Remote work is swiftly becoming one of the most desirable benefits an employer can offer to employees today. A CNBC report indicates that about 70 percent of professionals work remotely at least one day a week, while 52 percent of the workforce work remotely for at least half of the week. The liberty to work wherever they want with more flexible hours is a great motivating factor for employees who can’t stand the sterility and monotony of office life.

As the world faces the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, it’s clear that a switch to remote work and remote recruiting is not an option, but a necessity for many companies worldwide. The majority of the companies are changing their recruitment practices and strategies, showing that it’s not business as usual.

In a nutshell, knowing whether to hire or not may grant you survival, while knowing how to keep in touch with talent may give you a chance to succeed during and after the pandemic. You don’t want candidates thinking that your business died or is neglecting them; they should know that times are different, but you are still there

Should You Be Recruiting During a Pandemic?

While some businesses have had to freeze hiring, some have actually increased hiring. For instance, you should keep hiring if you are facing increased demand in your products or services. For instance, businesses categorized as essential service providers like healthcare providers, online sellers with home deliveries, supermarkets, and take-away food sellers generally have more orders. Even if you’re outside one of those industries, it’s still a good idea, especially for recruiting agencies, to be building relationships with candidates (and the companies looking to hire them, now or in the future).

If your company is among those that are providing essential services, then you should be recruiting during the plague. When bringing new hires on board, you should remember to adapt to new hiring practices. For instance, you should be as transparent and empathetic as possible. Tell candidates that times are different, and the vacancy is due to increased demand, which may not last.

If your business is experiencing a decrease in demand, you might want to slow hiring. Hiring more employees when your business is taking a hit isn’t a sound decision. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should stop talent searching or communicating with prospective candidates. You should be building a pipeline or a “bench” of talent — keep in touch with candidates and aim to create a meaningful relationship that can materialize to recruitment as COVID-19 ends. Now is also a great time to pick up hires that might otherwise not be on the market, so spring for those if you can!

Best Practices for Remote Recruiting

If you are remote recruiting, there are several things that you should consider doing. The following are the best practices of recruiting candidates remotely:

Adapt your approach

Your remote recruiting approach will be informed by whether your company has come to a complete standstill or is moving faster now more than ever. Generally, this will require beginning from scratch and creating an entirely new hiring strategy that’s dependent on virtual sourcing and onboarding.

Embrace digital remote recruiting tactics

To maintain remote recruiting momentum, you will need to use technology that empowers your team to digitally source, screen, and onboard new hires remotely. This will not only help you to prioritize the health and safety of everyone involved, but it will also help you to speed up the remote recruiting process. For instance, you can place the ads on social media, incorporating relevant hashtags.

In addition, you should also consider implementing a robust candidate relationship management system and as well as an application tracking system. It’s worth thinking about optimizing your tech stack, especially incorporating video interviewing platforms, if you haven’t already. The right systems can fuel your remote recruiting efforts and can streamline the process both now and in the future.

Be transparent

At a time when candidates are very skeptical about changing jobs in a crisis, transparency is of great importance. When placing your job adverts, it is important to state whether the job is permanent, temporary and whether or not interviews will happen remotely.

Adhere to all hiring policies that are in place

When recruiting candidates remotely, you should treat the process the same way as you would an onsite interview. The interviewer should inform themselves about the candidate, converse without distractions such as phones and third parties, and reinforce the business brand and culture throughout the interview. Check candidate’s working hours as WFH can be flexible.

Maintaining a connection with candidates during the remote recruiting process means that if candidates sent applications for a position that has become unnecessary due to COVID-19, email them to say so. Other than giving it a personal touch, the outreach message used here should:

Be empathetic: Don’t be too pushy or convincing. Talk about how the current situation has had effects on your business, and that you are coping. You might start with a sentence like: “Hi, I trust you are safe amid this pandemic affecting all of us.”

Be resourceful: A long message telling the candidate there are no openings might not be useful. You can direct the candidate to a blog on remote jobs, working from home, and so on. Explain that you hold employees’ and candidates’ health dear, and everything is happening to keep everybody safe.

Mention the pandemic: Mention the COVID-19 situation in your message’s body without going into too much detail. To emphasize empathy, finish the text with an “I appreciate your understanding, stay safe” message or something similar.

Be promising: Tell the candidate that you are reviewing their resume, and you hope to talk to them soon.

What Tools Can You Use for Remote Recruiting?

Businesses are changing their recruitment process in full – from how they place job ads to how new hires are oriented. Thankfully, there are a plethora of new tools coming out every day that can help those working in a remote recruiting environment to connect with far-away candidates. One of these handy tools is Interseller.

How Interseller Helps with Remote Recruiting

If you are involved in staffing and recruiting in a small to mid-sized firm, Interseller is one of the tools that will come in handy when it comes to remote recruiting. It is designed to make the process of reaching out and engaging with candidates hassle-free.

One of the biggest advantages of using Interseller is that it helps you to build a more predictable and consistent candidate pipeline. With it, you can find candidates’ personal email addresses and reach them with automated and personalized email sequences, all while keeping any ATS or CRM up-to-date.

Interseller is arguably the best tool to reach and engage talent during COVID-19. Be sure to try it out to revamp your remote recruiting process.