How to Conduct Virtual Recruitment [Guide 2024]

With the endless blessings of the modern-day internet, you can easily reach candidates in the furthest corners of the world through virtual recruitment.

Needless to say, the virtual world opens up a wealth of opportunities for recruiters who are searching for the best possible candidates in their respective fields. Launching a virtual recruitment drive has never been as easy as it is today.

Regardless of your reasons for dabbling in virtual hiring, no need to worry at all. Here, we have compiled a detailed guide outlining everything about your next virtual recruitment drive.

Introduction to Virtual Recruitment

Virtual recruitment is simply a hiring process that takes place remotely. The best part of this process is that it takes place without the candidates and recruiters needing to meet face-to-face. Instead, virtual recruiters completely rely on technology when it comes to hosting virtual assessments, video interviews, and surveys to evaluate their applicants remotely.

For example, during a virtual campus recruiting drive, you can connect with college and university students without going there. Such virtual recruiting strategies can help you gain an audience just with digital marketing that is much more cost-efficient.

Benefits of Virtual Recruiting

Let’s discuss some top benefits of virtual recruiting & hiring that will make you go digital for your next recruitment drive:

1. Wider Audience Reach

The most significant benefit of online recruiting is that virtual recruiters can reach more candidates. This is especially beneficial for smaller employers who lack a sizable recruiting staff dedicated to sourcing talent. Furthermore, virtual open houses, as well as virtual job fairs, allow more people to attend.

2. Saves Time Through Automation

A well-planned virtual recruitment process uses automation tools to take care of the bulk of manual tasks. Doing so will help you streamline and optimize the entire process to make sure your recruiting time is used effectively.

3. Cost-Effective

Last but not least, in the long run, your company will also save money on interview expenses. Not only this but also travel expenses for your out-of-town candidates.

A Guide to Taking In-person Recruiting Virtual

As you shift your face-to-face recruiting online, it’s important to keep your existing recruitment philosophy intact. You should be able to make a point to reinforce your employer brand and values throughout the recruiting process.

While this detail is a critical part of all recruiting, it’s even more important in the case of a virtual setting. This is because your applicants will have significantly less in-person interaction with your team as well as your organization.

There is a long list of companies that have found many creative ways to successfully utilize virtual recruitment. Many of such top companies constantly promote recruitment efforts on their social media pages. Also, they create a branded hashtag to promote their events, offer weekly virtual chats, and much more. They also offer numerous online hiring events to provide candidates with the best opportunities to connect with their organization.

With the above-mentioned points in mind, here we have gathered three proven strategies for an effective virtual placement drive:

Hosting Virtual Job Fairs and Open Houses

You can host effective virtual “meet and greets” as part of your virtual recruiting strategies. Focus on hosting live video conferencing meetings during which you can invite prospective candidates to “meet” the hiring managers. They can also enjoy virtual office tours and Q&As with your team members. Job fairs and open houses are some great ways to engage with talent. It will also give them a chance to learn more about the company.

Utilizing Phone and Video Interviews to Screen Candidates

Screening candidates with promising resumes is still a vital step when it comes to finding good candidate matches. Typically, virtual recruiters will learn in-depth about the individual, before they make any final decision.

Companies have long been used to recruiting through video interviews. It is a great way to make the interview experience more personal. This is because the virtual candidate can feel more comfortable in their home environment, and not in a conference room.

Developing a Comprehensive Virtual Onboarding Program

To ensure a smooth virtual onboarding process, you need to follow some general guidelines. Here is what you need to consider when developing a comprehensive virtual onboarding program:

1. Use An Effective Virtual Recruiting Technology Solution

Technology is said to be the cornerstone of virtual onboarding. It is important to ensure that adequate technology is available for all employees. You can start with identifying the required virtual onboarding platform as well as providing essential hardware to new hires. This includes necessary network access and configuration.

