The Covid-19 pandemic has caught all companies off guard. Thrown off-balance, they have had to review their organisational methods, impose working from home, and change how they manage staff and projects remotely. But as the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining... so why not take advantage of this unprecedented situation to switch to new business practices? A change in how some solutions are used can only prove beneficial. This applies to pre-recorded video interviews, which offer many advantages in recruitment and beyond.
1. Continue recruiting remotely
If you need to keep recruiting, do not put it on hold until the end of the lockdown! With deferred video interviews, your ongoing recruitment drives can continue with gentle tweaks to your operating methods. You can still ask candidates whose profiles catch your eye to answer your questions at their own pace from home and, crucially, on video. Similarly, you can watch their replies when it suits you and get your colleagues’ feedback. It's an opportunity to arrange a more structured interview, in which all candidates answer the same questions. This eliminates some of the cognitive biases of the face-to-face set-up and makes for a more objective assessment.
Harness this method to ask your candidates in more detail about their motivations, soft skills and language abilities. Candidates also enjoy pre-recorded video interviews because they can prepare for them more effectively and show themselves in their best light, helping them to stand out from the crowd!
2. Keep in contact with your teams
When organisational change happens, pre-recorded video interviews are a good support tool as a means of preserving the link with teams. Communication is essential, especially during an emergency. Continually adapting your messages helps reassure teams about decisions made and the changes that, in this time of crisis, occur frequently. Pre-recorded video interviews help you get these messages out quickly, for example when explaining steps taken to cope with the current situation. Staff can watch these messages and respond when they have availability.
The aim is to take account of the human factor, offset social distancing and minimise the constraints of working from home, when staff availability depends on many variables.
Arranging regular feedback, but without time constraints, also helps maintain the relationship of trust and boost motivation.
3. Facilitate employee development
This extraordinary period of home isolation might be a good time to upskill your workforce. If your business is just ticking over, and your sales staff, for instance, are unable to make any headway with their usual tasks, take this opportunity to organise mini-training sessions. Use pre-recorded video interviews as a tool to create practical exercises, or to train your teams in dealing with objections, interacting with dissatisfied customers or responding to a specific situation. In these unprecedented times, challenging our practices has become the new normal, so why not sound out your staff on this subject? Video interviews allow you to question all your team members about how they see their roles, or how they might change in the future.
As well as making up for a lack of activity, you will also be investing in your workforce: everyone's a winner!
SMART INTERVIEW, the pre-recorded video interview solution of Central Test, if available free of charge for 3 months. Try it!
