Monday, September 21, 2020

Hiring new employees during an international pandemic

 Today I have a new employee starting to work for me, this is my second new employee to start in two weeks, and I am currently interviewing for a third.  

Interviewing/hiring during this strange time in this strange environment was quite an experience.  One of the people I hired was someone who had worked for us before so that was a much less strange interview as were the internal applicants.  Speaking to them on the phone and via zoom felt normal.  But interviewing external applicants was very odd.

Phone interviews for preliminary screening is pretty normal, so that wasn't that big of a deal.  Video interviews for finalist though were a bit more odd.  We normally have 1:1 interviews across the board, but having back to back 1:1 video interviews felt strange so instead we had me and my 2 bosses on a panel type interview.  But then it was odd figuring out how to handle asking questions, so we had to kind of appoint one of the individuals the point person for holding the interview.  We were able to figure it out and things ran fairly smoothly but it still felt strange...

But now for the really strange part...in about 2 hours I will be meeting my new employee for the first time.  I hired someone I have literally never met before.  It all feels so strange and there is no way that this would ever normally fly in my company.   Yet here we are in a world where it would be perfectly acceptable for me to even say "you know what...work from home until January and I'll just meet you for the first time ever then."  

Today is going to be odd...wish me luck!

1 comment:

thomashomilius said...

What about fat people? Would you hire people if you saw they were fat?

Thomas Homilius

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