Moving countries isn’t easy; neither is moving to a country without a social circle. My early days in Singapore have been daunting but an enjoyable one, looking for a job, making new friends and socializing, that I thoroughly enjoyed until the Covid19. Still in the early days of my job and boxed in the apartment, the crisis was revealing, portraying a painful negative outlook. I couldn’t portend the full force of the impact that was to come. The crises has challenged the status quo in several industries and accelerated dramatic transformations in all sectors and functions. Neither are the companies immune to these changes.

Let’s face it! If I were to compare a similar change, IT services faced the same fate a couple of years ago. Since then, it has pioneered the use of technology and has evolved itself into various service offerings. On the same note, we see a new trend over the last few months with an increase in work from home and remote hiring. Is HR now the center stage? Should the HR refocus itself in a digitized world? A look at the current HR space would offer us the clue. 

The applicant tracker system (ATS) is one prime example. The rapid change in technology hasn’t made considerable change on the age-old system. Résumés are old fashioned and doesn’t entirely reflect on the candidate’s know-how or the competency skill sets. It doesn’t serve anymore the purpose. The current status quo will not be the new norm post-crises. Big tech companies, like the “FAANG” league, have reiterated their commitment to operationalize work from home. The current crisis has brought in renewed focus on the digitalization of the workforce and its ecosystem. Remote hiring and recruitment are going to be the new standard. Compelling use cases are many in the HR services.

Recent surveys show that the impacts aren’t lopsided only towards the companies. Candidates also stand to gain during the recruitment process. Some of the interviewing platforms can interview 100% of the job applicants with certainty, remove confirmation bias and at the same time provide the possibility of gray-scale video interviews. The benefits also start early on for the companies such as flexibility in scheduling the interview, ability to screen candidates based on new technology, which I would address a bit more in detail, that in turn optimizes the bottom line and also helps to access a global work talent pool. According to Forbes magazine, Top 10 HR Trends That Matter Most In 2020 Workplace, technology-based HR recruiting can shorten the screening time from 32 minutes per candidate to 8 minutes per candidate and improve the completion rate of job applications from 85% to 97%.

So, how do you go about creating a process in the remote hiring? A holistic approach with the right choice of technology for video interviewing, supporting candidates with self-video assessment and transparency are the key factors. Much like a regular recruitment, be prepared and choose the right video interview technology to access the potential job seekers remotely. This foremost and important choice will help you to streamline the complete process. Some of the existing video interviewing tools provide only end to end connectivity. However, digitalization goes beyond typical video interviews. Data insights and analytics about candidates are pertinent in selecting the right tool. Some of the key considerations to guide towards a robust choice are: Does the platform minimize human intervention & interview all the candidates? Are confirmatory biases avoided in the pre selection phase? Can preselection be automated? Are candidate insights provided to support your actual hiring? And not to say the least, are data protected by privacy laws? For example some of the HR tech tools don’t dump candidate data back to the ATS provider. This in turn helps companies secure robustly their candidate data.

Keep candidates well-informed at each stage of the interview process—you’ll want to give them feedback. As preselection is automated, you can provide a real time automatically generated results. This enhances the trust and provides a means for the candidates to improve on their future candidature. Also, supporting them with mock video interviews will boost their morale prior to the actual interviewing and increase the overall candidate submission rate.

Many of the companies are already executing robotic process automation in candidate preselection to help seamlessly recruit candidates. As Diane Gherson, CHRO of IBM says, “our job in HR is to create that connected, transparent, mobile, personalized, searchable and 24×7 universe through our workplace and our tools”*. This means creating an employee journey from candidate selection to a workplace environment with personalized employee experiences that will reflect on the future of the workplace. Moreover, the HR space has already started embracing these new digital trends. As these new technologies evolve, the change is to stay and reckon to be a future trendsetter!