Bringing HR into the Cloud: The Remote Future of Interviewing

There are companies still talking about digital transformation in 2020, and you’re clearly behind the curve if you’re one of them. While the disparity between those who have gone digital and those who haven’t has been deepening for a while, it became obvious when COVID-19 forced us all to move our offices into our homes. The days of companies offering remote work as a luxury or something only to be used in extreme or rare circumstances are over.

Recruitment is a sector that has resisted this transition to the digital age, especially as far as interviewing goes. We’ve valued in-person, face-to-meetings as the defining moment before making that final decision. The mindset of having to meet someone in person to really “know” whether they will be a fit is obvious and based on our natural instincts.

But it is quite possible to glean just as much about a person from a virtual interview. In fact, there are cues that we can miss in-person as much as via a video conference. The key is to hone our interviewing skills and view this time as an opportunity to learn how to read through the screen.

At CloudOps, we strive to be innovative in our human resources and recruitment processes. We leverage tools such as Zoom to screen and meet our candidates. We use Lever, a cloud-based solution that works both as an ATS and CRM, to manage our hiring process within our cross-functional teams.

We have also automated much of our onboarding process through our HRIS, BambooHR. For example, through BambooHR we schedule virtual lunches to welcome new hires to the team after receiving our welcome packet (shown to the right) in the mail. Slack, the online messaging platform, is a daily part of our work lives that helps us connect from our home offices.

These tools have been part of our processes for quite some time, but COVID-19 has made them take center stage. Our goal is to help empower our customers to own their destinies in the cloud. It only made sense for us to bring our HR processes into the cloud.

When determining whether candidates will fit within our company culture, virtual interviews can be just as time-efficient and effective as in-person interviews. We use Zoom to screen and meet candidates and have come to use most of its features. Screen sharing can allow candidates to share an IDE when coding problems. The whiteboard feature allows them to map out solutions. 

The best thing about virtual interviews is its ability to make the process more human by breaking down the boundary separating a candidate’s personal and professional lives. When kids or furry friends pop into the screen every now and then, we catch a glimpse of a candidate as an individual and how they would fit into our company culture. In doing so, we are able to understand the bigger picture of a person and therefore make better decisions.

Interested in joining our team of teams? We’re hiring! Check out our careers page to view our most recent opportunities that I’d love to speak with you about.

Jennifer Canty

Jennifer Canty is the Technical Recruiter at CloudOps with a background teaching scuba diving. She is passionate about connecting with people from all walks of life and strives to be a polyglot (she is currently fluent in French and Spanish and is learning Portuguese and Italian). Jen spends her free time Zwifting, learning computer science, and playing the piano and the clarinet.