Virtual Hiring & Creating a Great Experience - Interview with Brian White

Virtual hiring can impact the candidate experience. What can you do to make sure that how people interact with you in a virtual hiring scenario have the best possible experience? In this episode of Talent Acquisition Talks, Brian White, Executive Director of HR & Operations, Auburn-Washburn Unified School District 437, shares how his CandE award-winning team has leveled up their virtual hiring experience to wow candidates.

After watching this clip below, go check out the full 20-minute episode on YouTube here.

Transcript

Joe Matar:
How have you maintained that amazing candidate experience, even in this all virtual world?

Brian White:
Yeah. I think as you said, Joe, it really, I think, has become more important maybe than it was before, especially when you think about the world a lot of us are living in right now where we're isolated. We're quarantined. We're socially distance. So we've removed ourselves from a lot of those type of things, where we were able to build those relationships when we had in-person type of experiences.

And I think relationships are extremely vital in the recruitment process and to the candidate experience. And so I think with the pandemic and moving to a virtual world, some of that, being able to maintain those relationships and have the kind of experience that you want your candidates to have changed a little bit. And so what I would say is one of the first things that we did was we looked at, in our current process, because we had just come off winning a CandE Award. We have worked on improving our candidate experience for a good three years. And then all of a sudden the world changed.

Brian White:
So one of the first things that we did was we looked, we really looked, excuse me, at each of our steps in the process and our touchpoints in the candidate experience journey to see how can we do it now? So whatever we were doing before we looked at, how can we replicate that or do that now virtually? And so we were very fortunate in our space, in our industry to be at the forefront of working with a lot of virtual recruiting software and tools and solutions. And so we were in virtual career fairs very early.

Joe Matar:
Yes, you were

Brian White:
So we're able to make some of those transitions very quickly. And virtual career fairs have been some that have been a part of our talent pipeline now for many years. And those virtual career fairs really are a great way to begin and build and engage in relationships with candidates in a way that was very informal, easy, comfortable. And so that was before the pandemic, so we thought we were being innovative in being able to build relationships with candidates from their homes with their own devices and starting with those chats, but really, that turned out to be the new world.

Brian White:
And so for some of those steps, really looking at how can we make sure that that candidate feels like they have consistent communication through the process, but in a way that's still personal. And so that kind of became our journey now. Once the pandemic started is maintaining that candidate experience and maintaining the information, the communication we want at those different touchpoints.

Joe Matar:
And how do you make it? You brought up the word personal and personalizing experience. Can you give some examples of how you do that in this all virtual world?

Brian White:
Yeah, yeah. So obviously depending on the size of the organization, the scope of your organization, some things may or may not resonate, but I think it's the concept of the principles that really apply across all scope. And so some of the things that we looked at doing were we really looked at changing maybe some of the communication templates that we were using within our applicant tracking system. And so I would say that prior to the pandemic, a lot of our communication templates were a little bit more generic based off of which stage in the process you made it to.

And so what we realized is during the pandemic is that that communication that candidates were receiving was going to be all the more important to them because if they're looking for a job, they weren't able to kind of get out and hit the streets like they used to be able to do. It is all virtual for them. And so we really looked at kind of ... One of the first thing we did was we added additional communication templates so that it applied to more steps in the process, more, I guess, phases along the journey for the candidates so that we could customize it a little bit more.

And so that's high touch. Took a little bit of work to do, but for us, we thought it was valuable so that our candidates did feel like the experience they were having was more personal to them, and not just a generic form letter.

Joe Matar:
Yeah. I think that that's super smart. And when we talk about personalization, I think that sometimes recruiters, and this applies to marketers and salespeople, personalization doesn't always have to mean that you're having 45 minute phone conversations with every single person that comes into your world, your ATS, your CRM, your digital kind of universe. I think the point that you're bringing up here is that you can customize it and you can make it contextually relevant to the person by really thinking about where they are in the process. What have been some of the conversations that you've previously had for with that individual or that group of individuals? Did they come in through a virtual career fair? Did they come in through your ATS?

Joe Matar:
And that can kind of really give you some insight into what those messages and templates should be. And that's going to go a long way to making that individual feel that you really are reaching out to them, especially when people can feel so isolated and alone, and they're not out there taking it to the streets trying to get jobs in-person, right? So I think that that's fantastic.

Joe Matar:
Thanks for watching another episode of Talent Acquisition Talks. And if you're looking for more content, just like this, make sure you head over to brazen.com/tatalks and sign up for our weekly video newsletter. We've got interviews with some of the top minds in TA, and we don't want you to miss it. So again, head over to brazen.com/tatalks, sign up now, and I'll see you next week.