As the global pandemic pushed us into an uncertain world, many organizations quickly switched to remote environments to continue their operations. However, since most businesses lacked a remote-ready talent funnel, adapting to the new landscape proved challenging.
While the transition was difficult initially, organizations soon realized the many potential benefits of remote or hybrid work models. Many organizations saw increased workforce productivity, and remote hiring opened employers up to geodiverse talent sources.
Thus, as the world gradually returns to normal, organizations have realized the benefits of building a remote-ready talent funnel. If this is on your to-do list, here’s a guide to help you develop and optimize a remote-ready talent acquisition funnel.
What is a talent funnel?
A talent funnel is a theoretical pipeline that maps a candidate’s movement from their first point of contact with your organization up until they’re recruited.
At the funnel’s start, candidates have zero awareness about your brand, and by its end, applicants are employed. An optimized talent acquisition funnel has minimal friction, reduces your time and cost to hire, and helps you identify the best applicants.
Why should your talent funnel be remote-ready?
The pandemic made it clear that businesses should implement remote fallback measures for unexpected situations. Having a remote-ready workforce is beneficial in general, even if your company primarily operates in-office.
This is because remote preparatory measures help members overcome geographical constraints and other limitations, ensuring their presence even when they’re not physically available. In fact, one-third of Americans now view working from a physical office as something of the past.
Remote and hybrid work models have also been correlated with increased productivity and a better work-life balance. Organizations offered remote work options reduced staff turnover, and improved morale. Additionally, remote-first businesses also save on significant office overhead costs.
Thus, employers can leverage remote-ready talent funnels for onboarding talent that’s prepared to adapt to new or unexpected situations. Tech talent, in particular, can effectively fulfill their roles remotely, making remote work all the more relevant to the field.
Additionally, remote recruiting methods can reduce your time and cost to hire, expand your outreach, and improve the quality of talent you acquire (through rigorous testing with the help of skills assessment tests).
8 best practices to build a remote-ready talent funnel
Building a remote-ready talent funnel helps businesses prepare for the unexpected and diversify their workforce. Here are 8 best practices to help you build your own.
1. Raise brand awareness
Your brand image and awareness influence the quality of talent you attract. Glassdoor reported that 35% of hiring decision-makers are set to increase their branding spend to improve the quality of talent acquisition. Additionally, organizations with a strong employer brand experience a 50% reduction in cost per hire, 28% less turnover, and faster hiring times (source).
Organizations can improve their employer branding by:
- Showcasing their work culture
- Advertising the benefits of working for your brand (a “why work for us” section in your job descriptions can help)
- Increasing your brand visibility (such as through social media outreach and job fairs)
- Projecting your brand image, including brand values, goals, social responsibility, impact, etc.
Strategically raising brand awareness is one of the most critical stages of your talent acquisition funnel. You can project an image of an organization where professionals want to work. By improving your employer branding, you can attract the best talent and improve your pool of applicants.
2. Optimize your application process
If you’re looking to attract the best talent, it’s important to remember that your competition is too. Thus, top-performing applicants often have multiple opportunities, and they may shy away from organizations with tedious application processes.
To secure the best candidates, you should make the application process precise and seamless. For example, on the job description, clearly communicate your expectations and the role’s requirements, and discuss why employees enjoy working at your company.
Additionally, from a technical standpoint, try to make your application process simple and efficient. For example, let candidates know where to submit their applications, whether references are required (and if so, what the process of submitting them is), and what documents and details are required.
During the application process, building a meaningful professional relationship with applicants is important. If candidates have a good experience with your hiring process, they will view your company more positively, regardless of whether they eventually join or not.
3. Conduct phone screening
Phone screening helps filter out unqualified and ill-suited candidates in the early stages of the recruitment process. Phone interviews don’t need to be long; they’re typically 15-30 minutes.
Generally, phone screening focuses on verifying a candidate’s qualifications and ensuring they properly understand the role’s requirements.
You can ask candidates a few verification or technical interview questions to make a shortlist. Then, later in the funnel, employers can vet shortlisted applicants thoroughly with more robust assessment methods.
When building a remote-ready talent funnel, it’s also beneficial to ask applicants about their experience with remote work (or remote study, if they’re fresh graduates).
