Many have spoken on the alienating and dehumanizing effects of technology and how Zoom and other similar platforms, while incredibly convenient, cannot compensate for human interaction, connection and information exchange that in person meetings allow for.

With so many employers now relying exclusively (or at least mainly) on interviews conducted over a technology platform, it got me wondering if this “virtual effect” is also occurring in interview processes happening in today’s market? Moreover, could this lack of in-person connection explain the prolonged recruiting lifecycles we’re seeing?

A Look Back at Interviews Before COVID

In order to evaluate whether there has been an increase in the average interview-to-hire timeframe for the permanent searches we’ve conducted since employers have started leveraging remote interview processes, we compared our pre-COVID and post-COVID time to fill stats. The differences were jarring. In 2019, when candidates met in person, our average time to hire was 17 days. When we look at the same metric for interviews conducted entirely virtually, that stat jumps to 55 days. Fascinatingly, when we measure time to fill where employers also include a live or in-person interview, that number significantly decreases to just 31 days.
*Hiring stats based upon data collected between January 2022 through September 2022.

Not only that, but our hiring data shows that moving to live interviews in an average 1.52 rounds was more likely to result in a successful hire. Unsuccessful searches conducted up to an average of 3.11 interview rounds virtually before moving to live interviews, if at all. This information would suggest that interview processes that rely entirely on virtual interaction are far less likely to conclude successfully, and those employers run the risk of wasting significantly more amounts of interviewer time, bandwidth and resources before reaching the conclusion that an individual isn’t the right fit for a role.

Case Study

A client of ours learned this lesson the hard way. Desiring to hire an Executive Assistant, their initial thought was to go through multiple rounds and screenings of virtual interviews before committing to an onsite interview. This was partially because they felt virtual interviews would be more convenient to schedule and because several of their team members were traveling and they reasoned it would allow the process to keep moving.

The candidate was presented and went through three separate rounds of virtual interviews and had touch points with four team members in total, all of whom were extremely enthusiastic. References were checked in anticipation of the candidate coming onsite for a final meet and greet and to see the physical space they would be working from. Unfortunately, it was at this stage of the process that things unraveled as the client determined that the characteristics of the candidate and demeanor were not going to be suitable for the role, after all.

All in all, from the time of presenting the candidate to declining the candidate from the process, 42 days had elapsed and approximately 6 hours of interviewer bandwidth had been used up, not including the additional time spent internally on gathering feedback, coordinating logistics or communicating with external search partners, in this case us. Had the client inverted the process and started with an onsite interview or even moved to onsite after one virtual screen as we discussed above, significant amounts of time and effort would have been saved. They also recognized that, while convenient, the virtual interviews didn’t convey the same level of information or clarity they needed to make a decision about a candidate and that those inputs were best received from an in-person interaction.

Recognizing this, the client shifted to onsite meetings as the first step going forward.

Lessons Learned

Our empirical experience suggests that the most efficient approach to interviewing, both in terms of time to fill and in terms of information gleaned that is relevant to decision-making, is an approach that includes an in-person interview. Moreover, companies are advantaged by incorporating the onsite interview stage as early in a process as possible, as doing so allows everyone to get on the same page faster and greatly reduces time to fill stats.

Metrics aside, I believe there is something very powerful that shifts in our empathy and ability to relate and connect to others when we introduce the distance of technology. It’s a lot easier to dismiss a candidate you’ve never spent time in a room with, shook the hand of, taken a stroll with or truly looked at face to face. Those are the moments that lend to connection and through connection comes understanding, which should be the goal of any interview process. Not only do the stats support it, but our collective humanity suggests meeting in person is the dignified thing to do.

Written by Jessica Vann

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This is a story of how a business owner who grew up in the heart (some would say hood) of San Francisco ended up shifting her company’s “office” to a horse ranch in Tucson, AZ. Let me preface this by saying I have no business owning a horse ranch in the Sonoran Desert. Up until 2 years ago, I wore Ferragamo mules and balanced on a BART train every morning to work from our office in downtown San Francisco. Up until six months ago, I had never even heard of a javelina, let alone imagined I would confront an angry herd of them in my front yard! Perhaps I took the label “trailblazer” a little too literally.

But the last two years of life amidst a pandemic have offered a plethora of lessons as well as opportunities to question the things we previously believed were sacrosanct, including, among so many things, the office. For so many years, as a business owner running a recruiting firm, I believed it was imperative for credibility and company culture that we have an office. I blindly accepted that having an office was what you did. Never mind that office space in downtown San Francisco was the second-most costly item on our P&L after employee salaries and benefits, I never questioned the necessity of the office. All that changed when COVID hit. With shelter in place orders in San Francisco that were perpetually extended to waives of variants that kept us siloed for indefinite amounts of time, the office was no longer available to us, and we were forced to pivot.

I’m not going to lie; those first few months were rough. Like so many small, privately funded companies, our business basically bottomed out overnight. Couple that with the added pressure of maintaining payroll, preserving jobs, and shelling out obscene amounts of rent each month for what was, effectively, a ridiculously overpriced mailbox. Something had to give.

