Top tips to make a hiring decision without the physical handshake

Creating the right connection with a candidate, as well as assessing their cultural fit and technical capability, is key to making the right hiring decision. But how can you feel confident when making an offer to a candidate that you’ve never met face to face?

Here are our top tips to tackle the final hiring decision when taking on the challenge of doing it remotely:

1. Be creative

Every candidate will be prepared for commonplace interview questions and whilst these should still be included, by asking questions in a creative way you will be able to truly understand how a person thinks.

2. Don’t be afraid to challenge

Put the candidate in situation where they are more likely to show their true selves. You don’t want to intimidate them, but by outlining a challenging situation that they may face in their new position, you’ll get a sense of how they would handle it and whether this sits well within your team.

3. Make eye contact

When you are on video, you need to make sure that you are looking at the camera instead of the candidate when you are speaking. It is still appropriate to smile and nod as you are listening. Gestures are still appropriate to show that you are engaged with the candidate, but remember that some of your hand gestures will be out of frame.

4. Allow your employees to help

You are not the only person who is going to have to work with this candidate. There is likely already a team of employees you trust that will have to interact with him or her every day. Whilst you don’t want to bombard the prospective candidate, 70% of employees said that dedicated cultural fit interviews should be a part of the interview process so  by introducing them to a few of their potential peers in the final stage of the hiring process – even if it’s with a glass of wine on a Zoom call – could help both you and the candidate decide on whether they will be a good fit for the team.

5. Don’t forget it’s a two-way street

As with a face to face meeting, you and your brand are also being assessed by the candidate in an online interview. Is often a candidate’s first impression of an employer, and will effect how they interact with the company in the future. To promote the brand image and integrity of your organisation it’s important to manage the interview process carefully, allowing time to take questions from the candidate and importantly feeding back to them on the timelines agreed from the outset.