A major recruitment-related obstacle being faced by companies post COVID-19 is the inability to conduct face-to-face interviews.
With this unprecedented challenge in mind, Northrop Grumman’s Talent Acquisition team established new virtual hiring practices. During this challenging time, the team worked together to quickly solve complex issues while creating added options for video interviewing.
Teams throughout the company have been leveraging virtual technology as a creative solution to fill open requisitions, including those needed to successfully compete for new proposal wins. Recently, in an effort to pursue a proposal task award, program manager Mike and his team partnered with Talent Acquisition to rapidly execute a virtual interview plan to secure candidates with contingent offers in just one week. In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, this team successfully conducted virtual interviews and extended numerous offers.
Elsewhere around Northrop Grumman, managers of two teams in Orlando, Florida, knew they needed to hire nearly 50 engineers as soon as possible to cover program growth and workforce changes this summer. They also knew they couldn’t wait until COVID-19 restrictions on travel and in-person interviews were eased. So they decided to hold three all-virtual hiring events.
“Face-to-face engagement typically plays a big role as we bring in new talent,” says Terri, a business unit vice president. “High performance like this – the same level delivered to our customers – enables us to keep moving forward even as we reimagine the way we conduct our business.”
For one team in Space Park, pre-pandemic talent acquisition efforts included giving prospective candidates a tour of the work area when they came in for their interview. This has proved valuable in the hiring process. On the heels of COVID-19, while they had already shifted to virtual interviews, the team knew they needed to keep the tour in as part of the experience … in this case, a virtual tour.
“We didn’t want to remove the tour from the interview experience despite the current environment restrictions,” says Wes, assistant department manager at Space Park. “We decided to provide a virtual tour. By the end of the tour, one candidate was blown away by the equipment — and the amount of equipment — in the lab, the expertise of our engineers and the fact we design and analyze from scratch.”
Against the backdrop COVID-19, virtual hiring solutions have minimized the loss of potential interview candidates and is another great example of how our teams at Northrop Grumman are collaborating to quickly innovate solutions and rise to face complex challenges.
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