COVID-19 was just declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, and it may impact your hiring landscape. If your organization is in the midst of a hiring crunch, this could be a difficult time to navigate interviewing and meeting new candidates. 

Below is some guidance on how to hire for those must-fill positions when hiring conventions, which may include travel, temporarily change.  

Businesses that already utilize a remote-friendly culture are going to have a significant edge over companies and industries that rely on a solely on-site workforce. During a pandemic such as what we are experiencing today, it may be beneficial for people to work from home and avoid congregating in large numbers. Simply put: if you’re in a place impacted by COVID-19 and your employees have the capability to work from home, consider that as an option.

But hiring often requires at least one in-person meeting. The candidate needs to feel confident in their choice, meaning they need to have a real sense of the culture they may be coming in to and the people they would be working alongside. On the other hand, the company also needs to feel confident that this candidate is the right fit for their organization. 

Some organizations have implemented a hiring freeze: no new talent will be acquired until the freeze has been lifted. Others have put a hiring delay in place until things calm down and general concern over traveling has subsided.  

Companies that are still interviewing are adjusting their methods as needed. Interviews that would have been in-person are now taking place via video conference, and few companies are asking potential candidates to travel to HQ for a meet-and-greet. It's almost always an option to make technology work for you - think video conferences where you work through an issue just like you would in person – with all the appropriate team members and the candidate collaborating virtually. 

If you truly believe you cannot commit to hire an employee without a face-to-face interview, then we suggest delaying your interviews to either a certain date, or until “further notice”, while recognizing that you may lose some candidates because of this. If you have a recruiting partner working with you, they can continue to source and screen candidates during this time, so that after the delay ends you have a robust pipeline of qualified candidates ready to interview.  

Recruiting and hiring methods may need to evolve for the time being.  If you are open to interviewing with technology helping you along the way, then you still have many options available for finding the right people for your open positions. If you determine that final interviews should only be conducted in-person, you can always delay them and use an RPO partner to continue to build your candidate pipeline for when you are ready to resume.   

By Jessica Palmer