LinkedIn may not be a well-used networking tool among employees in manufacturing and the trades, but don’t underestimate the tech-savvy nature of today’s blue-collar workers. Smartphones are as common as hard hats at construction sites these days as workers use them for scheduling jobs, sending proof-of-work updates and staying in touch with their supervisors and clients. On the manufacturing floor, mobile device applications are increasingly used by plant managers and line workers to access information for daily job tasks and monitor performance.
However, talent acquisition for manual and technical roles remains different from white-collar recruitment. Purpose-built video interviewing software can help you engage more effectively with blue-collar candidates and accelerate quality hiring for these roles.
4 Ways to Leverage Your Interviewing Software
The interviewing technology you rely on for efficiently hiring professional roles also helps TA teams engage, interview and hire better candidates for positions in factories, transportation and logistics, and the trades. With a purpose-built solution, your candidates don’t need special technology to participate in interviews. They can use a smartphone if they choose. Either way, you gain all of the modern advantages in terms of efficiency, time savings, and faster speed-to-hire:
- Invite Candidates to Complete an On-Demand Voice Interview. Simplify interviewing for your candidates and your team with an automated phone call that enables candidates to answer your pre-recorded questions. Using any phone, candidates can participate during a lunch break, or at any convenient time outside their working hours. Their responses are recorded for you to review and forward to hiring managers. On-demand voice interviews are effective whether you have just a few candidates to reach or are in high-volume hiring mode.
- Modernize Phone Interviews. Interviewing technology improves the traditional phone interview process by allowing you to schedule, administer, record and share the interview with hiring team members. Candidates can participate using a smartphone or any phone, at a time that works with their schedule. Recruiters and hiring managers can quickly and easily refer back to the recorded interview if questions come up, reducing the need to reach candidates multiple times, and improve collaboration and hiring decision-making.
- Streamline On-Premise Interviews. When it’s time for live, on-premise interviews, streamline with your interviewing solution. Maintain your question sets in the platform for easy access; record your notes and fit score for each candidate in the platform and ask additional interviewers to do the same. After the interviews are completed, the entire hiring team will have simple and convenient access to all of this documentation and their notes readily available for hiring decisions.
- Speed Up Scheduling. Some interviewing software also has an integrated application that allows candidates to self-schedule an interview. Using email or text, they select a slot that works best for them from times you’ve proposed. You don’t have to worry about trying to reach them when they’re on the job to set up the interview. Some of these applications also allow you to coordinate multiple interviewers. Consider using it for campus hiring, job fairs or any other time you need to schedule an interview. This technology helps employers demonstrate they respect their candidates time.
Raise Your Profile with Blue-Collar Candidates
How candidate-centric is your hiring process for blue-collar workers? Is it simple, fast, and appropriate for the role? Your candidate experience says a lot about your organization and the way talent is valued. To engage with this talent pool more effectively, use the ideas above to design a hiring experience that is welcoming, convenient for candidates and respectful of their schedules. It’s the first step in creating a better candidate experience that shows your organization is different and builds blue-collar candidates’ interest in accepting your offer.
About the author: Sarah Doughty is Vice President, Client Success at Montage where she leads client partnership development. Sarah and her team support clients in maximizing their ROI through change management and enhanced adoption of Montage’s interviewing solution.
