Actsoft’s Hiring and Training Process During the Pandemic

There’s no question that for many companies, the hiring and training process is among one of the most impacted aspects of business by COVID-19. At Actsoft, we’ve taken an approach that enables us to still move forward, allowing us to continue developing relevant solutions for your company by expanding our team and putting in place measures to keep everyone as safe as possible while we do it. Here’s an inside look at how we’ve adapted our hiring and training processes.

Hiring

With most of our team being remote right now, we now interview and bring on new team members completely electronically. Our company is committed to an operations plan that is both flexible and protective of the health of our employees, keeping them and prospective candidates safer at home. Heather Herbst, Actsoft’s HR Talent Acquisition Generalist, described some of the new techniques we’ve enacted to grow our talent pool during this uncertain time.

“The process in itself hasn’t changed much for us, other than what used to be an in-person interview is now a video call,” said Herbst. “That and training has all been remote as well, done via webinars and video calls.”

Herbst also mentioned that while not being able to meet in person with new candidates can present some unique challenges, the process itself has been quite efficient overall.

“We haven’t really seen any true challenges due to Zoom and video interviewing. However, the one downside I would mention is not being able to actually meet the candidates in-person,” she said. “While the human element is still somewhat there through the video call, it is just such a different experience being able to talk face to face, shake the candidate’s hand and give them the office tour, so to speak. It is definitely less personable, but we are making the best of it.”

Training

Once a candidate is brought on, our expert training team does everything to make sure the new hire is thoroughly prepared to excel in their new role, as well as help acclimate them to our company’s family-oriented, relationship-driven culture. Joel Trumbach, a corporate trainer at Actsoft, described how his department can do both of these things efficiently, despite the difficulties that remote learning can sometimes pose.

“There are a lot more smaller bites being taken. So, instead of having new employees watch videos about entire features of our solutions, the training’s been broken up more, and we’re able to address any questions in a more detailed setting over personalized video calls,” Trumbach said. “And as far as the company culture goes, we’ve been able to create camaraderie by coming up with exercises that involve new hires in a class all working together. So, now it’s not just, ‘What am I doing to make myself a success?’ But now you’re also investing an interest in other people’s success too, and then that kind of starts to build relationships beyond there.”

Due to the changes the pandemic imposes on business, Trumbach sees a potentially permanent shift in what companies of the future will do to hire and train new staff members, even once its effects conclude.

“We’re all realizing that classroom learning is totally different from e-learning, so there are lots of different techniques and styles that you have to use to make it successful. However … a lot of times we’ve been limited in terms of which employees we can hire because of location,” Trumbach said. “We’ve had some candidates that we’ve thought could be rock stars for our company and moved up in it, because when we hire, we always look for that, but the problem was, they were limited by location. It’s not just about who can fill a position; we’re looking for who can turn this into a career. I think coronavirus has forced companies to become permanently more flexible in this way, and what that’s done is it’s really opened up the job market.”

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