Jump Start Your Virtual Campus Recruitment in These 5 Steps
In an ideal world (i.e., the world in 2019), companies by now would have successfully hired, onboarded, and trained a fresh lot of graduates. Not only that, preparation for the next batch campus recruitment would also have been on its way. But 2020 had different things in store for the 19-20 batch.
Majority of students were concerned about their uncertain future, wondering whether 2020 would bring any good news for their careers. This is where technology stepped up and ensured that recruitment doesn’t take a hit. It replaced on-campus recruitment with virtual campus recruitment and saved a lot of trouble for the current as well as upcoming batches.
Although virtual campus recruitment is unchartered territory for most organizations, but if you have the right strategies in place, nothing can stop you.
Virtual Campus Recruitment
Virtual or Online Campus Recruitment is best described as the process of hiring campus students using virtual means at all hiring stages including skill assessment, interviews, onboarding, and training. These virtual means are generally online tools and technologies that require candidates to have phones or laptops at their disposal along with internet connectivity.
Surprisingly, implementing virtual campus recruitment is not that difficult as one might think. Rather, it is easy on the pocket and effort. By eliminating the need to travel to a hundred different locations and colleges for hiring, virtual recruitment eases the complexities of the hiring process and provides the comfort of home to both the recruiters and the candidates.
Building Virtual Recruitment Plan
Getting started with virtual recruitment is easier than it sounds. Here we bring you 5 simple things that you must do to give your virtual recruitment plan a headstart.
- Employer Brand
- Pre-placement Talks
- Online Assessment
- Automatic Interview Scheduling
- Video Interviews
1. Employer Brand
Since you are opting for a digital platform of recruitment, ensure to have a consistent and quality digital presence. By digital presence we mean, company pages and information on all important channels including,
- Glassdoor
- Google and more……
Simply having a presence on these platforms won’t work, ensure to have a compelling presence that attracts candidates towards your brand. That gives you an edge over your competitors.
Don’t maintain a company page for the sake of digital presence, take it a notch higher, and connect with your target audience through relevant and meaningful content. Constantly show your employer brand, share company achievements, work culture, employee faces, and stories to make a human connection.
Besides, you can share employee testimonials on your page. Listening to the experience of employees working at your company leaves an authentic impression that blowing your own trumpet on social platforms won’t give. If possible, take these testimonials from the alumni of the college you are targeting. Seeing a known face would leave a lasting impression.
Read More: New to Campus Recruitment? Follow These Practices to Meet Your Goals
2. Pre-placement Talks
This is important to engage and attract the candidates beforehand. Pre-placement talks are a great way to build your credibility and employer brand in front of the students. Just before the actual placement begins, organize a pre-placement session to set the expectations right. Collect all the relevant information beforehand to avoid any last-minute goof-ups. Here is a list of information that you can cover in your pre-placement talk,
- Expectations, selection criteria, tips to crack interviews
- Organizational and job details
- FAQs
- Work Culture
- Salary along with perks and benefits
- Importance of the job role in organizational success
- Open the floor for candidates’ concerns
3. Online Assessment
If you are still stuck with paper-based examinations, then it’s high time to invest in online screening and skill assessment tools that fit your organizational and candidate needs. HireVue, Mettl by Mercer are great tools for online assessment that can be personalized for different skill-based assessments. Tools like HackerEarth, HackerRank, Codility, DevSkiller, eSkill, InterviewMocha, and Kandio are great choices for assessing the technical skills of candidates.
Apart from this, there are many aptitude, cognitive, and culture fit assessment tools available to fully test and understand the candidates’ fitness.
From conducting recruitment tests, assessing hard skills, and evaluating soft skills to invigilating students with remote proctoring, online assessment tools offer end-to-end solutions for a smooth and successful transition to a virtual assessment platform.
4. Automatic Interview Scheduling
According to a recent study,
67% of respondents say it takes them 30 mins to 2 hours to schedule a single interview.
56% of companies have a dedicated person on their recruiting team for scheduling interviews.
Above stats easily conclude that scheduling interview is a time-consuming task then one can imagine. Therefore, you must opt for automated interview scheduling tools that can schedule, follow-up, conduct, and administer the whole interview process faster. These tools automate the complete process and eliminate a lot of involved hassles that are otherwise difficult to manage.
In place of toggling and following up on hundreds of interview mail invites, you can simply set up an interview schedule on the tool.
Automated interview scheduling also offers candidates the flexibility to self-schedule and reschedule interviews as per their preferred time, based on available time slots. Besides, it automatically follows-ups with the candidates before the interview to minimize any probable no-shows at the last moment.
Read More: 4 Ways to Improve Diversity Hiring in Campus Recruiting
5. Video Interviews
Face to face interviews were all the rage before CoVID. But during CoVID, companies hopped onto the video interviewing tools to make end-to-end recruitment possible without meeting in-person.
You can also use these video interview tools to conduct virtual interviews.
Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Zoom, Skype, JobVite, and HireVue are some of the many options available in the market. It connects all your panel members on the same platform and helps them take video interviews just like face-to-face interviews. You can also record the interviews to take more opinions before making the final decision.
Virtual Campus Recruitment is all about getting started at the right time with the right strategies and the right tools. If you need assistance in setting up your virtual recruitment plan, we are here to help.