2. Design An Orientation Schedule

Onboarding is not restricted to one day or even one week. No matter what the circumstances, virtual onboarding should be strategic. This long-term process is meant to coordinate with new employees at all levels of the organization. Send your new hires a detailed list of trainings and tasks to complete within their first 30, 60, and 90 days so they have clear instructions about how to shift seamlessly into their position and role as a company employee. High quality virtual onboarding platforms will allow you to track employee progress automatically, to the point that employees may not even need to self-report on their tasks accomplished.

3. Communicate Often

New hires often feel lost at a new job during the first few days. Physical distance can heighten this feeling even more. To lessen the struggle of your remote employees, be sure to carry out frequent and clear communication.

How to Host A Successful Virtual Recruitment Event

In cases where job fairs or other networking events prove to be a key component of your virtual recruiting strategies, it is important to conceive of ways to replicate the success of those events virtually. Online events still provide an ideal opportunity for candidates to familiarize themselves with your company and hiring team.

To boost your chances of hosting a successful virtual recruiting events, there are a few things for you. All such points hinge on the needs, size, and capabilities of your organization. Also, without any second thought, the more advanced tech you have access to, the better options you’ll have available for your dedicated remote recruiting process.

Below are some basic tips for creating the best virtual recruitment event:

1. Leverage Creative Event Features to Entice Audiences

Virtual recruiting events don’t have to be boring or dull. In fact, when planned well, they will act as the best promotional tool to attract candidates to your company.

Not only should you use the event to source, screen, and recruit candidates through meetings & calls, you should make it a fun, engaging experience that entices candidates to want to work for you.

Set up educational sessions about life at your company, career opportunities, and even workshops offering advice to candidates about how to stand out in the interview process. Gamify your event with scavenger hunts or leaderboards that award prizes to attendees with the most points at the end of the event.

2. Don’t Ignore Employer Branding

Amplify your branding with exciting custom 3D virtual environments. Even in the case of virtual recruitment, don’t forget to keep thinking of ways to showcase your unique employer branding. You have the freedom to be as creative as possible. Create a welcome video for candidates that they can view before or after the interview, or give virtual office tours.

3. Promote Your Virtual Event Across All Digital Platforms

Starting from your website to your social media pages and email lists, leverage every channel available to advertise your event. This is important to maximize candidate participation.

4. Pre-schedule Some Screening Calls & Interviews

Make sure your recruiters go into the event with a few interviews already scheduled, plus leave some free time for them to conduct ad-hoc calls throughout the event day. Your virtual recruiting event platform should feature the ability to upload job listings, and your candidates will be able to submit their applications to these open roles prior to the event starting. Review these applicants beforehand and contact them to setup a scheduled interview time.

You can also search and filter through candidates by their registration information, and screen their resumes before your event starts. If anyone stands out as a great candidate for an open role, you can also get in touch with them prior to the event in order to schedule an interview with them during event hours.

5. Focus On Clear Communication During Interviews

One drawback to video interviews is that you are unable to depend much on non-verbal communication, to evaluate a candidate.

A few of the important factors to keep in mind that can make virtual interviews feel awkward include:

• Delays between the two parties speaking
• A blurry video feed
• Miscommunication

You need to focus on what the candidate is saying as well as their experiences, but not those awkward moments.

6. Follow-up With Attendees Post-event

It is important to make sure that you send an email or direct message to your entire attendee list. It should be thanking them for attending the event as well as encouraging them to reach out if any of them have additional questions.

7. Implement Metrics to Track Success

Along with tracking the number of people who register and attend your virtual events, you can also calculate the number of applications received, number of meetings booked, and number of candidates who have successfully made it to the next step in the interview process as a result of their activity at the event.

Pro Tips for Virtual Recruitment

Tips to conduct a successful virtual recruiting event include:

1. Comply with Data Collection Guidelines

Whenever you use virtual recruitment technology and you collect data online, you must abide by data collection guidelines.

Take precautions to make sure your recruitment process is non-discriminatory. It should be as per the Equality Act, which means at no stage should your recruitment funnel filter out candidates due to their age, gender, marital status, disability, religion, or race.

