The year 2020 will always be in people’s memories due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It changed how people work and recruit, among many other things. Every business had to adapt to new things, especially when it comes to working from home. Most businesses took advantage of this challenge and thrived. Indeed, there are numerous businesses that continued recruiting and growing their teams effortlessly. However, there’s one thing that will always be difficult when recruiting new employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. It refers to integrating and onboarding new team members.
Recruiting Remotely
The current situation has made it difficult to recruit new members for your team. However, there are numerous candidates out there who are the perfect addition to your team and are available immediately. It might feel strange not meeting someone face to face. However, it has become the norm since the COVID-19 outbreak. Actually, most people have become more accustomed to working remotely and meeting virtually.
If you are planning to recruit people remotely, you need to become creative and change your mindset accordingly. You should be able to get great candidates and present them as you did before the pandemic. Most headhunters and marketing recruitment professionals believe that meeting their candidates before presenting them to the employer is important. That’s why meeting them virtually is important. As such, they conduct their own video interviews to be able to understand these candidates as people without relying entirely on their CVs.
As such, head hunters should be able to present the right candidates to employers. Even better, they can present the interviews so that the employers have a first impression without necessarily doing their own video interviews. Therefore, simply because you can’t meet candidates in person, it doesn’t mean that you should deviate from the procedure in place. You can hold a short interview first and a second more formal interview where you can set a task and request for a presentation as you normally would.
Onboarding
1. Communication and Reassurance
At most times, starting a new job can be quite nerve-racking. If you are starting a new job in such perilous times, you might feel more stressed than you normally would. If you are a talent manager or line manager, you need to open up communication as early as possible and reassure people about the process effortlessly. Good practices involve calling the new candidates remotely for an initial welcome chat. Next, you can share your email and phone number so you can let them know to reach out whenever they need help. It’s important to keep that line of communication open without being overbearing.
2. Help Them with Technology
During the pandemic, people adopted various work-from-home tactics and platforms. You need a laptop, VPN, Zoom and Slack. Therefore, IT guys can now play a huge role in connecting everyone remotely. Make sure everything has been done for a great starter set-up for new employees as soon as possible.
3. Structured Welcome Programme
Structure is also very important for new employees at the moment. You need a new starter programme for the best results. For instance, avoid overloading them with a lot of information but you need to have clear points said right from the start. For instance, you can introduce the points to new employees in a Zoom call. You can also have a presentation on the company culture and introduce them to their day-to-day tasks.
4. Keep in Contact
Keep in regular contact with your new employees. Make sure they are comfortable enough to call you. Avoid being too overbearing. Show them that you trust them without necessarily checking up on them every second. You can schedule a regular Zoom call or chat daily at first then reduce the frequency as things start picking up.
Use these tips to recruit and integrate new employees effortlessly during the coronavirus pandemic.