RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif.—CO-OP Financial Services is conducting video interviews for contact center reps and onboarding the majority of its staff virtually—a change meant to address the pandemic that’s working well enough to continue on after the health crisis ends, the CUSO said.
It’s a strategy being explored and deployed by other organizations and credit unions across the movement, a number of sources have told CUToday.info.
“We have found that our new process not only is safer for everyone but we are getting results—strong candidates and our team can get through more interviews this way. It’s simply more efficient and more effective,” said Mallory Wilson, director of talent acquisition.
What’s most beneficial about the process is staff can review video interviews at their convenience, as opposed to having a set interview time.
“They can also work in the videos when they have downtime,” said Wilson. “We are getting through a lot more candidates this way—we are getting through about 100 video interviews a week. Previously, each one of these candidates would been a phone call of about 30 minutes that had to be scheduled.”
The Pre-Job Job
Mallory Wilson
Wilson emphasized, candidates have to take an active role in this process, as opposed to having to just wait for the company to contact them.
“We find we are getting more serious candidates this way,” said Wilson.
And it’s good this system has been implemented, Wilson said, since demand for CO-OP contact center service from credit unions is increasing. As CUToday.info reported, the CUSO is expanding its call centers.
Wilson said CO-OP hired more than 200 new call center representatives in the first two months of the pandemic crisis.
“Starting in early March, with the health crisis rising, we were just challenged to start thinking differently about all that we do,” said Cheryl Middleton-Jones, chief people officer. “I turned to Mallory and just asked her how can you make everything that we do, from a hiring perspective, virtual. And she and her team have done a great job rethinking all that we do regarding talent acquisition.”
A Short Window
Middleton-Jones acknowledged Wilson and her team had a short window to create a new hiring process with the pandemic bearing down on the nation.
“We had about 48 hours to transition to a virtual world,” Jones said. “And we did this not only in the face of the pandemic, but also as we faced the need to begin hiring a lot more staff.”
Cheryl Middleton-Jones
Jones acknowledged the pandemic has pushed to the forefront what the company had already established as an objective for 2020, to do more virtual hiring and onboarding.
“But again, we had looked at making this transition over a longer period of time, not just days,” Jones said.
Wilson explained contact center recruiters source candidates from a variety of avenues. The recruiter then emails the candidate an invitation to complete a video interview.
The Process
The video interview, accessed via a web link, carries a series of standard written questions contact center applicants are asked by the company.
“Once the video interview is completed, the recruiter receives an email alert to watch the recording,” said Wilson. “If the candidate is selected to move forward in the hiring process, the recruiter will set up a live WebEx interview with the candidate and hiring manager.”
If the hiring manager decides to move forward with the candidate, the candidate then goes through CO-OP’s standard hiring process, which includes an offer letter and pre-employment screening.
“We then schedule them into one of our in-person contact center training classes on-site, before they begin their work,” said Wilson.
For non-contact center positions, CO-OP continues its standard pre-screen process, which is a telephone interview conducted by the recruiter. But the company has replaced the in-person manager interview with a live WebEx interview. All non- contact center new hires attend virtual new employee orientation, which is facilitated by the CO-OP HR team.
“We just don’t virtually onboard contact center staff,” said Wilson. “We still prefer to do that in person.”
Looking Forward
She explained that due to the need for social distancing, additional orientation classes are being held to accommodate not only the increased demand but smaller class sizes.
From what CO-OP has experienced in the early days of the pandemic and this new, more distant approach to hiring, could it be the way more companies hire moving forward?
“I think there's probably going to be less of the in-person interviews in the future, not to say we're going to go completely away from that, but I think what this shows is we can hire good people and we can do quite a bit of it virtually,” stated Middleton-Jones.