gradually moving towards virtual hiring solutions to reduce the loss of potential candidates. Virtual hiring is enabling organizations to seamlessly conduct talent recruitment and management no matter where they are.

Susmita Sarma: Hello everyone, this is Sushmita from Vantage HR Influencers Podcast, and today we are talking about the rise of virtual hiring amidst COVID-19. Today we have with us Mr. Vikas Dua, who is an accomplished HR and recruitment professional, a TEDx speaker, and a blogger on HR practices with over 15 years of high-quality experience. Currently, he is the Chief HR Mentor at Attayn, an HR tech firm that works on enhancing knowledge sharing in the academic space. Welcome to the show, Vikas.

Vikas Dua: Thank you so much, Sushmita. Pleasure being here today.

Susmita Sarma: So before we start, please tell us more about your journey in the HR world.

Vikas Dua: Sure, Sushmita, happy to share that. I am an HR professional with over 18 years of experience in the field. I have worked largely with very large organizations. In fact, I've been part of some multi-billion dollar organizations, and therefore I've been exposed to a lot of cutting-edge HR practices over the years. I started my journey in HR with a large IT and business services organization, setting up the campus recruitment team for the company. And then over the years, I have held many portfolios within the HR space, with the last being heading the entire hiring in the APAC region for a very large IT services organization. And today, like you said, I am setting up a team which is focused on enhancing knowledge in our academic institutes.

Susmita Sarma: Right, right. So starting with the topic, because with the rise of virtual hiring, what does a virtual talent acquisition solution look like?

Vikas Dua: Sure, happy to take that. Sushmita, before I actually answer this question, just for 30 seconds, we all understand recruitment, right, it is connecting a candidate to a career, and that has been the practice for over centuries. In recent years, we are really seeing an important transformation of this entire recruitment process into what you would just call the virtual talent acquisition process cycle. What happens in this is that all the recruitment stages we are familiar with are transformed into the virtual space, or an online or remote space. And when we look at recruitment, these stages typically go right from sourcing of candidates, to screening, to assessments and interviews, to the offer of the candidate, and to even onboarding the candidate. So when this happens through digitally enabled technology frameworks, that is really what virtual talent acquisition is.

Susmita Sarma: Right. So would you like to tell us about the short-term and long-term advantages or benefits of virtual hiring?

Vikas Dua: Sure. The advantage of virtual talent acquisition, Sushmita, clearly is that it is freed up of the constraint of time and distance in traditional recruitment. We've always had to have the candidate come into our office spaces, or the recruitment team has had to travel to a campus to evaluate students. But thanks to virtual talent acquisition, or the virtual platforms that we have today, this distance and time gets negated. So what ends up happening is that you have multiple advantages in multiple dimensions. For example, you save time and effort, you have more efficient management of the entire process, and you're also able to give a much better candidate experience during the entire recruitment cycle. In most organizations, what happens is that at least in entry-level hiring, companies end up selecting just one or two out of ten candidates, a selection ratio of less than 10 or 20%. And the remaining 70 to 80% are rejected and go back having spent all that time and effort. In a virtual environment, you're able to address that 70 to 80% who don't get selected much more efficiently, and give them a much better experience, even if they are not eventually selected.

Susmita Sarma: Right. So again, what are the limitations of virtual hiring, if you talk about the disadvantages?

Vikas Dua: Limitations again stem from the fact that we humans are all very, I would say, personal-touch-based personalities. We like to interact with people, sit across the table, and try to have a conversation, which is like an actual interview. We try to get a sense of what they're really thinking inside, what their feelings and emotions are, and honestly speaking, somewhere this is difficult to translate into a virtual platform as of today. Maybe in a year or two, or five years, when technology moves even further ahead, this challenge may get addressed, but right now, reading body language and developing that personal connection is a slight limitation in my view. Also, what happens in these virtual environments is that technology dependency is very high. You're dependent on your bandwidth, you're dependent on the lighting in the room the candidate is sitting in. So what ends up happening is that the entire interview or selection process may get impacted because one of the technology bits in the framework didn't work efficiently.

