“Covid hiring” especially in regards to the interview process has created a whole new paradigm in the employing process. I warned about the zoom 30 minute interviews, in previous postings, and how they were destroying good hiring opportunities for both candidates and companies. The video medium has altered employer’s decision-making viewpoint.
Below are concepts that my business partner, Rich Lavinski, derived from this new employing process.
- Never schedule an interview for less than an hour.
Any interview simply takes longer to gather information needed to make an informed decision. Sometimes the technology doesn’t work very well, and getting it fixed eats up time.
- Video Time Consumption
Small talk eats up more time than personal, face-to-face interviews do.
- Distractions & Interruptions
Disruptions are more likely to occur… the cat enters the camera view or unexpected noise in the background (dog barking, kids playing, etc.). These kinds of things make the interview less professional.
- Interview Planning
Hiring authorities need to plan the interview more carefully. It’s really important to write out beforehand the questions the candidate needs to be asked, write the answers clearly so they can be referred to even weeks later.
- Effective Topic Coverage
Make sure you cover all of the topics you need answered. Limit these to only three or four. The time is going to go a lot faster than you think. A face-to-face interview doesn’t have the perception of time limit.
- Determine Next Steps
Determine what information you need to take the next steps and evaluate that decision about a candidate right then.
- Importance of Face-to-Face
Never hire a candidate without a face-to-face interview. We hear from our IT staffing clients all the time about interviewing one candidate and qualifying that candidate via video only to have a different candidate show up, in person, for the consulting job. Somewhere along the line, most of us wouldn’t buy a car without test driving it and we surely wouldn’t buy a house without walking through it.
To prevent mistakes in employing, do not let this new “Covid hiring” paradigm hangover cause a fault in your traditional hiring process.
