Author: Jessica Wu

After hearing countless horror stories about remote interviews, it’s clear that the worst practices from in-person hiring have transferred online—and they’re destroying the candidate experience.

A long time ago, I applied for a role at a Fortune 500 company where several former colleagues worked. I passed the initial screening and was scheduled to visit the company’s downtown office and meet who would have been my manager and coworkers. 

On arrival I had to check-in with security, who clearly were not told I was coming. After 30 minutes trying to contact the company, I was finally allowed into the office—to then be told that my interviewers were no longer available; so, they threw anyone they could at me. 

The first person I spoke with had no idea what I was supposed to do, and it was clear he didn’t like his job. Others asked me a generic list of questions. The person who would have been my manager had decided to work from a remote office that day, so I sat in her empty office and had a phone call with her. Good thing I took the whole afternoon off to come into their office, right?

Poor communication, unprepared interviewers, and a clear disregard for my experience made it easy for me to decide to not move forward in the process. The disappointing thing, though, is that these are all simple areas to address with the proper care. And, they should not still be a problem in the age of remote hiring. Yet they are!

If you’re hoping to hire great people, then you need to structure the whole process from the interviewees’ standpoint. Let’s explore what companies are doing that is hurting their hiring process, and what to do instead.

The Current State of Remote Hiring

We’ve been hearing from many industry peers that remote work has led to an even longer, more involved hiring process—and that’s not a good thing for candidates and companies alike!

Let’s look at the current reality:

• A standard job opening will receive 118 applicants on average (250 or more for corporate jobs). Understandably, this applicant volume can overwhelm a hiring team.
• Job seekers who apply to 21-81 jobs have the greatest likelihood of landing an interview. This numbers game means that candidates are likely to become critical of every step of the process for each job opportunity.
• Most entry-level positions involve 2-4 interviews, but executive-level positions often require more than four. 
• Recruiters and hiring professionals generally agree that it takes 60 days to fill a non-managerial professional role. But what if you can accelerate that by creating a better process?

How To Improve Your Remote Hiring Process

Instead of creating a more efficient process, too many companies have taken what they were doing wrong in the pre-pandemic world and ported it over to the virtual interview process—so now, people take a half day off to sit on video calls with people asking them the same questions.

In talking to our peers, the following are the most commonly cited criticisms about remote hiring processes, and tips to help you build a better experience.

Improve Candidate Communication

A lack of communication, communications intended for another candidate, and slow response times cause anxiety and frustration for job seekers. To help alleviate these feelings, companies should clearly explain:

• How long candidates should expect to hear back after they apply
• How many steps the interview process may take, with an overview of what each step involves and an estimated timeline for each
• How candidates can ask questions and seek help during the process 

Start by reviewing your job listings. In addition to the job description and company background, include a section about what the interview process involves and how quickly you’re looking to fill the role. Be as specific and transparent as possible, detailing exactly what happens at each step of the process and how long it will take—and be sure to fulfill those expectations!

Consider setting up automated responses at every step of the hiring process to let people know when they will hear back from you, and the next steps. Automated — but personalized — messages will greatly improve your hiring experience.

“People often spell my name Andy instead of Andi, which is understandable if you have not seen it spelled,” says Andi Robinson, Hijinx Marketing. “But I had a recruiter call me by a completely different name in an email communication. I also had an interviewer not show up for the interview.”

As you receive questions and feedback from candidates, create an FAQ document with approved messages that your team can use when addressing specific needs and questions. Even better, you should share that FAQ with candidates to preemptively address their needs.

Trim the Excessively Lengthy and Complex Hiring Processes

Interviews are an essential way for candidates and hiring teams to assess each other and decide if it’s a mutual match. The issue, though, is that teams often coordinate too many interviews, which take too much time, and often involve unpaid work projects that the company plans to use (don’t do this!).

