Each industry undergoes revolutions or evolutions every few decades. The hiring industry also experienced the latter five years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world in more ways than one. One such effect was remote working. It is not that remote working was not there before the pandemic hit the world. However, the scale it operated was far less than what we see today.
Before the pandemic, remote work was amalgamated into outsourcing. This meant that a company in the United States would outsource some of its jobs to other countries, but it had a proper office setup where employees were required to be present. However, the pandemic changed all that. According to a Gallup survey, in April 2020, 51 percent of the workforce in the United States worked from home.
When this started to work, the employees realized that remote working was now a priority apart from salaries and job roles. While this has caused massive friction between the employer and employees, remote working is only rising as companies also realize that it benefits them in the long run.
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The rise of remote working
COVID-19 Pandemic
As discussed earlier, the COVID-19 pandemic was the main catalyst for remote working a much-needed boost. When the pandemic hit, several companies scrambled quickly to ensure they could operate remotely with the same efficiency. At the same time, there was skepticism over whether such a large workforce working remotely could replicate the efficiency of working from the office. The results astonished everyone. Take, for example, a survey conducted in 2020 by FlexJobs Survey, which found that 51 per cent of employees felt more productive working remotely. This figure has since risen, as is evident by a 2022 survey by SCIKEY’s Tech Talent Outlook, with 64 per cent of people feeling more productive while working remotely.
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Technology Advancements
While the COVID-19 pandemic was the major catalyst for the rise in remote working, it was also backed by several other factors, one of them being the rapid technological advancements that allowed several industries to operate with more or less the same efficiency. For example, video conferencing platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams allowed companies to communicate effectively. In addition, other text-based tools such as Slack and Basecamp also help companies keep track of every project. Also, by 2020, several countries across the world had optical fiber cables that allowed for higher internet speeds, which allowed companies to easily do multiple tasks at once.
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Employee Preferences
After the pandemic, employees started to realize that the flexibility that remote working offered was as crucial to them as salary, remuneration, and promotions. Workers felt that remote work gave them a sense of control over their choices, allowing them to spend more time with their families. It also gives them a work-life balance. For example, working from home allowed employees to not only save time on commuting but also allowed them to relocate to other places closer to their families. Research showed that in the longer run, this work-life balance led to employees having better mental health, which improved their efficiency and led to fewer incidents of burnout and turnover rate.
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Access to Global Talent
In recent years, the rise of remote work has been linked to one major reason: access to global talent. Once a company opens its doors to remote work, it can easily hire talent from across the world without considering geographical barriers. This massively increases the talent pool, allowing companies to hire talent with diverse skill sets that might not be available locally. It also allows companies to have more diverse teams fulfilling their DEI initiatives. Having employees from across the world also means that businesses can operate at all times, This is especially helpful for industries such as:
- Customer support.
- DevOps/IT teams.
- News and media.
- Global product launches.
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Cost Savings for Companies
The other reason, apart from access to global talent that has contributed to the rise of remote working, is the massive cost saving that comes with remote working. The first major saving comes with the rent of office space. This saving is greater if the offices are located in big financial centers such as New York, San Francisco, and London. Apart from this, there are several maintenance costs associated with leasing office spaces that are also saved. Furthermore, companies also save money on infrastructure such as desktops, printers, scanners, and internal servers. Companies can also look to the job market that has a lesser average salary, saving them further financial remuneration.
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Productivity Insights
Post-pandemic, several types of research were conducted to see whether working from home led to better productivity. The results were very positive. According to several research companies that promoted remote work, their employees were more productive and took fewer sick leaves, which benefited the company in the long run. Furthermore, flexible working hours allowed each employee to work in their most productive hours allowing them to ‘deep work’. Several tools on the market allow companies to operate with clear workflows and track tasks. Some of them are Asana, Trello, and ClickUp, project management tools; Toggl and Clockify, time management tools and KPIs; and Jira sprints, which measure outputs.
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Interview as a Service
Now that we have established that remote working is beneficial for companies, we need to answer the most important question: How can we create a recruitment policy that hires the best talent while hiring remotely? This is where a new player in the market named Interview as a Service (IaaS) emerged. Companies that offer these services have revolutionized the hiring market in recent years.
However, before we go into the importance of interviewing as a service in remote work, we must first understand what it is.
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What is Interview as a Service?
Interview as a Service is a hiring solution in which companies outsource their hiring to third-party platforms adept at conducting smart interviews. Using these services, companies can hire better talent faster and eliminate the hassle of a cumbersome recruitment process.
End-to-End IaaS Platforms
These platforms provide solutions for the entire hiring process. Companies aiming to make their recruitment processes more efficient rely on them. These tools handle every aspect of the hiring journey, including scheduling, conducting, and evaluating interviews.
These platforms are used as efficient assistants to interviewers. Their key features include seamless integration with any Application Tracking System (ATS), access to a pool of expert interviewers for unbiased assessments, and accurate evaluation tools. In addition to technical skills, these platforms are also expected to identify soft skills during the interview process.
