Hybrid work: how to ensure an exceptional candidate experience?

Developments in recent years have transformed the world of recruitment and hiring, both for industry professionals and for candidates.

Companies have realised that it is no longer necessary to meet a candidate face-to-face in order to hire them. Similarly, a candidate no longer needs a face-to-face meeting to accept a job offer.

The impact of this has been considerable. The database of candidates to draw on (and of companies to send CVs to) has grown enormously, as has the competition between companies to attract the best talent.

To convince employees to accept an offer in a highly competitive job market, companies need to pay greater attention to the candidate experience and optimise a purely digital application process.

Achieving this involves the six key steps or best practices reviewed below.

1. Focus on communication

Today, company policy on hybrid working and teleworking is decisive for a candidate's decision. This is why it needs to be communicated as early as possible, even from the moment the job offer is published. Otherwise, the company runs the risk of including many candidates in the selection process who have no intention of accepting the policy.

For companies with a particularly flexible policy, this can make all the difference when it comes to attracting talent.

For a couple of years now, for example, many of the vacancies at Altamira HRM explicitly mention the possibility of working at our offices or remotely, depending on preference. As a result, we have seen a significant increase in the number of applications and the acceptance rate of offers.

However, the real nerve centre of communication with candidates remains the career site. It is there that a company must impress the candidate and convince them of their suitability by communicating:

• The values and mission;
• Incentives and benefits;
• The opinion of its employees, through interviews and testimonials;
• Corporate culture.

As the candidate database is expected to expand, more attention also needs to be paid to diversity and inclusion policies.

Job sites have become increasingly important in recent years. Moreover, one of the implications of the spread of teleworking is that candidates have been returning to job sites, especially from PCs rather than smartphones (see graph). Companies should therefore take advantage of this opportunity to showcase their day-to-day work, using a mix of text, images and video content.

However, it is still advisable that the job page is responsive, so that the candidate's experience when accessing the website from a mobile device remains satisfactory.

2. Reduce friction points

As marketing teaches us, in order to get a high number of applications for an advertisement, it is necessary to reduce the effort a user has to make to apply as much as possible.

Many job sites still require a disproportionate number of fields to be filled in with information that is already available on the CV. The better option - which increases the conversion rate of users to candidates and improves the experience - is to ask the candidate only for the information that is strictly necessary to identify and contact them.

Recruiters can then use the Applicant Tracking System to extract the information they need from the attached CV, either through sophisticated search tools or through AI technologies such as resume parsing.

To enhance the candidate experience and reduce candidate effort, quick application forms on platforms such as Indeed or LinkedIn can also be used.

3. Keep the relationship alive

Obviously, not meeting a candidate face-to-face has its consequences:

• It makes it more difficult to make contact with them,
• It requires you to cultivate and strengthen a relationship with them from the outset,
• you need to make efforts to ensure a greater presence and be timely in feedback and communication.

Again, automated notifications and emails, as well as communication templates in recruitment software can offer valuable help. However, the human component is irreplaceable: phoning to inform all candidates interviewed about the development of the selection process is, for example, an action that should not be dispensed with.

All exchanges with candidates can be tracked with the ATS. In this way, recruiters can establish a relationship with them and recover profiles that had previously been discarded, picking up where they left off.

4. Offer greater autonomy

In the modern world of work, where tasks are no longer always performed in close contact with colleagues and managers, companies have had to learn to hold employees accountable and offer them greater autonomy.

It is therefore not surprising that candidates also want to be more independent.

To enhance the remote candidate experience and give them more control in the process, it is a good idea:

• Offer them the possibility to record a short video interview. This gives them the opportunity to express themselves without being so tied to their CV, which increases the degree of satisfaction with the company's selection process.
• Give you the opportunity to set up a live interview with the recruiter, based on an online calendar that you can consult on the company's job page.

ATSs also offer automated tests that candidates can take when they have time, without the pressure of a face-to-face interview. These tools increase the perception of transparency and merit-based decision-making.

5. Leverage the benefits of video interviews

As mentioned in the opening lines of this article, in recent years we have learned to hire without meeting the candidate in person.

We have also learned how to convince a candidate to work for us, despite the distance and the impossibility of meeting face-to-face.

Finding the natural substitute for the in-person interview was easy. Although a video interview cannot completely replace a face-to-face meeting, it retains several features and offers additional advantages:

• It is easier to organise, as it eliminates the problem of travel.
• It requires less time on both sides.
• It allows for the simultaneous participation of several people from different locations.
• It can be recorded with the prior consent of the participants.
• It allows introverted candidates to feel more comfortable and perform better during the interview than they would in person.

So, if we cannot interview someone face-to-face, it is better to focus on the strengths of the video interview rather than the weaknesses.

6. Continue to cultivate engagement

Once the recruitment process is complete, it is important that the company has everything in place to take care of remote onboarding. Otherwise, the new employee will quickly feel abandoned.

Modern HR management software with workflows can guide the process of onboarding an employee remotely, transmitting the correct information, collecting all the necessary documentation and guiding actions such as setting up company accounts and assigning a mentor.

This ensures that the new employee's experience gets off on the right foot from the first day on the job.