by Raghu Nandhan | Apr 7, 2020 | Ace the Interview
With growing global health concerns regarding COVID-19, hundreds of companies have stopped their standard recruitment processes and opted for remote interviewing, sourcing, and screening. While this transition to remote interviewing may not affect all stages of the candidate funnel, it does impact the candidate experience directly. It shows that you as company care for employee’s health and is top of game with the changes happening due to viral spread of corona virus.
Not every role can be performed remotely, likewise not every candidate is suited for a remote work career. Conducting remote interviews may seem a bit stressful or scary if you’re new to it. Transitioning to an entirely virtual hiring process is not easy, also decision making becomes critical as finding candidate’s interest levels in-person through signals like body language is tricky. These are few internal aspects to consider but there are many other factors to check for like the candidate’s internet connection stability or candidate being familiar to tools which you will be utilizing to conduct interview.
If you have vigorous hiring targets to achieve this quarter, then don’t let this new trend-switch to remote work hold back your hiring efforts. Follow below steps to stay on track and deliver best candidate experience remote interviewing process.
Get hang of basic technical interviewing best practices
In today’s aggressive tech talent market, one blow or error during the process is enough to turn away interested candidates. While conducting remote interviews, it’s important that you are technically sound with basic technical interviewing practices. Being prepared for the remote interview not only guarantees the success of the interview but it also ensures your candidate that you’re prioritizing their interest in working as a remote member of your company. Remember, the key to conducting remote interviews is your tech choices.
Use a skills assessment test before connecting
You don’t want to waste your time connecting to everyone and conducting interview for all the applicants. Especially for high volume roles conducting skills assessment test will filter the number of applicants and help you quickly choose applicants that should move on to the video interview stage.
Connect with the candidate
After filtering it time to connect with candidates, first thing to communicate them clearly whether the interview will be a phone or video interview. Make sure the candidate understands this because no one will like to log into the interview and find that it’s a video interview, when they thought it was only by phone. While interviewing remotely, you won’t get the opportunity to create an in-person connection with the candidate so, it’s crucial that you stay connected to the candidate throughout the interview process.
This is why it is so important to value remote communication tools, not only with your active remote employees but also during the interview process as well. Don’t just stick to one communication tools, be adapt with different tools. Also, make sure to send across any software needed, along with instructions on how to download and set up the program. Some common programs which can be used are Google Hangouts, Skype, and GoToMeeting.
Create a distraction free remote interviewing environment
During remote interviewing, don’t leave any space for interruptions. To prevent Wi-Fi failure, get an ethernet cord and use a hardwired internet connection during interviews. To prevent any other online interruptions, put notifications from other apps on mute. Also, make sure that there is no source of bright light behind you as it makes it difficult for you to be seen on camera. Even though you cannot control candidate’s interview environment, it is considered best to send them an email prior advising them on how to take the interview in a distraction-free environment with stable internet connection.
Practice makes man perfect
This is just not a saying, if you don’t have expertise hiring remote workers, there is a possibility of some bug fixing in your remote hiring. Make sure your interviewing program is working properly. Also test your microphone level to ensure you are heard. Prepare few necessary interview question lists and run through them and practice it a few times.
Wrap it up
Working remote is exploding in popularity and now with the pandemic era it has become a necessity until things become normal. It is a proven fact that remote working boosts the flexibility and freedom of employees and employers alike. But learning how to steer through this new business model is difficult. Particularly, interviewing and hiring remote employees requires learning a new skill-set. Practicing the above discussed tips can help take your interviewing skills to the next level and put your best professional foot forward, and ultimately find the best candidate for your open position.
by Raghu Nandhan | Aug 12, 2019 | Ace the Interview
How costly can a bad hire be? One hiring mistake might price up to 5 times the bad hire’s annual remuneration. Companies can’t afford hiring mistakes, which are pricey and can erode employee morale.