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Interview Conducting Platforms
These tools support only the interview stage of recruitment. Services related to other stages are not offered. Companies can streamline their interview processes through scheduling features, expert interviewers, and structured formats.
Some of these tools also offer video-based interviews, allowing candidates to prepare in advance. The use of these platforms has increased significantly in recent times. A growing preference for employees who align with company values and culture has been observed, and these platforms are used to support such value-based hiring.
Examples: eTeki, InterviewDesk
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AI-Powered Assessment Platforms
In recent years, artificial intelligence has transformed the hiring process. AI-powered tools analyze candidate behavior and responses to enhance the fairness and accuracy of assessments, actively reducing bias in recruitment.
Reports are generated automatically, and candidates are scored digitally using structured scorecards following interviews. These innovations significantly improve the overall recruitment process.
Examples: HireVue, Modern Hire, Pymetrics, Vervoe, Sapia.ai
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Technical Interview Platforms
These platforms are used specifically to evaluate technical capabilities. They are commonly used in fields such as software development, data science, and data visualization. Live coding tests, automated evaluations, and AI-generated insights assess candidates’ coding skills.
AI is used to create real-world coding scenarios in live coding tests. After the tests, scores are assigned automatically based on predefined benchmarks, ensuring consistency and speed in evaluating technical talent.
Examples: HackerRank, Codility, CodeSignal.
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How Interview as A Service tools can help
Scalability
Interview as a Service falls under the larger umbrella of Software as a Service (SaaS), and the major benefit of any SaaS application is that it is very easy to scale. These tools also have special features that allow every Interview to be recorded and transcribed. The transcripts can be viewed and analyzed by every stakeholder in the interview process, providing them with different opinions.
Also Read: Why Enterprise Companies are Shifting to IaaS for hiring top talent
Consistent Candidate Evaluation
As mentioned earlier, companies worldwide are very particular about reducing the chances of having a bad hire. This is where IaaS helps make the candidate evaluation consistent. For example, IaaS tools use a structured interview format where every candidate is asked the same questions to ensure they are judged on the same metric, thus helping reduce bias in the recruitment process even when interviews are conducted remotely.
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Access to Expert Interviewers
When companies outsource their hiring to a third party with IaaS, one of their reasons for doing so is because of the lack of recruiters who have the skills to conduct interviews of certain skill sets. This is where IaaS tools provide their clients with a plethora of expert interviewees with domain-specific expertise, especially regarding technical interviews.
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Reduced Time to Hire
Using Interview as a Service also helps companies reduce the time to hire. These tools are embedded with features such as automated scheduling, real-time feedback, and integrated assessments. These features can also be deployed efficiently even when the interviews are being conducted remotely.
Also Read: Advantages of Interview as a Service over traditional interviews
Improved Candidate Experience
Using IaaS tools also helps improve the candidate experience by providing them with quick feedback. This saves the company time and creates a positive perception in the candidate’s mind. So, in the future, they are more likely to recommend the company to their peers and friends.
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Integration with Remote Hiring Stacks
Any company that promotes remote working uses an Application Tracker System (ATS) and other remote hiring stacks. IaaS tools can be easily integrated with such stacks, eliminating the need for new training.
Now that we have established the advantages of IaaS tools, we should focus on tools that provide these services. One such tool is BarRaiser, your one-stop shop for ending all your hiring woes from pre-interview to interview and post-interview.
With BarRaiser, recruiters can create a detailed interview plan for candidates. The interviewer can give specific instructions to our AI bot to create an interview, such as:
- The Questions for the Interview
- The number of rounds for the Interview
- The duration of the Interview and its specific sub-parts
- The number of parts that the Interview must be divided into and their durations
- Must have questions
- The number of experience required for the job posting
- Must have skills
- Additional Skills
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Using these instructions, our tool will create a structured interview format to ensure an unbiased candidate selection process.
After this, our AI Interview Copilot assists the interviewer by giving them specific instructions. For example, if the Interview exceeds the time limit, the AI bot will alert the recruiter to speed up the process. We are also committed to making our process as unbiased as possible. This is why our AI transcribes and records every Interview and immediately raises an alert if the recruiter uses language that might be considered discriminatory to the candidate.
Experience top-tier interview quality with us
After the Interview, the AI asks for a detailed review of the candidate from the interviewer. We believe that our tool is an assistant and not the decision maker, so it formulates answers only after receiving instructions from the interviewer. While this is happening, the AI is also creating another report that measures the recruiter’s effectiveness and performance. This report acts as a check and balance to ensure accountability for every stakeholder involved in the recruitment process.
Using BarRaiser, we guarantee quality hiring that will bolster diversity and inclusion. BarRaiser is the best AI interview platform, featuring structured interviews and tools to ensure quality hiring while eliminating recruitment bias. With BarRaiser’s support, you’ll be well-equipped to build a strong team of sales associates who will drive sales and deliver exceptional customer service.