The global pandemic has forced businesses across all sectors to rethink their approach to online onboarding. As companies adjust to the ‘new normal’, online testing and assessments are helping employers smooth the process and mitigate the risks of remote hiring. Building teams is hard at the best of times. Throughout countless surveys across hundreds of markets, the task of hiring and engaging the right people never ceases to rank among the key challenges faced by businesses. In the context of the current health crisis, however, a new layer of complexity has been added to the mix – the need to screen, evaluate and onboard new staff remotely, without the usual workflows of face-to-face and in-office interaction typically so critical in helping both employer and employee get acclimatised in their new relationships. Remote hiring is a strange new world for many organisations. In-person interviews – whether for an initial meet-and-greet or as the final round in a series of phone and virtual chats – have been the mainstay of recruitment processes for as long as companies have been hiring. And, even when some businesses adapt to the idea of making job offers without meeting candidates, the training and onboarding phase often involves new hires moving around the organisation to meet their colleagues and get bedded in. But with the Covid-19 pandemic shaking up norms around physical interaction, companies are looking for new ideas to allow them to keep moving forwards in the era of social distancing. How online testing helps Along with evaluating cultural fit, one of the underlying reasons traditional interview processes depend so heavily on in-person interaction is to give hiring companies a chance to probe and explore employee skill sets. Carefully-worded questions, tasks or panel interview groups are constructed to explore competency, often at the expense of any kind of measurable test. Online testing platforms help employers solve a multitude of problems by offering a way to quantify candidate abilities or knowledge in key areas, as well as enabling benchmarking across applicant pools, or against top-performing employees. Similarly, psychometric tests allow insights into how a candidate will fit into your organisation and how they can be nurtured to add the most value. Best of all? They’re 100% online, allowing hiring managers and HR teams to confidently assess candidate skills even amid a global health crisis, freeing up video interview space to concentrate on soft skills, motivation and personality fit. Online onboarding – the ‘new normal’ Despite the impacts of the pandemic, companies continue to hire actively across a range of commercial sectors. But it’s not just interviewing and testing which has moved online. After pulling the trigger on a job offer, companies still need to deliver training and onboarding without the traditional convenience of classrooms and in-office sessions. Remote training programs are rapidly becoming essential tools for companies to train and integrate remote hires, providing a scalable solution to quickly fill skill gaps and ensure new employees fully prepped for the tasks ahead. Aided by a growing comfort across the workforce with video and chat technology, the right online support is opening up new ways for employers to hire and integrate remote workers confidently and at pace. With no clear end in sight to the current lockdown and social distancing restrictions, businesses globally need to look to the future and adapt to the ‘new normal’ of flexible recruitment programs that allow for the unexpected. ***** ISV.Online is the leading supplier of skills testing software and services to the UK Recruitment Industry. Used by 9 of the top 10 UK agencies, by number of offices, and 7 of the top 10, by revenue, ISV.Online offers candidate skills assessment and evaluation software and online training tools, allowing agencies and in-house HR/recruitment teams to validate the skills of potential candidates and existing employees across a wide range of areas.