Hiring an employee is a very important decision. It’s a fragile choice because hiring the wrong person can be very costly and catastrophic. Many employers make the mistake of hiring a bad employee because their number one concern is filling a position. Instead, employers should focus on filling the position with the right employee. To avoid such mistakes one should lean to below suggestions to spot a nearly bad hire:
Unprepared for the interview
All candidates should go into an interview with basic knowledge about the company and its mission, a succinct summary of their professional experience, and a strong case about why you should hire them. If you raise them to inform you why they’re curious about the position and that they provide you with a blank stare or a generic response, they may not have taken the time to be told regarding the corporate.
Ask questions related to the job they’re applying for
This is a big mistake I see a plenty of hiring managers build. If the question does not relate to the position, or the candidates’ ability to try and do the duty, then it should not be asked. An interview is not the time to attempt to make a personal connection, the reason being this it tends to allow the candidate to control the interview, instead of the interviewer extracting the knowledge he or she must build an informed and objective call.
Trigger potentially toxic questions.
Question the person for the five things he/she liked least regarding his or her last company. Asking, for one thing, is pretty common. Catechizing for five pressures the person to reveal either strategic insights or signs of toxicity. The answers would tell a lot about their personality and can be used to picture cultural adaptability.
Short on details
Though the candidate shouldn’t ramble on about their previous roles and responsibilities, they should at least be able to give you a few details about their capabilities and skill level. If they can’t coherently (and succinctly) explain how their experience makes them a fit for your team and the company as a whole, then they may not have the confidence or ability to succeed in the role
Not owning up to their mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes during their careers; it’s just a fact of life. But where the red flag lies, is when a candidate doesn’t admit them or fails to turn the experience into a positive. For instance, if you ask them to explain a scenario when you’ve made a mistake and they either blame someone else or simply state the good parts, this isn’t an honest reflection on events. Ideally, a candidate should tell you how they rectified the problem and learned from it. If they waste time bashing their old employers, they won’t have any issues doing the same to you as well.
Lack of growth
Career growth is a huge factor for a lot of ambitious professionals. Try asking them:
“Why did you want to leave your previous role?”
“What lessons have you learned in your previous role(s)?”
“Where do you see yourself in five years?”
These interview questions will allow candidates an opportunity to tell you how ambitious they are, explain why career growth might have stagnated and whether they have the initiative to want to learn new skills moving forward.On the flip side, if a candidate comes across like they want to grow at an unrealistic rate which doesn’t suit the particular job role, this might be a cause for concern as they will probably become restless and leave early on.
Solutions to deal with a bad hire
The above points can help you avoid a bad hire but in case you couldn’t figure out one during the interview process you can fix/deal with it by following below steps:
Deal with the situation immediately, take immediate actions and don’t let it fester.
Determine if their deficiencies contradict what they said or claimed during the interview process, or what they showed on their resume.
Get specific and detailed feedback from co-workers and supervisors.
Determine if it is best to let them go, or their blunt edges can be sharpened with little efforts?
Be clear regarding your/their legal rights if you fire them.
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by Raghu Nandhan | Jan 3, 2019 | Ace the Interview
Do you remember what life was like before the internet or the iPhones existed? Or can you imagine actually having to look up a word in the dictionary? Probably not, but the truth is your most useful tools didn’t even exist 15 years ago. Yeah, you read it right. Want to know something even crazier?
By 2022, we’ll lose over five million jobs to automation. That means that future jobs will look vastly different by the time you graduate university. Don’t worry, though! The jobs of the future will actually be more interesting than those of the past.
Gone are the days of factory workers and physical production. We’ll let the machines handle that. Instead, future jobs will involve knowledge and innovation. Machines are actually doing you a favour. They’re freeing you up to explore experiment and find interesting solutions to complex problems, like pollution.
Say goodbye to a desk job and hello to the world of creation!
