Remote Hiring: Takeaways and Suggestions

As 2020 dawned, we at ICAP were exploring remote work and remote interviewing. We work with clients all over the country and we’ve utilized some of these tactics before and we wanted to share it.

ICAP put together some key takeaways for remote hiring in this context or if this makes sense to implement for your business in general.

Takeaways:

Password protect your interviews. As the news about “zoom bombing” shows, safeguarding your privacy is a must. Interviews often provide candidates first impressions about companies, leadership, and culture. Curating that experience might be helpful during the interview process.

Mute those who aren’t speaking. Everyone’s working from home with (likely) lots of distractions. Whether it’s the laundry, dishwasher, or children fighting in the other room, a best practice is to mute those not speaking to minimize distractions.

Have all conducting or participating in the interview go into a separate room to minimize distractions with the door closed, so no children, people, or animals disturb the flow of the interview.

Keep your laptop at eye level. Even though interviews are snapshots, ensuring your laptop is at eye level will allow you to practice good posture, which projects confidence and doesn’t hurt your back.

Look into the camera when you’re speaking rather than the faces on the computer. Even though this can be awkward and counter-intuitive, you don’t want someone looking at your chin, your forehead, or up your nostrils when they should be focusing on what you’re saying.

If your desk is in front a window, close the blinds especially if you have glasses. This reduces glare.

Make sure everyone involved knows how to work the web conference service to minimize technical disruptions. Getting on early or having someone walk you through how to work it saves valuable time and ensures that the primary purpose of the meeting is achieved: getting to know a great candidate.

Suggestions:

Those conducting the interview can create an itinerary for the call notating who will ask what question, how long you’ll do an introduction, etc. In ICAP’s experience, web conferences run much smoother with a well-communicated plan.

Align everyone on the video on or off decision and communicate that to the candidate. Likely, everyone has on business-appropriate clothes on (on their torso anyway), so having the video on might allow your candidate to feel more confident when they see people.

Ensure everyone has copies of the candidate’s resume. Make sure it is shared before the beginning of the interview.

Do a quick check-in or ice breaker at the beginning. While potentially not necessary before an in-person interview, having everyone answer questions like “what are you most excited about in the next 6 months?” or “what’s your favorite meal?” allows people to build more rapport.

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