TwineIn a fast-changing hiring landscape and with a massive shift to remote work among creative talent, HR teams face multiple challenges. This article highlights the key issues and solutions to vetting candidates, carefully onboarding talent and rapidly proving their worth to avoid costly and time-consuming mis-hires.
Creatives are a notoriously fickle hire, even in the pre-remote days. But now they can hunt for the top jobs in a global market, and demonstrate their skills through glowing portfolios. Attracting the right candidates is one job HR is used to dealing with, but ensuring they are who and what they claim to be is another challenge.
The Rise of the Remote Creative
HR professionals face a number of challenges dealing with the creative mindset.
First, there is the flood of fake applicants to deal with, along with potentially hundreds of genuine candidates.
But in a world of pro-forma job descriptions and little room for candidates to express themselves in bare-bones application forms, identifying strong prospects is also a challenge.
After that, managing interviews, assessing creativity and skills, and identifying candidates that would be a strong fit for the company with long-term ambition are further issues.
To resolve these issues, assuming the HR team doesn’t outsource hiring of specialist roles to niche agencies or headhunters, a logical and consistent strategy is required.
Fighting the Fakes and Fraudsters
A recent Gartner report suggests one-in-four job profiles will be a fake by 2028. Some might be from candidates trying to spam for a role, others might be from journalists trying to prove discrimination against race, gender or other aspects.
But, most will be from criminals, using AI-generated fictional creations. Their aim is to join a company remotely. Perhaps, so they can quickly gain access to any systems, steal data, plant viruses, access financial information, or simply claim wages and benefits until their ruse is spotted, or create “real” fake personas that have a genuine career paper trail behind them.
To fight fake job applicants, HR should work with IT to deploy fraud-spotting solutions to weed out most of them. For the rest, training recruiters to verify candidate information through multiple channels is a vital human-centric step. Implementing a modern applicant tracking system can aid in this process as well.
Even though the role is remote, HR can demand some increasing in-person interactions. Larger businesses will have the budget, and meeting team members and with immediate bosses can ensure candidate suitability. They should also understand the security technology landscape around physical security and IT defenses to maintain business and worker safety.
Third-party checks and due diligence are also a key part of the HR strategy, creating a multi-pronged approach to candidate identity, proving their skills and knowledge. Key to this is checking in with former managers to find out if they work well independently, if they follow rules and laws, and take their work seriously enough for the market they are operating in.
Hiring A Remote Creative
Having found and selected the best candidate, hiring for remote work requires further finesse compared to on-site workers. The primary question, remuneration, stock and benefits, should be staggered to generate long-term attractive benefits for the employee, building loyalty.
HR must also work with IT to ensure a suitable technology stack is in place that ensures they can work and communicate effectively. Along with logins, hardware, any creative requirements like art hardware, studio equipment and comfort needs must be met on day one.
Once they are logged on and in-situ, HR must ensure the employee’s team has a 30-day plan in place with contact, feedback and mentoring in place to minimise alone time during their early weeks. Ensuring they are made to feel part of the team, rather than left to get on with it is a key part to building engagement and loyalty.
Among their tasks, some should have quick proving points, milestones and fast wins to help them feel adept and valued, and used to highlight any communications or system weaknesses that must be addressed. They can also bring to the fore any worker weaknesses that training can support.
Working Remotely With HR for A Bright Future and Career
While HR might consider it “job done”, when the employee has made it through their first month, feedback from check-ins and reports should be monitored to ensure progress is happy on all sides. Any negatives should be addressed rather than left to fester, be it something simple like the need for a travel budget or more complex, such as an administrative obstacle or blocker to their work or creativity.
To promote an air of constant learning, they should be encouraged to set aside time for upskilling, through online workshops or peer learning, as well as get-togethers where possible. These will help build up team skills and informal knowledge that doesn’t appear on official documents, as well as help grow camaraderie and a competitive spirit among all members.
Finally, a HR specialist should take time to understand the minutiae of creative types and where their skills can diverge from other roles. Creative writing, design, animation, and advertising projects can extend from days to months. Some creatives need micro-management along the way while others will be happy with a regular timeline.
Challenging HR Beliefs About Remote and Creative Work
Many creatives have been working remotely long before COVID and the recent trend. As such they understand the benefits, responsibilities and demands more than most. HR should take their insights on-board during discussions as part of the trust building process, as well as any feedback on the company’s hiring processes.
Whatever the short-term shifts in working trends, remote workers should not be corralled back into the office on the demands of a CEO’s whim. Instead, HR should take the role as a catalyst for culture change among businesses to get the best results from remote workers, while dealing fairly with those who do not meet expected standards, especially if they are relatively young in their career.
Raksha
