Hybrid work: how to ensure an exceptional candidate experience?

Developments in recent years have transformed the world of recruiting and hiring, both for industry professionals and for candidates.

Companies have realized that it is no longer necessary to meet a candidate face-to-face in order to hire them. Likewise, a candidate no longer needs an in-person meeting to accept a job offer.

The impact of this has been considerable. The database of candidates to draw from (and companies to send resumes to) has grown dramatically, as has the competition among companies to attract the best talent.

To convince workers to accept an offer in a highly competitive job market, companies must pay greater attention to candidate experience and optimize a purely digital application process.

Achieving this goes through the six key steps or best practices we review below.

1. Focus on communication

Today, company policies on hybrid work and telecommuting are decisive for a candidate's decision. This is why it is necessary to communicate it as soon as possible, even from the moment the job offer is published. Otherwise, the company runs the risk of including in the selection process many candidates who have no intention of accepting the policy.

For companies with a particularly flexible policy, this can make all the difference when it comes to attracting talent.

For a couple of years now, for example, for many of the vacancies at Altamira HRM we have explicitly mentioned the possibility of working in our offices or remotely, depending on preferences. As a result, we have seen a significant increase in the number of applications and the acceptance rate of offers.

However, the real nerve center of communication with candidates remains the career site. It is there that a company must impress the candidate and convince him/her of its suitability by transmitting to him/her:

• The values and mission;
• Incentives and benefits;
• The opinion of its employees, through interviews and testimonials;
• The corporate culture.

With the expected expansion of the candidate database, it is also necessary to pay more attention to diversity and inclusion policies.

Job sites have become increasingly important in recent years. Moreover, one of the implications of the spread of teleworking is that candidates have returned to consulting them, especially from the computer rather than from the smartphone (see graph). Companies must therefore take advantage of this opportunity to publicize their day-to-day work, using a mix of text, images and video content.

However, it is still advisable that the job page is responsive, so that the candidate's experience when accessing the website from a mobile device is still satisfactory.

2. Reduce friction points

As marketing teaches us, to get a high number of applications for an advertisement, it is necessary to reduce the effort a user must make to apply.

Many job sites still require a disproportionate number of fields to be filled in with information that is already available on the CV. The best option - which increases the conversion rate of users to candidates and improves the experience - is to ask the candidate only for the information strictly necessary to identify and contact him or her.

Recruiters can then use the Applicant Tracking System to extract the information they need from the attached CV, either through sophisticated search tools or through AI technologies such as resume parsing.

To enhance the candidate experience and reduce candidate effort, you can also use the quick application forms on certain platforms such as Indeed or LinkedIn.

3. Keep the relationship alive

Obviously, not meeting a candidate face-to-face has its consequences:

• It makes it more difficult to engage with him or her,
• It requires you to cultivate and strengthen a relationship with them from the beginning,
• you need to deploy efforts to ensure a greater presence and be timely in feedback and communication.

Again, automated notifications and emails, as well as recruitment software communication templates can offer valuable assistance. However, the human component is irreplaceable: making a phone call to inform all the candidates interviewed about the development of the selection process is, for example, an action that we should not do without.

All exchanges with candidates can be tracked with the ATS. In this way, recruiters can establish a relationship with them and recover profiles that had previously been discarded, picking up where they left off.

4. Offer greater autonomy

In the modern world of work, where tasks are no longer always performed in close contact with colleagues and managers, companies have had to learn to hold employees accountable and offer them greater autonomy.

It is therefore not surprising that candidates also want to be more independent.

To enhance the remote candidate experience and give them more control in the process, it's a good idea:

• Offer him or her the possibility to record a short video interview. This gives him/her the opportunity to express him/herself without being so tied to his/her CV, which increases the degree of satisfaction with the company's selection process.
• Give you the opportunity to set up a live interview with the recruiter, based on an online calendar that you can consult on the company's employment page.

ATSs also offer automatic tests to candidates, which they can take when they have time, without the pressure of an in-person interview. These tools increase the perception of transparency and a merit-based decision.

5. Leverage the benefits of video interviews.

As we mentioned in the opening lines of this article, in recent years we have learned to hire without meeting the candidate in person.

We have also learned how to convince a candidate to work for us, despite the distance and the impossibility of meeting face-to-face.

Finding the natural substitute for the in-person interview was easy. While a video interview cannot completely replace a face-to-face meeting, it retains several features and offers additional advantages:

• It is easier to arrange, as it eliminates the hassle of travel.
• It requires less time on both sides.
• It allows the simultaneous participation of several people from different locations.
• It can be recorded with the prior consent of the participants.
• It allows introverted candidates to feel more comfortable and perform better during the interview than they would in person.

So, if we cannot interview someone face-to-face, it is better to focus on the strengths of the video interview rather than the weaknesses.

6. Continue to cultivate engagement

Once the recruiting process is complete, it is important that the company has everything it needs to take care of remote onboarding. Otherwise, the new employee will quickly feel abandoned.

Modern HR management software with workflows can guide the process of onboarding an employee remotely, transmitting the correct information, collecting all the necessary documentation and guiding actions such as setting up company accounts and assigning a mentor.

This ensures that the new employee's experience gets off on the right foot from the first day on the job.