Susmita Sarma: So, sticking with the same line, on the disadvantage you just spoke about, hiring face-to-face could be deep-rooted in the culture of a lot of businesses. How do you make virtual interviewing work in a way that both the hiring manager and the candidate still feel it's authentic and personal?

Vikas Dua: Great question. In fact, every organization has largely always wanted to have that personal touch during the selection process, and ensure that each candidate goes back with a good feeling, irrespective of whether the candidate has been selected or not, even in a virtual environment. It takes a little extra initiative from the HR end to make sure the candidate still feels a personal connection to the organization. And this happens in various ways. For example, when a candidate has received an invitation on email and is scheduled to take an interview in a couple of hours on a technology platform, the recruiter can actually just pick up the phone, call the candidate, have a brief conversation, give some tips and guidance to make sure the candidate isn't unsettled and is slightly more comfortable before actually going on to the recruitment platform. So these are some of the steps organizations are already taking to succeed.

Susmita Sarma: Okay. So I came across this quote by Amelia Green, a Glassdoor career trends expert, that video interviews can sometimes feel awkward and present challenges for candidates and interviewers. As more and more hiring managers speak to candidates via video interviews, it's important to keep several best practices in mind. So how do you make the virtual recruitment process a success, or what are the best practices HR should keep in mind for virtual onboarding?

Vikas Dua: Sure. In fact, this is actually, in my view, the most tricky aspect of a virtual talent acquisition process, and I'm glad you brought that up. Video interviews are of two kinds in a virtual process. The first is what we call an asynchronous video interview. Here, what happens is that the laptop, desktop, or mobile phone of the candidate flashes a question to the candidate, and he or she is supposed to record a response to it within 30 seconds or a minute, whatever time frame has been set by the organization. So there is no interviewer on the other side, you are just talking into the camera. In this case, what we have realized is that candidates are pretty much unsettled when they come across this initially, because it isn't something we're used to. We've never seen it growing up, never experienced it in school or college, but sadly today, when you're sitting for a job interview, you're thrown this question on the screen and you're supposed to answer it into the camera. So the best practice really is to keep preparing and practicing, doing dummy sessions where you're just talking into your mobile phone camera and recording yourself to see how you look and come across. This is something that improves only with practice, so the more you do it, the more comfortable and sophisticated you'll end up looking. The second is what's called a synchronous interview, where you have a panel, one, two, or three people on the other side of the screen, and you're being interviewed very similar to what we see in a webinar or a video call nowadays. In this case, you have to keep in mind that your background is very clear, it isn't cluttered, the lighting in the room is bright so you're visible well to the other people, and there's no disturbance in your room in terms of ambient noise. Also, a very important thing is looking into the camera of your laptop or mobile phone, because often what we do is we end up looking at the people on the screen because we're seeing them in front of us. But when you look at it from the other side, you notice that you're actually not looking directly into the camera, or into the eyes, because you're looking at some other section of the screen. So that's a little tricky to manage, but again, with a bit of confidence and preparation, you can train yourself to look into the screen as you answer the interviewer's questions.

Susmita Sarma: Yeah. And the same thing goes for the HR managers as well, right, they have to as well.

Vikas Dua: Yeah.

Susmita Sarma: So I believe, with time, applicants will get accustomed to remote recruitment practices, so organizations will have to adapt to these practices now and keep them going forward. HR teams will need to be closely involved in managing the system. So what are some of the most helpful and general e-recruiting resources to be used in and beyond the crisis?

Vikas Dua: Great. So Sushmita, today primarily what we are seeing is that candidates are very digitally savvy. They're spending most of their out-of-office time on social media, on platforms where they engage with other like-minded groups of youngsters. They're happy to operate on their mobile phones and participate in a recruitment process from that device. So what HR teams really need to do is understand this reality. The fact is we've all been conditioned to be in a paper-and-pencil, office-based environment, but now it's time to actually reach out to candidates wherever they are. Which means HR teams need to be very savvy in using digital marketing techniques to reach out to candidates, be able to send targeted emails that inspire or motivate them to apply for jobs at their organizations, and also have a strong comfort level with technology, to be able to deploy other elements in the virtual recruitment framework, such as chatbots or virtual systems that can help address candidate questions. And the beauty of deploying technology frameworks like a chatbot is that you can deploy it 24/7. So an HR team isn't constrained by its office hours. A candidate could be sitting after classes at 9:30 or 10 PM at night, checking online, coming across a specific job, having a question about it, and can immediately write a query to the chatbot and get an instantaneous reply. So these are some of the new elements HR teams are stitching together to make sure they're visible to the candidate whenever he or she is even thinking about taking up a job or changing one.

