When it comes to recruitment, businesses have been in a state of limbo thanks to Brexit. The jobs market was just getting lively again. But in the wake of coronavirus, you might be wondering whether recruitment agencies in London will all go quiet? Should you call your London recruitment agency and stop plans to hire, or is now the very time you need to take hiring action? At London’s leading office support recruitment agency, Love Success, we take an honest look at hiring during the coronavirus outbreak…
Hold fire on the handshake, not on the job
Even tech giant Google isn’t holding off on recruiting due to the coronavirus pandemic. They’re just taking precautions to do it differently. Phone and virtual interviews are taking place instead of face-to-face interviews, and no one will be welcoming new starters with a handshake.
What you don’t want to do as a business is rashly put your recruitment plans on hold. There’s still a huge amount of unknown around the long-term implications of the pandemic. However, what is for certain is that some businesses will thrive, and to do so, you need survive. So, in an already worrying time, you don’t want to penalise yourself by not having the right talent behind you.
Make some changes
There will be some important changes in how you undertake recruitment in the best interests of the business. For the moment and the months ahead, it makes sense to avoid some of your typical candidate outreach processes. For example, it’s sensible to avoid large-scale recruitment fairs, educational institution exhibitions, and presentations—and most of these will be cancelled anyway.
Instead, use a London recruitment agency within your specialist niche to find staff. They’ll be able to serve as the bridge between you and your candidates. At Love Success, we can help you as a dedicated PA recruitment agency and a specialist in office support jobs.
Use the technology available to you
With our technologically connected world, we’ve got tools at our disposal that can make managing coronavirus less stressful from a business perspective. The online world is enabling many businesses to keep functioning, and those same online tools can be used to keep your recruitment going too. Recruitment events can be moved online, and online tools such as Google Sheets can be used to manage candidate screening and comparisons.
When it comes to interviews, phone interviews can be just as useful and revealing. In the next week, we’ll be guiding you on how to conduct phone interviews. Often, when hiring a PA or office support worker, you want to be able to assess an individual’s technological comfort and arranging and carrying out an interview remotely can really show how comfortable the candidate is with this.
Unless the role you’re recruiting for is going to be virtual too, you may want to create a video of your office and site. You can send this to candidates so they can get a feel for your workplace and know what it will be like when things go back to normal.
You may also find it useful to ask candidates to undertake a project-based assessment. This can give vital insight into how they will actually perform ‘on the job’.
Be confident
The instability of the coronavirus situation isn’t permanent. It will eventually pass, even if we have to make some adjustments. What matters is that you don’t sacrifice talent in the meantime, as your competitors certainly won’t be.
Love Success is a leading London PA & office support recruitment agency.
Our expert recruiters can help you find permanent and temporary jobs in London.
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