Part 1 – The benefits of remote hiring and onboarding new talent

First in our two-part series – The benefits of remote hiring and onboarding new talent

Hiring managers have faced the challenge of onboarding new talent remotely for several months. The concept of growing your team remotely may still feel new and alien, but successfully interviewing, hiring, and welcoming new people can be done from a distance – there are plenty of success stories, including here at TelcoSwitch.

The flexibility of video conferencing means businesses can continue to screen, interview, and hire talent without the need to physically meet, despite the fact it’s naturally more desirable and ‘human’ to want to converse in person. So, technology aside, how can you make a success of this?

Hiring new talent online

Unified communications platforms have become the bridge for collaboration and connecting with co-workers during Covid-19. Therefore, it’s no coincidence that hiring managers are leveraging video conferencing benefits when evaluating new talent.

We’ve increased our headcount by a third in 2020, and all hires had the majority of their hiring and onboarding taking place remotely (and in some cases, the entire process involved no face-to-face meeting at all).

One of the real benefits we’ve found with remote hiring is the speed at which we can hire. During a hiring process that will typically involve two or three meetings, often with two or more stakeholders involved, getting everyone’s diaries in sync can be challenging. By moving more of the interview stages remote, rather than just the first stage, we’ve been able to keep conversations moving and get later stage interviews booked with candidates faster than before.

As our Technical Director, Aaron Foster, puts it, “not everyone can co-ordinate diaries to be in the office on a specific day at a specific time, but almost everyone can find an hour for a video call. It’s powerful because candidates aren’t kept waiting, and we don’t miss out on great talent due to scheduling conflicts.”

One of the biggest challenges with hiring remotely is identifying the fit of personality to your business’s culture. There’s no denying it’s harder to gauge this when interviews and evaluations are all taking place through a screen, but there’s an upside.

Our Head of Sales, Sam Giggle, has done more hiring in 2020 than most of our other teams. “It’s harder for candidates to get their personality across, and it’s harder for the hiring manager to detect the fit of the candidate”, he says. “We work extremely hard to communicate effectively what’s important to TelcoSwitch, and the right candidate will make the same effort, so if you’re getting those good vibes remotely, you know they’d be magnified if you were face-to-face. That means you have a great candidate in front of you.”

The next step

The second part of this series will cover how to successfully onboard new employees remotely. Here you will find all the tips and tools you’ll need to welcome and integrate your new employee in no time!