Are You Making These 6 Common Virtual Recruitment Mistakes?

When Covid-19 happened, companies, had to shift and adapt to remote work. Now, as the market starts to recover and companies open their doors to hiring new employees, HR has to face the many challenges that accompany virtual recruitment and onboarding. 

But how do you find the most suitable candidate virtually? 

As the interviewer, you are more likely to be relaxed than a job candidate, you still need to ensure a smooth and efficient hiring process. Conducting virtual recruitment without proper preparation leads to a missed opportunity to hire an exceptional candidate as well as smear your company’s reputation among future job seekers.

There are mistakes that can scare a new hire off. Research suggests that a negative onboarding experience can make new hires twice as likely to just search for a new job.

To avoid a negative outcome, here are common mistakes you should avoid when hiring remotely. 

1. Not Enough Recruiters

The good thing about virtual recruitment is that it allows recruiters to talk to more candidates via both video and in-person interviews. Video interviews can be used in concert with or as replacements to in-person events, so you don’t need as much staff. 

However, you still want to ensure that your candidates are not waiting too long during the virtual recruiting events. Unfortunately, most employers underestimate the staffing need for virtual events, which causes a poor candidate experience for the participating job seekers. 

To prevent this issue, your recruitment staff should be based on the number of job seekers who sign up for the event. Consider having one recruiter for every 10 candidates to ensure that interviews can move quickly without creating virtual traffic. Another alternative is to conduct an asynchronous virtual job fair. 

2. Failing to Define a Target Job Seeker

Whipping up a job description is a principal tool in your talent acquisition arsenal. So, don’t skim over this important part of the process, or you’ll have to spend unnecessary time making up for it later. 

A well-written job description will not only alert potential candidates to how their current skills align perfectly with the role you need, but also acts as a signal to those who don’t meet your criteria. In short, it can prevent the need to separate the wheat from the chaff.  

If the job you’re advertising is considered one of the best work-from-home jobs, expect an influx of applicants. What better way to sort through them than to specify the qualifications you’re looking for?

This is especially true for virtual recruitment where you might feel you lack a more personal assessment of a candidate. Failing to do this, you risk hiring an individual unsuitable for the job, causing frustration on both sides and expensive re-hiring for the position. 

3. Poor Promotion Strategy

The only way to attract the best candidates for the job is to get the word out. And promoting your virtual recruiting events is not just about sending out a tweet or an email and calling it a day. 

Attracting quality talent to your virtual career fairs can be tedious. It begins with building relationships and expanding your company’s talent community. This means you need to build awareness and interest over time so that you are not scrambling when it is time to make the hire. 

Make sure that you create a strategy for promoting your virtual recruiting events that reflect the company’s brand and the preferences of its talent community. 

4. Relying On The Wrong Tools

There is a lot to benefit from using the right tool for every task or job. And some companies have tried to use tools that are not designed for virtual recruiting such as video chat platforms and reap poor results. 

Trying to piece together a cohesive virtual recruiting strategy with tools that do not complement the unique needs of the recruiting process can create more opportunities for mistakes, more work for your team, and poor candidate experience. 

This can be avoided by implementing a virtual recruiting platform built to support the process and has built-in features to promote events, delivering a smooth candidate experience, and providing actionable insights. 

You should also look into automation that can help ensure recruitment success. After all, computers have better memory recall than humans and automation takes the grunt work of the hiring process. 

5. Unprofessional Interviews

Another common virtual recruitment mistake is on the part of interviewers who act unprofessional—multitasking or acting disinterested during interviews. 

Interviewers should be engaged in the interview process as is the candidate. They shouldn’t sneak a peek at their phone in the middle of a virtual interview, thinking that the candidate will not notice. 

Interviewers should also not fall into the trap of multitasking during a phone interview. It takes a minute to check messages and email that can lead to an interviewer losing track of the thread of the interview. This can lead to awkwardness, especially when you repeat a question a candidate already answered. 

6. Not Following Up

Following up after the virtual recruitment is important. 

By keeping candidates engaged after a virtual recruitment event, you increase your chance of hiring the best talent. Engagement post recruiting event requires effort on your part. Use automated tools to ask candidates for feedback, and communicate next steps through email or text.

Job seekers no longer wait for days for prospective companies to call them. If they don’t hear from you after a couple of days, chances are, they’ll start to look at other opportunities. 

Also, you need to let candidates know if they were not chosen so they can move forward. Job seekers of today think more highly of the companies that communicate throughout the recruiting process, even when they do not get the job offer. 

Final Thoughts

Virtual recruitment will never be as personal as face-to-face meetings. But, if you can identify and avoid the common virtual recruitment mistakes listed above, you can make a good impression on candidates, increasing your chances of acquiring a good hire, and gather enough information to make the right hiring decision.

About the Author

Hanson Cheng is the founder of Freedom to Ascend. He empowers online entrepreneurs and business owners to 10x their business and become financially independent. You can connect with him here.