HM Visions aims to provide you with all the latest accounting recruitment news, jobs and careers advice
During the past few months, having the right financial talent at the right time has become more crucial than ever for many. With most London offices still unsure when they can safely reopen, we have been working with our clients to navigate them through this new landscape, ensuring a successful onboarding process is in place to support their business needs.
Some of our clients are very familiar with remote interviews and onboarding and have used this method for some time. For those unfamiliar with this approach we’ve been guiding and supporting them through this transition. Here is a brief guide on what has been working well……
Zoom has been incredibly popular in supporting the interview process. This is an easy to use, free (for meetings up to 40 minutes) video cloud platform for conferencing, collaboration, chat, and webinars across mobile devices and desktops. It is easy to set-up, extremely simple to use, and allows up to 100 participants per session. It serves as an efficient online medium for stakeholders involved in the interview to see each other’s faces, gauge interactions with one another, whilst also sharing screens and information.
Zoom has not only been our go-to tool for new vacancies, our own team at Halliday Marx have used it regularly for daily meetings, one-to-one catch-ups, liaising with Hiring Managers, and providing briefings on job vacancies.
For both hiring and onboarding, Zoom is our medium of choice.
Video interviews are much the same as face to face interviews, just with a few nuances that you can master to ensure things run smoothly; ensure your technology is working correctly, communicate how the process will work with your candidate ahead of the interview, ensure your team understand how the interview will run, ensure you have a tidy, quiet space in which to hold the interview, dress and conduct yourself professionally – as you would for a face-to-face interview.
After conducting video interviews, some clients have then opted to invite the preferred candidate to meet for a face to face chat, keeping the regulations of social distancing in mind. These typically involve relatively quick meetings at their offices in larger meeting rooms.
We have also found that two specific soft skills are becoming increasingly important in the current climate; self-motivation and the ability to embrace change.
Candidates who can demonstrate that they are self-motivated and unphased by independent learning will strive in the current environment. The ability to adapt, remain positive and seek solutions will also become increasingly important in supporting business goals.
Some example interview questions to help you identify these skills might include:
Tell me about the changes you have made to your everyday working style to make yourself as efficient as possible.
Whilst working remotely, how have you kept yourself motivated?
From a temporary perspective, over-hiring is an option which can provide intermediary flexibility and capacity. This means hiring someone more qualified than the role typically requires to ensure it can be handled with ease. As a temporary solution, this has helped many of our candidates to hit the ground running and solved our client challenges regarding current issues with limited on the job training opportunities.
If you are planning on making a new hire, be it a temporary or permanent employee, you must ensure that you and your team have the availability to support that person remotely and provide them with all they need to complete their work effectively.
Where possible, our clients have scheduled in time for video screenshare meetings to ensure all necessary information is communicated clearly. This is far more successful than sending several 100-page documents for on-boarders to trawl through.
Make sure communication is consistent and timely, including a daily check-in and where possible, do this at the start and end of every day. Use the technology – your new hire needs to see you, and you need to see them.
At Halliday Marx, our candidates start their new roles full of enthusiasm and are raring to go. Regardless of current challenges, technology is allowing our clients to harness and maintain this enthusiasm. With FaceTime, WhatsApp, Zoom, MS Teams and a little intuition, there is every reason to continue hiring and onboarding successfully. We have seen many clients hold virtual coffee mornings and lunches to allow new hires to meet the team – and even get a guided tour of the office!
Whilst it is understandable that the thought of hiring and onboarding remotely might initially seem daunting, our clients who are pressing ahead are doing so with success. Working with your financial recruitment specialist to plan a thorough process, coupled with the vast choice of video technology available, appear to be the key to a winning approach.
Want to know more about how our clients are hiring financial talent during Covid-19? Get in touch with us at i[email protected] or call us on 020 7096 8200.
For the latest recruitment information, financial opportunities, career advice and company updates, follow us on LinkedIn and twitter @HallidayMarx