You can ask candidates which remote collaboration software they’re familiar with, if they maintain productivity while working remotely, and similar questions to gain a clearer understanding of their remote readiness.
After conducting the phone screening, you can ask candidates if they have any questions about the position. It’s beneficial to clear up any uncertainties they have in the early stages, to save on recruiting time and costs in the long run.
4. Leverage skills assessment tests (if applicable) and multi-stage evaluation process
As an employer, you know that hiring the best talent doesn’t only entail finding top performers; cultural fit, work ethic, communication skills, and other factors are also critical. The best fit for your organization is a candidate with the right skills who aligns with your company’s goals and vision.
Multi-stage hiring processes are beneficial because they help you reliably vet candidates for these various considerations. By securing the best candidates on the first recruiting round, employers can reduce employee turnover costs and the expenses of reinitiating the hiring process.
Tech employers, in particular, can leverage skills assessment tests to optimize their talent funnel. Coding skill tests assess candidates for their programming knowledge, creative thinking, problem-solving proficiency, and ability to optimize code.
Skill assessment platforms (like We Create Problems) let recruiters design custom tests for each tech role, including data science, software development, DevOps, and more.
Conducting video interviews also helps employers optimize their remote-ready talent funnel. With a remote interview, you can reliably vet candidates for their communication skills and cultural fit. Additionally, video interviewing lets recruiters and hiring managers overcome geographical limitations and expand their talent pool.
5. Maintain and nurture relationships with your talent funnel
Nurturing your talent pool and maintaining relationships with potential employees is crucial to optimizing your brand’s talent acquisition.
One of the most effective strategies for cultivating relationships with your talent pool is to provide individuals with value. This can be in the form of professional development guidance, employment opportunities, helpful content, or training workshops.
Fostering meaningful relationships with potential candidates improves your organization’s employer branding and helps you continually hire the best talent.
Even if an ideal potential applicant isn’t currently interested in working at your company, knowing your brand has plenty to offer may motivate them to apply at a later point.
6. Monitor your metrics and improve problem points
As technology continues its evolution, HR practices have also become tech-enabled, optimizing hiring processes with data-driven strategies.
Nowadays, organizations can accurately measure their talent funnel’s performance with quantifiable metrics, including the time to hire, cost to hire, offer to acceptance ratio, and more.
By measuring your recruitment metrics, you can identify friction in the talent acquisition funnel and address the issues. For example, a high cost per hire and time to hire indicate ineffective recruitment processes. Additionally, if your hiring times are lengthy, you might lose top performers to competitors.
7. Hire the best applicants from your remote-ready talent pool
After optimizing your talent funnel and recruitment process, you can reap the benefits of your hard work. With a reliable talent funnel in place, you can identify the top candidates, screen out underperformers, and hire the best fit.
8. Leverage remote onboarding for collaboration
The global pandemic taught businesses to always have remote collaborative tools at the ready. To make sure your team is remote-ready and prepared for the unexpected, consider using remote collaboration tools and workspaces.
Even if your organization operates primarily in-office, a remote workspace helps with emergency correspondence, and you can offer employees the option to work remotely if a hybrid model suits your organization.
How WeCP helps tech employers build a remote-ready tech talent funnel
WeCP (We Create Problems) is an all-in-one tech recruitment platform that helps employers build remote-ready talent funnels.
You can use WeCP’s bulk skill assessment tests to reliably vet candidates for key skills, and the platform’s video interviewing integration to conduct remote interviews.
WeCP’s advanced functionality helps guarantee the best results, with features such as:
Auto evaluators: A built-in tool that automatically carries different assessments, from MCQs to coding. It also conducts video interviews and helps select the best talent.
Real IDE with IntelliSense: A feature that lends candidates help with syntax questions, so they remain focused on problem-solving and logic.
Video proctoring: A tool that smartly minimizes the risk of cheating by checking for common cheating tactics, including Google search and using external devices.
Load balancing: the software reduces load by sharing it with a platform that boasts 99.95% uptime.
ATS and LMS integrations: These tools track a candidate’s progress and help recruiters identify top performers.
Code payback: The software vets code inputs for plagiarism to ensure a 100% candidate evaluation success rate.
Start building your tech talent funnel with WeCP today.
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