Future Skills
Although no one can accurately predict what jobs will look like in the future, there are seven skills that will be essential to your future success.
- Creativity:
Worried about robots stealing your job? The more creative you are, the less likely you are to lose your job to a robot! While robots may be better than you at calculating and diagnosing problems, they aren’t very good at creating original content, thinking outside the box or being abstract.
- Critical Thinking:
Technology may be able to automate many of the jobs that currently exist, but you probably wouldn’t trust it to do your critical thinking for you; as such your future career will require you to have excellent critical thinking skills. You’ll constantly need to be analysing various situations, considering multiple solutions and making decisions on the fly through logic and reasoning.
- Mental Elasticity and Complex Problem Solving:
The future is going to bring problems you’ve never seen before in a world you’ve never experienced. In order to solve these problems, you’ll need to have the mental flexibility to think outside of the box, see the big picture and rearrange things to find a solution. Luckily, this skill is highly develop able and simply takes practice. The more difficult problems you tackle, the more bendy your brain will get.
- STEM:
Even though Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths jobs are super-hot right now, don’t expect them to go away in the future. As technology progresses, you’ll need to have more advanced STEM skills to keep up.
- SMAC:
You’ve heard of STEM but you probably haven’t heard of SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud). Catchy, right? Learning all of these skills/platforms will make you stand out in the future job market.
- Interdisciplinary Knowledge:
Your future career will require you to pull information from many different fields to come up with creative solutions to future problems. This skill is easy to work on as well. Start by reading as much as you can about anything and everything that interests you. Once you get to college, consider double majoring or minoring in completely different fields. Trust me, it’ll pay off in the long run.
- People Skills:
Listen, machines are going to take over eventually and technology is going to get much more advanced, so humans have to stick together. If you want to succeed in the future job market, you’ll have to learn how to manage and work with people and robots, which includes getting in touch with your emotions, having empathy and listening.
Now that you know what skills will make you successful in the future, let’s take a look at some future jobs.
- Waste Management/Trash Engineer
This may be the oddest future job but it’s totally necessary. Humans produce 2.6 billion pounds of trash annually, and what do we do with it? There is no way this practice is sustainable so we have to think about something else to do with all of our rubbish. You could turn our rubbish into clean gas or figure out a way to make it strong enough to construct buildings with. The possibilities are endless but it’s up to you to come up with the award winning ideas.
Average Salary: $25,425 – $87,178
Skills Needed: Strong STEM skills, critical thinking and mental elasticity.
Best Undergraduate Majors: Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Trash Engineering.
- Alternative Energy Consultant
People cannot survive on fossil fuel forever, so alternative energy sources are the only hope. I’m sure you’ve heard of solar, wind and hydroelectric energy. The question is, which one is right for your home, your community and your city? You’ll be an expert in all energy forms and go from city to city around the world assessing the best sustainable energy source for each place. Believe me, you’ll be in high demand very soon.
Average Salary: $35,561 – $86,162
Skills Needed: Strong STEM background, mental elasticity and people skills
Best Undergraduate Majors: Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Renewable Energy Engineering, Environmental Studies, Physics, Mechanical Engineering
- Organ/Body Part Creator
Ever heard of the organ black market? Well, it exists, it’s illegal and it’s a huge problem. Why? Because many people around the world spend years on medical waiting lists praying that their name will get called for the next eye, kidney or even heart available. Eventually, they get sick of waiting and they discover the deep, dark world of the organ black market, where they can buy whatever they need for a price.
Every 12 minutes a new name gets added onto the already gigantic waiting list and every day about 21 people die because they didn’t get the organ they needed.
With those kinds of stats, it’s not surprising that people turn to the black market. However, in a few years, it’ll be up to you to create organ and body parts from stem cells and other materials that is not yet known or don’t yet exist.
