Recruitment in Scottish Local Government has not stopped despite the issues presented by COVID-19 challenging traditional recruitment methods used by teams.
Many are still keen to continue and progress with their recruitment – vacancies still have to be filled.
Claire Kane is an Early Years Development Officer at West Lothian Council and has shared how she and others at West Lothian recently found using online interviewing, never having interviewed this way before.
The situation
The West Lothian Early Years team interviewed for 40 full time permanent posts. The posts had been advertised through myjobscotland before schools went into lockdown so they had to make a decision about what they wanted to do – to postpone the recruitment for the posts or to go ahead and interview using an online platform. They decided on the latter.
Initially there were reservations about whether this would be the most effective way to recruit. The team wanted to be sure they would get the same insight into and essence of the candidates as they would if they had been seeing them face to face.
The process
Before the interviews the team met to discuss the shortlist and also reviewed and adjusted the questions to make them slightly more relevant to better suit the circumstances in the current climate.
The team used Skype for Business web app. Each interviewer contacted the candidate directly to arrange the appropriate time (normally done through Talentlink) and to check that they would be able to take part in a Skype interview (to ensure there would be no barriers in terms of the technology being used). At this point they were informed that they would receive a link to join the interview and a help sheet to guide them through the process.
The team had spoken with the candidates beforehand to try to reassure them and explained that it wasn’t the usual way of doing things but that the team would try to make it as ’normal’ an experience as possible.
At the beginning of each interview, the interviewer spent a few minutes chatting with candidates about how unusual the situation was for everyone, building a rapport with them and the team felt this approach made for a better connection with the candidates. Quite a few of whom commented that they enjoyed the process despite having been apprehensive of it beforehand.
Afterwards, the team met on Microsoft Teams to discuss their scoring and to make joint decisions – this was really important. Beforehand they were concerned about making these decisions for permanent posts on their own but in the end it didn’t feel like that. They had a full and frank discussion and reached a consensus together.
The challenges
Not everyone was fully confident in using the technology. It was important to ensure that wasn’t an issue during interview and so they met as a team on Microsoft Teams and through the screen sharing facility Claire guided everyone through the process of setting up their Skype interview room and inviting candidates. The team trialled with each other a few times to make sure there were no issues so by the time they got to interview everyone felt quite confident in using the technology.
HR did amend recruitment processes and policies prior to this so they decided to interview one on one which they felt would be a better experience for the candidate. They weren’t sure that switching between different people would be effective. Being experienced interviewers and having all interviewed with each other before they were fairly confident that the same approach during interview would be applied.
There were a couple of the team who had tech issues and the candidates’ internet connections weren’t stable so they kept them on screen but suggested they did the interviewing by telephone which worked well.
The result
The team were pleasantly surprised by how natural the interviews felt. They tried to relax and reassure candidates throughout the interview process, also explaining that they might not be maintaining eye contact due to note taking but the candidates didn’t find it to be a problem. The team found that the interviews had a relaxed and more intimate feel about them.
The team at West Lothian Council would not hesitate to do interviews in this way again. They didn’t feel that this interview process was any less rigorous than it would normally be. It was also easier to set the interviews up this way – much time was saved in the set up process as they didn’t have to wait for interview room availability and match up diaries of interviewers. Travel time and costs for interview candidates were also saved.