Teleconferencing is such an invaluable tool that it has found innumerable uses, gaining a key place even outside of the business environment. But within the professional world, one particular area that stands to gain a great deal from integrating virtual meetings into its activities is the recruitment field.
As an area which naturally dedicates its time to connecting multiple different parties, such a simple and effective communication tool seems like an obvious blessing. By making extensive use of conference calling, recruitment agencies are able to contact a vast number of potential employees easily and cheaply – particularly with the availability of genuinely free conference calls. That means you are boosting your chances of finding more and more suitable candidates for the particular role you are recruiting for, benefiting you, the employer, and the candidates.
What’s more, audio meetings can save all parties a great deal of hassle. It saves you from having to worry about organising a large and convenient space to interview all the candidates for the job, as well as eliminating the need for the interviewees or employers to travel potentially large distances to reach the interview. Consequently, the pool of potential applicants is widened, as you can reach candidates from within a much larger geographical radius. And the entire process will be much more comfortable and convenient for everyone involved – there’s no downside for anybody!
The only thing required of you would be firstly to choose your conference call bridge, setting up a conference call room – with some providers, like WHYPAY?, setting up a conference call is easy and simple – and sharing the access details with the interviewees and the employers. Even this can be done with a simple automated email, complete with a handy calendar attachment if you choose WHYPAY?. Then the only thing left to do is for everybody to dial into the call, bringing together the recruiting agent, the candidate and the employee in one virtual space. This leaves you free to conduct the interview, and give the employers a chance to ask any questions they may have, too.
If the idea of switching from face to face meetings to audio meetings makes you somewhat nervous or uncertain, there is a great deal of advice on hosting a conference call available to set your mind at ease and inform you on how to read vocal cues during an audio meeting so that you always have a full awareness of what is going on and how your participants are feeling. Overall, the difference between a physical interview and a virtual one are minute, but there are tons of tips on holding interviews via teleconference that you can read over to get a feel for what to expect – there are certain ‘Do’s and ‘Don’t’s to consider during a virtual interview.
Undeniably, there are aspects of a face to face interview which can be lost in a teleconference, but you need not worry about giving up physical interviews altogether! Audio meetings can be a really great way to hold preliminary screenings in the early stages – a lot of people choose to start the interviewing process with conference calls. It’s a useful way to save time and find the candidates most suited and qualified for the role being recruited for. After you have determined the top applicants, you can move onto face to face interviews, if this seems beneficial.
A particular feature of conference calls which does make them so invaluable to many recruitment agencies is the ability to record the teleconference. This is a brilliant way to avoid any confusion between different applicants – which is undoubtedly common when large numbers of candidates are being interviewed in a short space of time. By simply listening over the recordings you can quickly distinguish between the different interviewees – even just hearing their voices may be enough! What’s more, you have irrefutable and extremely useful evidence to pass on to all the employers. This can prevent miscommunication, forgotten or incorrect details, and distorted information, which can easily happen when information is being passed along a chain of people. Thanks to recruitment agencies recording interviews, it is easy for both them and the employers to discern the best candidate for the job.
So, if you are in the field of recruitment, make conference calling a part of your process. It has countless benefits for your company, and the employers and interviewees will thank you for it! It is a flexible tool which you can use as much or as little as you choose, and depending on the specific role, the number of candidates you have, and so on. But there is no doubt that for every recruitment agency, conference calling has an array of benefits.