“I have been to interviews that have five rounds,” says marketer Amy Higgins. “However, each round requires multiple people and presentations. In all, I’ve interviewed sometimes over three months, meeting with 10+ people individually, completed multiple presentations that are in-depth enough to be event sessions, and still end up waiting for a decision. The higher you are in your career, the longer the process. I’m actually ok with the multiple people—it gives me a better feel for what I can expect working with the company and how their culture is internally. It’s just the time that can be painful.”

In many cases, extending a hiring process over a month or two is enough time for your preferred candidate to find and accept a job elsewhere. This makes it critical to map out your current hiring process to identify where you can streamline things. How long should each step take, and how long does each step currently take? What can you do to optimize each step without sacrificing the candidate’s experience or your ability to assess candidates?

For starters, host fewer interviews and use panel interviews to connect more team members with your candidates. Provide interviewer guides that help them understand how to effectively assess a candidate (we’ll share more on that next).

A Word About Those Unpaid Marketing Interview Projects

Back to those interview projects. I strongly recommend that you compensate interviewers if you assign them homework. Alternatively, you can host real-time tests that can be done in the course of an interview, which also allows your team to immediately assess the output and determine the next steps. 

So why shouldn’t you ask candidates to draft a content strategy or do a content audit?

“If you have job applicants create some type of work product as part of the application process, the applicant retains the rights in their work,” says Ruth Carter, Esq., Geek Law Firm. “You don’t own the rights unless they’ve assigned it to you. (If you make all prospective employees assign the rights in what they create as part of the application process, you suck, unless you’re compensating the applicants for their work.)”

The good news for applicants is you can use that project as an example of the caliber of work you do if you don’t get the job. 

“Let’s say you don’t have the prospective employee sign over their rights,” says Carter. “The applicant retains copyright ownership of their work, and can copy, distribute, and display it wherever they want. If their work contains IP owned by your company, such as a company logo, they will likely need to change this to a fake company logo to avoid giving the impression that there’s a relationship with the company that doesn’t exist.”

One senior marketer friend went through a month-long interview process, with three rounds of interviews with multiple people in each round, and a final content audit project. They didn’t get the job, yet noticed the company implemented many of their ideas. While this is perfectly legal since there is no legal protection for ideas in the U.S., it’s yet another reason why it’s better to pay even a small fee to candidates creating a work product that your company intends to use.

Prepare All Interviewers 

One of the easiest areas to address is also one of the most common issues with hiring processes in general: unprepared interviewers. 

Every interview should dig into unique areas to decide if the candidate is the right fit for the role and company. Instead, most interviews rehash the candidate’s work history, reconfirm the role they’re applying for, and explore a script of questions. 

Make this experience better by ensuring that every interviewer has read the candidate’s resume, understands the job description for the role, and reviewed the candidate’s LinkedIn profile or portfolio. Your goal is to make the candidate feel valued and gain an understanding of what it is about them that compelled your company to interview them for the role.

“I was interviewing with a hiring manager and the first question she asked was about my book,” said Andi. “It showed that she had done her research on my background.”

Ensure that every team member prioritizes interviews the same way you would treat a client—there should be no reason for an interviewer to be late or miss a scheduled interview. If your team has a virtual office manager, they can remind your team members about an upcoming interview. 

In the worst case scenario where an interviewer misses their meeting, then you should immediately call the interviewee to apologize and alert them of the next steps. If someone is waiting to be interviewed but receives no update, then they will understandably become frustrated with the process.

Prioritize The Remote Candidate Experience

The shortcomings of most remote hiring processes are not unique to remote environments, but they cause greater harm to the candidate experience because there isn’t an in-person connection to compensate. 

Provide clear and direct communication throughout the entire process, and ensure that everyone involved with the interview understands their role. Prepare interviewers so that they can host a meaningful conversation with the candidate, and consider hosting panel interviews to streamline the process.

If you see an increase in candidate turnover, then you may need to assess if you have too many interview steps or are taking too long to interview your candidates. 

After you find the ideal candidate and they’re about to join your team, follow these four tips for welcoming and engaging your new remote team members. To encourage ongoing connection and collaboration in your remote team, learn how Frameable Spaces empowers your team to interact just as you would in the physical office. 