Average Salary: $34,882 – $130,484
Skills Needed: Strong STEM background, critical thinking, mental elasticity, complex problem solving and creativity
Best Undergraduate Majors: Biology, Genetics, Biomedical Engineering
- Memory Surgeon
Here’s where things start to get a bit sci-fi-y. What if there was a way to surgically remove bad memories, mental illness and destructive behaviour? Is it possible? Would it be ethical? Would it rid the world of terrorism?
Only you can unlock the answers to these burning questions by becoming a Memory Surgeon. Your future career is bound to cause controversy but stick to it and you could change the world. Just make sure you’re only removing memories, illnesses and behaviours that actually need to be removed.
Average Salary: $322,568 to $452,703
Skills Needed: Strong STEM background, critical thinking, mental elasticity, complex problem solving and creativity
Best Undergraduate Majors: Biology, Chemistry, Neurobiology
- Personal Internet of Things (IoT) Security Repair Person
We are used to calling plumbers or repairmen when something is broken around the house, but who do you call when your smart refrigerator gets hacked and tells your smart coffee maker to continuously make coffee and your smart lights to turn on and off every five minutes? A personal IoT Security Repair Person of course. Dis-functioning of products due to hacking is just one of the many problems that the world is bound to face as our devices become smarter.
As an IoT Security Repair Person, you’ll be in charge of thwarting hackers before they cause any damage and fixing any damage that you’re unable to prevent.
Average Salary: $113,670 – $157,197
Skills Needed: STEM, Critical thinking, people skills, mental elasticity, SMAC skills and complex problem solving skills
Best Undergraduate Majors: Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
- Commercial Space Pilot
Elon Musk and Richard Branson are racing to space and soon, civilian space exploration is going to become a reality. However, there’s one little problem, who’s going to fly us around? We can’t possibly all become astronauts before exploring the moon or Mars that would take way too long and wouldn’t be practical at all. We’ll need someone who has the experience of an astronaut but is also trained to handle much larger rockets with many more people aboard.
Sounds like a tough job but if you’re an expert on space and have always dreamed of becoming an astronaut then it’s time to start thinking bigger.
Average Salary: $65,140 – $100,700
Skills Needed: STEM, Critical thinking, people skills, creativity, mental elasticity, interdisciplinary skills and complex problem solving skills
Best Undergraduate Majors: Aerospace Engineering, Astrology, Physics, Computer Science
- Personal Productivity Person
In order to compete with the up and coming automated workforce, people have to become as efficient as possible. Think about how many distractions you have in your present life that hinders you from unlocking your full potential: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Netflix, the 24-hour news cycle and more. As technology continues to evolve, the number of distractions we have will continue to grow and if we are inefficient, machines will be looming in the background ready to take our jobs.
Unless, we have Personal Productivity People (PPP). As a PPP, your job will consist of analysing people’s daily lives and teaching them to silence their daily distractions in order to work harder and smarter.
Average Salary: $36,295 – $134,748
Skills Needed: Critical thinking, creativity, people skills, mental elasticity, SMAC skills and interdisciplinary skills
Best Undergraduate Majors: Communication and Media, Physiology, Sociology
So here were few jobs or technologies of future which I could think of but it doesn’t limit only to these. There are many upcoming technologies which are still not known to the world.
Although a lot of the jobs that exist today will be automated in the coming years, we should be excited about the future, not scared of it. The robots will take over all of the boring jobs which will leave more free time for us to explore interesting, creative and important new jobs such as the 7 I outlined in this blog.
However, you shouldn’t limit yourself to the jobs on this list. Dream up your own list of potential future careers that use the essential skills mentioned earlier and who knows, you might create the next million-dollar idea.
Pragna is always involved in development/appreciation of new technology space. Do review the different solutions we are providing to our customers for over the years.
I hope this blog helped you dive into the future. What do you think, what other jobs or technologies would be high in demand in near future? If you could imagine something new apart from what I listed in then do let us know in the comment section below. Also share this blog with all your known ones and help them plan their careers.
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