How Will Companies Balance Online and Face-to-Face Recruitment in the Post-Pandemic World?

The sudden transition to the fully online recruiting process came with both pros and cons last year. On the one hand, scheduling interviews have become a piece of cake, the need to organize travels has disappeared, and recruiters have had more opportunities to recruit great talents from all over the world. On the other hand, many talent professionals have suffered a lot due to technical issues and complained about the impact of the transition on candidate experience.

Since back to the office now seems like a distant dream, you may already be thinking about what will happen to your recruiting process after the pandemic. Now that your team has experienced both sides, you may be reluctant to do things as before. Or you may be weighing which aspects online recruitment will bring to life after the pandemic, and which ones it will leave in 2020.

For teams working entirely remote, a completely online recruiting process may be the most logical way for everyone involved.

While many companies are likely to continue at least some face-to-face recruitment activities whenever possible, this may change from role to role. For positions that will work entirely remote, it can be an unnecessary and confusing step to bring the candidate to an office where s/he will never spend time, especially if the entire team is away.

For most roles, a mix of online and face-to-face tactics will help recruiters balance candidate experience with their productivity.

When companies had to make the first transition to online recruiting, many talent professionals and recruitment managers had minimal experience in interviewing and evaluating candidates remotely. Now that they have invested in online scanning methods and have realized that they are not only easier than expected but also particularly efficient, a complete return to the traditional model is unlikely.

Despite this, many of the talent professionals also express concern that a focus on productivity may impact candidate experience negatively and make it difficult to establish authentic connections.

There are also those who argue that the right balance is to do the first meetings online and then see the final round candidates face to face.

There are also those who believe that candidates will prefer online interviews more, as they will often prefer to interview from home and will not have to go to the company for the same job over and over again.

On the other hand, it is believed that the candidate will want to experience the corporate culture in a concrete way, which is not always easy from a video.

Consistency will be crucial in reducing prejudice and making candidates feel that they are being treated fairly.

One aspect to consider when deciding on face-to-face or online recruitment is the possibility for biases to enter the process. A bias may arise in case that, for a particular position, some candidates are interviewed face-to-face while others are interviewed online. Research shows that factors that can only be achieved in person – such as a physical handshake – can work better during negotiations. Therefore, it is possible that interviewing some candidates face-to-face may cause interviewers to view them more positively than the ones interviewed via videoconferencing. Consequently, consistency is the best practice in the attitude towards all candidates.

Recruiting will look different, but the basics will remain the same.

As a result, fundamentals such as providing a positive candidate experience will still apply whether companies choose to keep their recruitment processes completely online or adopt a hybrid model.

Source: LinkedIn Talent Solutions