It’s no surprise to anyone that the post-pandemic world operates in a vastly different way than it did prior to March 2020. We should all pat ourselves on the back for facing and overcoming what, at the time, felt like a mountain-like virtual learning curve. Email attachments used to be the most technically complex part of many of our jobs and now look at us — we’re doing live webcasts, wrestling with VPN access settings, and connecting from almost anywhere with hotspots. What was unimaginable to most of us in 2020 is now a daily reality in 2023.

However rightly deserved, these congratulations for adapting to the new virtual sphere must be short-lived. Advancements in virtual operations are racing forward and being adopted with lightning speed. Simply being able to tune in to a virtual meeting with a functioning camera and microphone is now the minimum expectation for virtual meeting and event participants. With so many industries embracing remote operations, a new set of skills are necessary to stay competitive: it’s time to shift your attention to polishing your virtual presence.

How to Craft a Polished Virtual Presence

Your virtual presence is the way you show up on camera, but it’s not just about the way you look. It’s a combination of all of the things that factor into the way you present yourself and the impression you ultimately give to those on the other side of the screen. Just as in the real world, how you conduct and present yourself in meetings has real consequences in how colleagues, audiences, or interviewers perceive you.

Here are some tips to help you establish a polished, professional virtual presence.

Familiarize Yourself With Your Video Platform

We’re all probably now familiar with the hot-under-the-collar feeling of searching frantically for a microphone button to unmute ourselves while a group of onlookers wait patiently for your response. It’s an understandable predicament, given the number of virtual meeting platforms used across different industries, but definitely something you’ll want to avoid. As mentioned earlier, advancements are happening at lightning speed — no one can know every new product out there.

The key here is preparation. When getting ready for a meeting on a new platform, take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the location of necessary tools, make sure you can connect your camera and microphone properly, and have any new software or updates installed. “Although it might feel awkward, it’s important for you to practice out loud, record yourself during your test run — and then watch it” says career coach Dr. Dawn Graham. This is going to give you a good opportunity to not only test that everything is working as it should but also how you’re presenting on camera.

Get the Visuals Right

Eye contact and camera position, lighting, your attire, and your space are all important aspects of your visual presentation to keep in mind.

Eye contact and camera position

Eye contact and camera position are closely related. Placing your computer camera at eye level, directly in front of you, will give the impression that you are maintaining eye contact with your audience or colleagues throughout the meeting. With this one adjustment, you both look attentive and are in turn, more engaging to speak with.

Visually, having your computer at eye level with about two feet of space between you and the camera, should place you directly in the center of your screen which will create a more appealing visual experience for those viewing your feed (please, please — avoid the under chin, up-the-nose shot, for everybody’s sake!)

Lighting

Perfecting your lighting is just as important as having your camera positioned correctly. Without proper lighting, you may not be seen at all! There are a plethora of professional lights and setups you can invest in to get great lighting, but it’s not necessary for most of us. We certainly don’t disparage those who do this because they look good when all set up, but it’s a nice-to-have. Most of us will want to start with what we have, by setting a bright (read: not harsh —industrial shop lights are not necessary) lamp behind your computer so that the light falls on and highlights your face as an easy first step. 

To set your lighting, open your virtual meeting platform and observe yourself on screen to determine what light placement looks the best on your face. Depending on the light source, you may need to boost it up with a few books or try a couple of different angles behind the computer. Avoid direct overhead lighting as it can create harsh shadows underneath the eyes, nose, and chin that can cause you to look haggard.

If you’re meeting during the day, setting up in front of a window so that the natural light illuminates your face is a great option for lighting — just make sure that you are facing the window instead of having your back turned to it. Being back-lit will make you appear completely in shadow on screen.

Your Attire and Your Space

Expressing your style through your fashion and decorating choices are never something that we’re going to argue against. For the purpose of this guide, we will make some suggestions for things to avoid since they can be disproportionately distracting over video.

