The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak is profoundly affecting the way we live, especially the way we work. Many organizations are adjusting to working remotely for the first time. However, every organization is doing its best to cope up with the 'New Normal.'

Organization leaders are trying to tackle the challenges presented by the current situation to ensure business continuity. Keeping the current situation in mind, the main question is whether to keep recruitment running or order a temporary freeze. But many organizations are already handling the recruitment process online. It is faster, cheaper, and easy to recruit digitally. Here the challenging part of the online hiring process is providing a seamless candidate experience.

In this time of uncertainty, an organization must deliver a clear message to candidates so that they can trust them as their future employer. Refining the recruitment process allows recruiters to develop a more thoughtful, engaging, empathic process that will remain valuable after the pandemic crisis.

Here are a few steps to help smoothen your organization's transition to an online candidate experience.

Communicate with Candidates:

With the current fast-changing circumstance, it is critical to keep candidates informed about every step of your recruitment process. During times of uncertainty, it is vital to communicate clearly with candidates about what they can expect from you. Deliver a thoughtful message, aside from the usual application status updates. Communicating with candidates will make a huge difference in how they engage with your organization and can help you to build more interest in your vacancies. Provide all the relevant information regarding all the stages of the application process. Due to any uncertainty, if there is a delay in response after any hiring step, keep your candidate in loop and update accordingly.

Add Human Touch:

Nowadays, in-person interviews are already changing to virtual interviews. So, there are many ways to automate and personalize communication through emails and social media. These platforms are the best way to interact with candidates at all stages of the recruitment process. In the virtual world, embracing video calls is one of the best ways of adding a personal touch to your recruitment efforts. Be available on call to answer candidates' questions because sometimes emotions and intent can get lost in emails and texts. Replace this with real voice calls and answer their queries on the spot.

Provide Interview Panel a Crash Course:

Take the time to give your entire interviewing team a refresher course to ensure that they can hire a perfect fit for the organization and provide an excellent candidate experience, which can also help you in improving the employer brand. Working remotely teams can do this course via a conference call. Train your hiring team on how to use the technology, and provide useful tips. Recruiters can also run some practice interviews like giving the other person some pointer so that it will look natural and personable on video calls. Record the call and share the written summary so everyone can have something to refer to.

Prioritize Safety First:

The priority of any organization must be to ensure safety to both its employees and candidates' health. To do this, the recruiting process needs to be adjusted according to the necessary health and safety precautions. Eliminate any in-person interviews and adopt the digital recruitment process. This is the key for organizations to attract, engage, and hire new talent without the need to meet candidates in-person. So, using a talent acquisition software that includes features such as video interviews and online assessments is a good option as it allows companies to keep recruiting while ensuring the candidate's safety.

Embrace Technology:

Technology will become a more significant part of the picture in providing an excellent candidate experience. We should blend our technology powers with a compassionate approach to streamline the recruitment process and provide an exceptional experience to candidates. Organizations should adopt a recruitment analytics solution to speed up their recruitment process. Introduce AI software like resume parser. It offers autofill forms for your career site so that the candidate can just upload his/her resume and all other details will get filled automatically. It can directly improve the candidate experience.

COVID-19 has caused a lot of significant changes in all the segments of the hiring process. To understand this in detail, put yourself in the shoes of candidates and review your entire hiring process. Does your site take too long to load? Is your application quite lengthy? Examine all these facts and find out more about candidates' expectations in detail.