Susmita Sarma: Right. So as virtual hiring continues, what are some of the ways of keeping new hires on track and engaged in a virtual world, in these uncertain times?

Vikas Dua: Great question again. So one of the biggest challenges in our services industry has primarily been what we call an offer drop, where you offer a particular candidate, and there's typically a three-week to three-month time frame between the offer and the joining date. And once the joining date comes close, we realize the candidate isn't going to join us, and that impacts HR teams immensely, because they've put in a lot of effort, they've managed to get all the necessary approvals, but unfortunately, with the job requirement being critical, they don't have a candidate, and therefore have to start the whole cycle all over again. So technology is helping in a huge way in addressing this challenge, by keeping these candidates engaged. To do that, these technology platforms have certain engagement-building mechanisms, whether that's in the form of automated updates and greetings that go out, or bite-sized information about the organization that goes out to these candidates. So a candidate waiting for their joining date to arrive gets nice, colorful mailers or pop-ups on their mobile phone showing interesting things happening at the organization, which builds affinity toward the organization and motivates the candidate to join. Organizations are also able to use these same technology platforms to create groups or cohorts. So if there's a batch of management trainees, for example, coming in on the 15th of the month, the HR team can club them all into a group, so they all start making a connection between themselves even before they come into the organization. And within that, the biggest enabler we've seen today is gamification, which is something the new millennials are all very excited about. Since they spend a lot of time in gamified apps, they also enjoy learning about the organization and interacting with people within it through similar games, where they earn points for every right answer they give, or achievement they clear, or training step they complete, and that drives engagement to a very high level. So those are some of the things companies are putting their brainpower into, to keep candidates engaged using technology.

Susmita Sarma: Great. So would you like to give some tips for smooth virtual hiring, to the HR listening to us?

Vikas Dua: Definitely. And I think this is the most critical part. What we've again observed time and again in many organizations is that when we talk about digitizing or setting up a virtual hiring process, many times we make the mistake of just taking our traditional paper-and-pencil, person-based recruitment process and trying to make it digital. This doesn't work, because it often comes with a lot of challenges along the way that aren't optimized for the digital platform or for the new generation. What I would recommend is that you really start from scratch, using what I call the design thinking approach. So put the candidate at the core, and start understanding how that candidate can be reached digitally and onboarded digitally, and all the steps in between. When you start from that digital-first approach, chances are your entire process will be very smooth and very efficient. So that's really the golden rule, start from scratch, start with digital at the core, start with the candidate at the focus of the process. You obviously need to take care of certain important pillars. One is that in the digital world, since you can reach out virtually anywhere in the globe, you've got to make sure your job description is well worded, easily understood, unambiguous, and accurate to the job you want the candidate for, and that will make the process very smooth and systematic throughout the technology platform. What happens sometimes is that companies tend to use different bits and pieces of platforms and connect them together, which takes candidates into the platform and then outside of it, and that's where the experience for the candidate gets reduced or impacted. So try and create a platform that's continuous and seamless right from start to end, and gives candidates a very good experience throughout the entire recruitment process. That's extremely important as well.

Susmita Sarma: Okay, so finally, please tell us how our listeners can reach out to you.

Vikas Dua: Oh sure, listeners can reach out to me on LinkedIn, vikas.dua, and also, if they want, they can follow the hashtag HR in my HeaRt. I do a lot of blogging and writing using that hashtag, so that should be an easy way to track me down.

Susmita Sarma: Okay, that was really a wonderful conversation with you, thanks for all the insights, and thank you for joining me.

Vikas Dua: Pleasure was all mine, thank you, Sushmita and Vantage Circle, for this opportunity. I wish all your listeners all the best in their times to come.

Susmita Sarma: Most welcome, thank you.

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