Why WFH is great for recruiters, but not for candidates

Working from home has been adopted by the recruitment industry (both agency recruiters and those in talent acquisition) with great enthusiasm and remains very popular as we move out of Covid. Some have remained as 100% WFH and others have introduced a hybrid model where staff come into the office a certain number of days a week.

We all love the flexibility, autonomy and freedom that comes with being able to work from home. I personally live in a regional area having started to WFH only a few months before Covid arrived. I certainly enjoy the benefits that comes with WFH and the ability to travel to our city offices normally around twice a month.

However working from home has made many recruiters lazy, lose touch, accept short cuts and – most concerningly – has jeopardized many recruiters ability to give a great candidate experience. I know these are strong opinions and these are blanket assumptions that don’t apply to everyone. However I encourage you to continue reading and make up your own mind.

Australia’s national unemployment rate is 3.5% (last month it was 3.4%). It’s the lowest unemployment level most of us have ever seen. Job advertisements are through the roof. Talent has never been harder to find and never harder to secure. We must be doing everything we can in our power to give candidates a great experience, but a simple step has been pushed to the side for the sake of our own convenience.

Late September 2022 we surveyed 400 current job seekers at SMAART Recruitment , asking a series of simple questions particularly with regards to their experiences with video interviewing versus in person (face-to-face). As a recruitment agency we are at the pointy end of the talent shortage, witnessing on a daily basis the pain of organisations with unfilled vacancies and the challenge for candidates who have received two, three or even four job offers and are trying to work out what is the best choice for them.

My hypothesis has been that while video interviewing has many benefits and is here to stay, as time goes on organisations are becoming more likely to secure a candidate if they are able to meet them face to face.

The preference for candidates when meeting a recruitment agency is via video, and when meeting the actual employer it is face-to-face. It is not surprising that there is more of a willingness to meet an agency recruiter via video – many candidates assume it is a preliminary screening and (rightly or wrongly) believe it is not as important as the employer interview.

Key with both of these findings is that 70-30 or 60-40. It’s not really a heavy preference either way and so offering only one of the two options means at a minimum that at least 30% of candidates are being asked to attend an interview in their least preferred format.

But why do we have to give candidates what they want?

It’s a fair question, but with record low unemployment and a huge number of candidates rejecting job offers, recruiters and employers need to be doing everything within their power to impress candidates.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget the obvious things until our eyes are opened (or reopened) to them. Of course it’s easier to build rapport in a face to face environment. Sure, it can be done to an extent via a video call, but seeing someone in person is where the magic happens.

When a candidate visits your organisation for an interview they have an experience that cannot be replicated via video. We have five senses and use nearly all of them when attending a face to face interview. For a video interview we only use two.

When a candidates comes into an office they are looking, listening and observing what is happening. Just being in that space gives the candidate extra information. In my experience the simple act of walking a candidate through the office to take a look around and maybe meet one or two people is the most effective way to impress them. It’s memorable, powerful and always appreciated. Do it and you increase your chances of that candidate accepting your offer every single time.

It comes down to these three questions that you need to ask yourself as a recruiter, recruitment team or employer:

-???????Do I/we want to build the best possible rapport with our candidates?

-???????Do I/we want to give candidates the best possible understanding of the position?

-???????Do I/we want to give candidates the most thorough and complete insights into our organisation?

If you answered yes to these three questions – and you should – then you need to be offering and encouraging face to face interviews.

When a Line Manager refuses to meet candidates face to face this is the information you need to share with them, especially if their success rate of their video interviewing is low. Ask them to offer the next ten candidates the choice of video or face-to-face interview and then compare the results.

Finally, 70% of candidates say it is “very” or “extremely” important to meet face-to-face at least once during the recruitment process. I think deep in our hearts we all know this, it’s just been accidentally forgotten.

Do continue to use video interviewing, but if you genuinely want to provide a great candidate experience you need to offer choice when it comes to interview format.

Would love to hear your thoughts via the comments.