For clothing: 

• Stripes and small, complex patterns on clothing can produce an unpleasant strobing effect on camera.

• When deciding what color to wear, aim for ‘navy, burgundy, or muted tones’ and avoid ‘wearing hot colors, such as pink or pure red, as they can reflect or bleed color onto your surroundings.‘

• Avoid wearing the same color as your background — you want to stand out, not look like part of the wall behind you! If you’re not using a virtual background, consider whether or not the room behind you is dark. If so, you may want to avoid wearing black or navy which would produce the same effect.

• Jewelry that shimmers or jingles can come across as very loud or bright on camera.

For your space:

• Tidy, neutral spaces are best. A cluttered or messy room can give the impression that you are disorganized. Take a few minutes to clear away any distracting piles that fall into your camera’s view and avoid showing artwork that may not be appropriate for professional settings.
• When possible, minimize activity in your background (you want the focus to stay on you- Fido sitting behind you will most certainly be a distraction).

• Virtual backgrounds can be glitchy and are not the cleanest look but sometimes cannot be avoided. If you do opt for a virtual background, go for a neutral image or color that shows you in the sharpest relief possible. If you’re in a dark room, sitting against a wall or hanging a sheet behind you it makes a huge difference in how natural a virtual background looks. 

Perfect Your Audio and Adjust Your Communication

While visuals are important, nailing your audio setup is vital. After all, what is the point of a call if you can’t hear or speak to the person you’re trying to connect with?  ‘Can you repeat that?, You cut out’ or ‘Do you have a fan on in the background?’ are the new phrase equivalents of ‘speak up, we can’t hear you in the back!’ There’s nothing quite like these jarring interruptions to completely throw you off your roll when talking in a meeting.

Use an external microphone

Laptop microphones have come a long way over the past few years but they pale in comparison even to the microphones built into headphones we now usually get with our smartphones. Not only is the microphone closer to your mouth, they’re also designed to sort out background noises to make your voice stand out even more clearly. If you’re seriously committed to top notch sound, there are plenty of USB microphones on the market to choose from that fit all price ranges (several people in our office use this one and love it!). There is also something to be said for the attention grabbing power of a smooth, radio-quality voice!

Tweak your communication style to fit the format 

Once you have your microphone and speaker settings optimized, it’s important to think about how communicating through video calls and chat can be different than talking in-person and how to adjust your speaking style to fit this new interactive format. 

You can control your own sound quality but not your audience’s speaker level or hearing abilities. When talking, make sure to speak directly into your microphone and pay attention to your communication speed and enunciation. What you’re saying is important – make sure everyone hears every word! A nice extra benefit of speaking in a clear, measured tone is that you will seem confident in your words. 

Though it may seem counterintuitive, nonverbal communication can sometimes be more helpful and less disruptive in video format than a constant stream of verbal contributions. Practice actively listening by looking at the person who is speaking, nodding your head, and smiling in encouragement when possible instead of unmuting to give running affirmations. This will help to keep the airwaves ‘clear’ for the speaker’s words to reach other meeting attendees unimpeded.  
Finally, take your time and leave room in the conversation to allow other people to speak. Since some people mute themselves automatically to keep their environmental noises minimized, it now may take a few extra seconds to unmute to respond to something you’ve said. Take a small pause between talking points. This small adjustment will create space for higher quality interactions in your meetings and again gives you the bonus of sounding more confident in your speech.

The Perfect Complement to a Polished Virtual Presence — Frameable Spaces

Now that we’re all familiar and hopefully more comfortable with virtual work, the next step in professional evolution is to develop a strong virtual presence. Using the guidelines listed above will help you establish a polished reputation and highlight you as a competitive candidate in remote work. 
It also helps to use a platform with useful features you can rely on. Frameable Spaces can help take your remote work to the next level with virtual backgrounds, noise cancellation, and a variety of other collaboration features. Book a demo to see how Frameable Spaces can give your distributed teams all the benefits of working together, no matter where they are.