How To Hire Top Talent Remotely?

Companies often struggle with assessing and recruiting the top talent that would perform in their environment. Since COVID-19 hit, virtual recruiting has become the new norm, and in-person interviews have become a thing of the past. With that, hiring the best talent remotely comes with its own set of new challenges. Recruiters at various companies need to learn how to recruit and assess candidates remotely.Many companies, especially contact centers, are struggling to keep up with hiring demands due to spikes in digital traffic, trying to figure out remote hiring best practices, and looking for a more effective and efficient remote candidate recruitment platform in comparison to their previous in-person methods.Amazon itself is hiring 3,500 employees across Ontario and British Columbia to expand their office footprint, so you can only imagine how much digital traffic and applicants they are receiving.

“Remote hiring is the new normal, and it is not going away anytime soon”
– Recruiters

So, how do you hire top talent when you can’t meet with them in person or assess their communication skills in an interview?

You need to find a virtual recruitment platform that helps you remote hire top performers quickly, has online assessment tests for jobs, and can evaluate your remote worker's communication skills automatically.

A new tool suggests looking into Learning Branch, an AI communication assessment tool, and a “no interview” hiring assessment platform to address your new hire needs.

The benefits of going with a no interview process for remote hiring at contact centers are:

• Saves recruitment costs
• Reduce time to hire
• Hire top candidates quickly
• Evaluates communication skills without bias, and collects actionable data
• Tests voice, chat, and email communication skills of new team members
• Standardizes and creates performance benchmarks for your organization

If you’re currently using a recruitment platform to replace your in-person interviews, it should help your business, not hinder it.  A virtual hiring tool should help you standardize your hiring process, making hiring new talent easier than ever, and save you time and money. With all the remote working, if it’s not aiding your team members, then it may be time to look into a more efficient and interactive platform.

Hiring employees at contact centers usually consists of volume hiring and in-person interviews, both of which are time-consuming and expensive. However, with the pandemic, hiring managers are not in an idle situation. They are unable to meet candidates in person and during remote work, the sudden influx of new applicants makes it more difficult. Even though video calls over zoom or other channels are an option, the high volume of new candidates makes it impossible to assess all the candidates face to face. So many companies approximately 1 in 4 are starting to use pre-hiring assessment tests to short-list top talent and minimize time spent on hiring.

Yes, there is a huge learning curve to move online and become a remote company, to hire top talent remotely and removing in-person interviews and move to remote interviews or video interviews, but the support centers that did, have reaped the benefits.

So how do you hire the top talent remotely?

Tap into your network online:A large benefit of virtual hiring is the possibility of hiring talent outside your geographic location having different time zones. This may be your secret weapon to acquire top talent for your company, serve global clients via remote teams, and a great corporate recruiting strategy to integrate remote jobs into your organization.To effectively broadcast about hiring remotely, we also suggest promoting your job postings across multiple channels(LinkedIn, Indeed, etc), and networks for optimal visibility to the job seekers.

Here are top 5 tips to remember when hiring talent without an interview

Tip#1 - Set Clear Needs

Be clear about who your dream candidates are. What are the most important skills for them to possess? Create a list of skills and criteria they must have to succeed in the job. Keep this list of performance ideals, as they will relate to tip number two.

Tip#2 - Streamline Performance Ideals

While hiring top talent remotely, it is essential to create standardized performance benchmarks across your organization. Candidates must meet performance criteria to move on to the next stage and get hired. Use the skills from tip number one and integrate them into your performance ideals.

Tip#3 - Test and Examine Candidates

Test candidates online through unbiased AI hiring software. This way, every candidate will be evaluated equally and given a fair chance to work at your company. One benefit of remote hiring is the removal of hiring bias. Whereas in-person is heavily reliant on a “gut feeling,” an unconscious bias, that this person is the right hire or judging candidates after their first impression, and only scratching the surface of what the candidate has to offer.

Tip#4 - Use technology to your advantage

A huge advantage of using technology to hire candidates remotely is the ability to scale your virtual hiring process across your organization, networks, and in multiple languages too. Using an AI tool to test pre-hires, will allow you to test specific work-related scenarios and situation judgment interview questions. You can throw twists and turns at candidates and test their ability to problem solve and act under pressure. All of which wouldn’t be possible in an in-person interview.

Tip#5 - Integrate training into your onboarding process

These Online assessment tools will give you lists of top competencies and skills that need to be improved in your organization. Use this information to offer training to up-skill your new employees. Go deep into candidate data, and notice trends, and start training programs to improve those specific skills of your talent pool.

What do you achieve from using a hiring and assessment platform?

• Enhanced candidate experience
• An increase in the number of quality hires and reduction in “poor hires”
• Quickly identify skill gaps and ensure candidates hit performance benchmarks to get hired as per the job description
• Improve performance of communication skills once hired by integrating customer service training into your hiring process
• A tool with training to up-skill your remote employees on an ongoing basis
• Ability to assess multilingual candidates automatically
• A quick automated remote hiring process that works

Nonetheless, hiring without an interview will take some getting used to, both for candidates and recruiters. But in the end, it will make the whole process a lot less time-consuming, which both parties can benefit from. You can speed up and automate the hiring process at your contact center by integrating a no interview assessment platform aligned with your company culture and goals. Start by using a non-biased interview pre-assessment and keep the hiring process fair.