One of the best ways to reduce unconscious bias is to introduce principles of blind hiring into your virtual recruitment process. This includes blind resume screening. This is just one of the many ways that will help you eliminate prejudice from your virtual recruitment process.

Also, if you’re recruiting virtually in a variety of countries, you must make legal considerations for all of them. This is because local labor and privacy laws might differ from each other. For example, if you’re recruiting virtually in Europe, you need to ensure that the virtual recruitment tools that you’re using are all GDPR compliant.

2. Keep Your Candidates Well-Informed

Virtual recruitment can be an uninvolved experience. Such experience often leaves candidates unsure about where they stand. This usually happens due to a lack of personal connection as well as feedback.

However, just because you are making use of remote and digital strategies to screen potential recruits, it doesn’t at all mean you are unable to offer a human touch to the experience.

So, you should tackle this issue by making candidates well-acknowledged about what your virtual hiring process looks like from the get-go.

Also, what stage the candidates are at? It is important to explain to them beforehand what tools you will be using during the process of recruiting virtually and how they can prepare.

One excellent virtual recruiting idea is to introduce the candidate to their interviewer in advance. Perhaps you could organize this with the help of email or LinkedIn. This will allow the applicant to do their homework relevant to the interviewer. Doing so often works wonders for putting the mind of your candidate at ease.

A lot of recruitment communication can easily be automated with the help of candidate relationship management tools, email marketing software, or your pre-employment testing suite. You can send relevant information to your candidates that will be based on the stage of the recruitment process they’re in, plus who is the hiring manager.

It is highly suggested to keep the lines of communication open. Also, give candidates an option to contact you via their preferred communication channel. This can be social media, email, or even phone.

3. Transform Your Career Events

Anything is possible in this world when it comes to modern technology. These days, traditional career events, as well as job fairs, can be undertaken virtually without making an extra effort. You can host nearly anything starting from open office days to networking events online. All you need to get your hands on is the best career fair platform and the right direction.

Digitizing such types of events is one of the fabulous ways of giving candidates an exciting insight into the culture of your company. Not only this, but virtual recruitment events are much cheaper as compared to traditional in-person occasions. They are also more accessible to larger pools of candidates.

To make your online recruiting process a success, you need to ensure that you prepare engaging content. Also, don’t forget to market your event heavily beforehand to expect a decent turnout. We recommend that you select a long list of team members that will appear live throughout the event. In this way, your candidates will have the opportunity to ‘meet’ your team.

One of the great virtual recruiting ideas is to host a few Q&A sessions. We urge you to encourage discussion amongst the prospective hires and your current staff. This idea works wonders for engaging your audience as well as identifying attendees, especially those who have their finger on the pulse.

4. Adapt Your Virtual Recruitment Tech Stack

Don’t know how to recruit virtually? Get a virtual recruitment platform that fulfills your needs. A good virtual recruitment process is heavily supported by technology. Also, you might need to better adjust your usual recruitment tech stack. It is important to check and ensure that it has the necessary capabilities or not.

For example, if you plan to conduct one-way video interviews, you need to know if your existing tech supports that. Or will you need to implement new software for this purpose? Are you able to upload company videos to your assessments to introduce your organization along with its culture?

Whenever you wish to implement new software, it is important to ensure that it integrates with your ATS. This is crucial to create a seamless experience for virtual recruiters and candidates alike.

If you’re expecting higher volumes of applications, it is important to consider using chatbots as virtual recruitment assistants. You can program it to answer frequently asked questions. It can also be used to redirect candidates to where they can find the help they are looking for.

You see, it is an effortless way to ease the workload of your support team and provide instant responses to applicants. A win-win situation for both!

Conclusion

Virtual recruiting can potentially transform your recruitment process. This type of recruiting lets you vet and hire candidates, from all across the globe, remotely. Not only that, but virtual recruitment also facilitates a cheaper, much faster, and more efficient hiring process. This is done while empowering you to expand your candidate pool much further than ever before.

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