With the hybridization of organizations and the intensification of the talent war, remote recruitment has become unavoidable for HR teams.
More intuitive sourcing, saving time, overcoming barriers in time and place… Remote recruitment brings lots of opportunities but also perhaps, certain challenges.

How to hire remotely? What is a remote candidate experience? That’s what we’ll be exploring in this article.

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Why is it important to perfect one’s remote candidate experience?

Si le recrutement à distance facilite la constitution d’une task force où le critère géographique n’est plus un frein, il reste trois enjeux de taille : l’attention, l’humanisation et la viralité de l’expérience elle-même. If remote recruitment facilitates the assembly of a task force where geographic criteria don’t matter, there remain 3 sizeable challenges: attention, humanization and the virality of the experience itself.

“Remote” hiring needs to be taken into account as an integral part of the candidate experience so that you can:

• Retain candidate attention in the midst of the talent war
• Attract the best, no matter the distance
• Show that your organization is in line with the new standards of the future of work (flexibility, mobility, autonomy)

In order for the candidate experience to be satisfying, HR teams need to redouble their efforts in order to humanize and personalize the experience, despite the distance. Distance should not risk increasing the feelings of isolation or a lack of consideration.

Many employees seem to be experiencing a degradation of their mental health due to forced remote work. As documented in Forbes, a 2019 survey by cloud infrastructure company Digital Ocean found that, for example, 82% of remote tech workers in the US felt burnt out.

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6 tips to ensure a successful candidate experience

To guarantee a remote candidate experience that is as smooth as one that’s in person, certain best practices can be quickly activated.

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Facilitate information sharing with the candidate

The candidate experience doesn’t start with the application but with their very first point of contact with the company. That includes the research they do on the company and its values via native communication channels like job websites, the company blog, social networks…You want the candidate to be able to find the company values and its culture.

In order to ensure a relationship of sustained trust from the very first impression, the company needs to share with the candidate:

• The keys to understanding the company’s strategic challenges, in order to allow the candidate to better prepared for the interview. Erie Insurance puts this into practice by making available articles dedicated to the analysis of its market, practical tips for having successful interviews, and even video feedback from their interns.
• Content that helps candidates see themselves within the company by providing, for example, information about the different members of their future team.
• Resources and advice about preparing for remote interviews in order to allow candidates to prepare, stress-free, for interviews via Zoom or Google Meet.

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Be clear about the recruitment process

What could be more disruptive for a candidate than showing up to an interview and, instead, being presented a use case to work on, or being faced with a series of endless interviews without warning?

From the start of the candidate experience, you should announce:

• The names and roles of the people they will meet
• The number of steps and the time between them
• The goal of each step, i.e. a use case to evaluate technical skills, Zoom interviews to evaluate soft skills

Using a Notion page, Blinkist informs candidates about their hiring process with total transparency, introducing the interlocutors they will meet. The page also includes tips for the interview, information about company culture, and even a discount code for candidates to test their app before their interview.

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Offer a live immersion into life at your company

Just because the recruitment process is remote, doesn’t mean the candidates will never visit the office!

Like Bold, you can set up a virtual visit of your offices via video call before the interview. This allows candidates to explore part of your culture and meet your team. In another vein, Datadog offers a slideshow with photos of the offices, teams and big events.

Welcome To The Jungle also proposes pre recorded videos that demonstrate the company’s personality, in which managers talk about their daily life at work. A live, interactive Q&A session via Zoom can also be helpful.

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Stay in touch regularly

All along the process, keep the candidate at top of mind. During this period, don’t be afraid to over communicate. There’s nothing worse for candidates than waiting for days without clarity.

According to CareerPlug, the lack of a response can leave a bad impression and discourage candidates. 84% of candidates claim that responsiveness, even early on in the application process, is very important to them

At each step of the process, bring rhythm to the candidate experience through the following messages:

• Recaps of important information
• Requests for administrative documents to streamline the administrative burden of onboarding
• Thank yous after the interview
• Notification of validation of the various hiring steps

Don’t hesitate to give the candidate contact information of members of their future team, so the candidate can ask questions directly.

You can also create a channel on your collaborative tool (Slack, Meet, etc.) dedicated to preselected candidates.

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Recap:

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Good management of the remote candidate experience requires keeping their interest throughout the journey to prevent any premature abandonment of the process. This requires creating points of contact along the way via recap emails, a newsletter, little notes or invitations to virtual events. 

For remote processes, privilege content that’s accessible at any time, like a video presentation or a connected Q&A session on Zoom.  

Facilitate candidates’ interview preparation through access to useful internal tools (advice articles on the blog, recap carrousels about employee values on LinkedIn, or a Notion page on company culture).