TecHRseries Interview with Benjy Gillman, Co-founder of myInterview

It will be interesting to see how work cultures change and evolve as businesses re-open with the Covid-19 threat still being at large. Benjy Gillman, Co-founder of myInterview shares his thoughts on the changing remote work experience and what the Covid-19 pandemic has taught the global workforce in this QnA. Catch the complete story:

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Tell us a little about yourself Benjy, what’s a typical day at work like for you while going through this new “changed work culture” due to the global pandemic?

Work has thankfully been very busy during this time. As businesses move to remote working, they have shifted to remote hiring as well. At myInterview, we have been working 100% remotely for the past seven weeks and have found, in general, an increase in productivity as a result. Every morning, we have a fifteen minute full team stand-up on video call and then divide into groups to plan respective days and reflect on the previous one. Whilst there has been less ad hoc collaboration, I have found our work has been more structured and purposeful.

From your journey so far, what are some of the biggest hiring and leadership learnings you would like to share with us?

Trust is the most important element in leading a team. When hiring fantastic people as we have, who are a lot more competent than me, it is worth my while to give them the wheel to steer to their success. As long as I am sufficiently transparent in providing them with the information and support they need, we will remain in a good position.

Read More: What Will Change for HR After The Covid-19 Lockdown?

At a time such as the present, with the ongoing pandemic and its effects on businesses and the need to work from home, what are some top tips you would like to share when it comes to hiring for remote teams and a distributed workforce?

The ongoing pandemic has forced us to work from home in order to protect our loved ones and ourselves. It has also forced businesses to accelerate their adoption of technologies and processes and allow employees to work flexibly. For some time now, we have seen a move to flexible work to give families the ability to look after children, cut down commuting times and rearrange the 9 – 5 window. Now that the results of this move, prompted by the most inopportune circumstances, have been seen, it is unlikely that business will return to the previous structure. The “new normal” everyone is talking about is going to be the result of the lasting effect of COVID-19.

Also, what are some of the top tips you would like to share with us when it comes to implementing a sound virtual hiring and virtual interview screening process at a time such as the present?

There is no question that video interviewing has been reshaping the recruitment world. Beyond saving time and money, it is becoming an essential tool in the hiring process. The more relevant information we have about candidates, the easier it is to make a hiring decision. That is true regardless of whether the process is conducted online or in person. However, it is imperative that the information that we are gathering is authentic, verified and role specific. It is therefore important that the technologies implemented to facilitate remote hiring are robust and appropriate for the specific roles. It is something I have worked very hard to ingrain in the DNA of myInterview.

Read More: The Benefits of Virtual Hiring During the Covid-19 Pandemic

How according to you will the global workforce and work cultures shape up given the changing work environments due to Covid-19 and otherwise? What are some of the biggest changes that will stay long-term?

It is going to be interesting to see how our work cultures will look post COVID-19. There is a very real human need to be connected to one another, so our desire to be a part of a professional group will remain. Video helps us connect, collaborate, and control our work schedules, and has opened up new possibilities, so the question is how we will choose to interact with those groups. We might see more split between working from home versus the office or we will see a fully embraced work from home, but with more focused team retreats in order to keep us engaged with the company mission. It is still too soon to tell, but we all know that there will be a change.

In the tech marketplace, work from home is not a new concept, although at the present time, it is all about more teams and businesses getting used to the concept. What remote work tips would you share with professionals who by now must be finding it challenging to be isolated and working from home through the world crisis?

We are going to see an accelerated trend toward remote work, meaning that we will be relying more heavily on video and other technologies to enable collaboration and data collection. AI is going to be more used to a greater degree to source candidates through automated pipelining – both for internal or external candidate pools.

The talent market in 2020 is looking to be increasingly candidate dominated. The number of candidates has grown exponentially as a result of layoffs and extended furloughs. As our economies start to ramp up again, we will need – more than ever – to ensure that candidates are screened thoroughly, yet efficiently. Before COVID-19, at myInterview, we were very focused on candidate experience as the driving factor for our technology selection and this should not change now. In fact, this is the time when we should be investing more in long-term strategic adoptions to ensure that we are enticing the best candidates to come work with us.

Read More: The Future of Work Includes a Hybrid Combination of Human and Digital Employees

How would you suggest global teams implement stronger virtual hiring practices across industries and can you share your top HR Tech tools/Hiring tools (besides myInterview of course) that teams can benefit from?

Global teams will need to be hiring with a focus on the local. For example, a Talent Acquisition manager in New York will find it hard to hire a full team of Engineers in Tel Aviv without properly understanding the culture – there would be a disconnect and some subtlety will be lost. However, that does not mean that we cannot embrace tools to make communication between satellite teams a lot more lean and efficient. It is important to understand what tasks require collaboration and which are autonomous. We can then use technology to bridge the gaps in our capabilities of both. For example, top of the funnel sourcing is autonomous and managers will use different tools within their regions to find the best talent. Our partners say that a video interview product that is used by all teams is beneficial as it enables collaboration lower down the funnel as well.

What other collaboration tools would you advise teams to use to boost productivity especially during these uncertain times due to the global pandemic and as work from home starts becoming the new normal for several people and industries?

Management tools such as Slack and Monday are great to keep everyone organized and connected. We also like Hugo.team for virtual meeting management.

Tag (mention/write about) the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read!

#Alan Walker and #Phil Strazzulla, would love to hear their thoughts. Both have provided invaluable guidance to myInterview through our journey.

A few last moment tips for businesses worldwide dealing with the current world pandemic

Change management is crucial to ensure your teams are ready to adopt new technologies and practices in order to maintain a smooth transition to flexible working. Stay safe!