After months of fretting, I realized that the source of my anxiety was my attachment to getting back to business-as-usual and my frustration that I couldn’t for reasons outside of my control. And then it hit me — surrender. Stop trying to control things you can’t. Stop resisting and allow the change to happen. Not the first (and probably not the last time) this lesson has appeared in my life.

The most exciting thing about leadership is that, along with the tremendous burden and responsibility comes empowerment, agency, and the ability to chart your own course. As I began to accept and embrace the changes around me, it made way for new questions and thoughts. Even if it were available, would I want to go back to my old way of life? What kind of lives do my team and I want to lead? What types of experiences are most conducive to building unity and connection within a team? What is the optimal recipe for productivity? How can we shore up training and knowledge exchange in a remote environment? How do we create opportunities for learning and collaboration if the office is no longer available to us?

During the pandemic I discovered new pleasures, interests and activities I never had time to cultivate before and I had more space in the day for observation and reflection. Turns out leadership lessons and metaphors abound when one has the time to witness and process. My newly discovered love of sourdough breadmaking teaches that the dough has to be stretched and pulled to its limits in order to build structure and strength in the loaf, which suggests to me that we, like the dough and most things in the natural world, are programmed for adversity and resiliency. Watching the yucca tree in my front yard struggle to regenerate itself from a frost until I was willing to cut off the dead top and start over taught me that you have to be willing to recognize what’s holding you back and, most importantly, be willing to shed it for renewal to happen. We’ve now adopted this as a mantra at our company. We tell each other to “cut the yucca tree” when it’s clear energy is being misdirected and needs to be reallocated toward a higher-yielding effort. And I wasn’t the only one on our team discovering new joys and sources of connection. Nearly half our team adopted puppies, something they couldn’t have done as easily working from an office, some built coops and started raising chickens, while others tackled ambitious home construction and renovation projects. Were we really willing to trade these newfound pleasures and freedoms and, moreover, was it even necessary to think in those terms?

Releasing the constraint of the office freed up not just financial resources, but creative resources as well. Once I accepted that an office no longer served our needs as a business or the lifestyle we desired as people, it made way for new ideas to emerge. I was no longer lamenting the past; I was dreaming up a new future and finding myself exhilarated by the possibilities to reinvent. While I was comfortable letting go of an office that required us to be there daily, I also knew the right balance for us ultimately needed to entail periodic in-person time. One of our core values (long before Zoom became a way of life) is Touch Over Tech and that became even clearer in the isolation of the pandemic. Tech is incredible for the convenience it offers, but relationships cannot fully root or develop as long as people remain largely anonymous squares on a screen.

With my end game clear, I began a multi-state quest to find a retreat-like space that could hold us, that brought us closer to nature and away from the restrictions, complications and intensity of city life and that offered a soothing backdrop to facilitate meaningful personal connection.

In relinquishing the office, I had to solve for and accept the following 4 things:

1. Change — I had to be willing to recognize that things had permanently shifted. Lifestyles were different, expectations and sentiments were different, and people’s physical locales were, in many cases, different. (50% of our team left the Bay Area in 2020). There was no going back. On top of that, it wasn’t necessary, and we didn’t want to. The only way forward was to reinvent and change.

2. Trust — I believe there are two primary reasons leaders feel a false sense of security in having an office. The first is productivity. Without an office and the ability to observe people, how do I know if people are doing their work? How can I feel confident people aren’t goofing off all day? Easy. Hire people who care about the things you are working toward and solving within your organization and whose love language aligns with the work they do at your organization. Supervision and scrutiny do not motivate people, but finding people who intrinsically care about what they’re doing creates an evergreen resource for motivation. The other reality for us was that 2021 was a banner year. We achieved the most on a gross revenue and EBITDA basis in our entire history and we did it all working remotely. Hard to argue with those results.

The second reason leaders take comfort in an office is the (yet again) false belief that by having an office and being able to keep tabs on people, you can keep them from straying or at least make it more difficult for them to interview elsewhere and leave you. Lots of fear-based thinking here. To that I quote the incomparable Madonna from an interview with Howard Stern, taken completely out of context but it works nonetheless… “You have to get over it. Here’s the thing, if they’re gonna do it, they’re gonna do it. If they’re gonna leave you, they’re gonna leave you. If they can be taken, let them go.”

3. Culture — I don’t subscribe to the convention that a company’s office is what defines its culture. Culture is the biproduct of authentic, spontaneous and sincere moments between people that create trust, solidarity, and a sense of belonging and joy. Culture does not happen because you simply group a bunch of lounge chairs together, add some ping pong tables and offer employees free lunch. Those are distractions and perks at best, they are not what creates adhesion and unifies a team. In the words of the great Maya Angelou, “…people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Recognizing this paved the way for the types of intentional gatherings, connections and interactions I wanted to facilitate when the team got together.

4. Training and Onboarding — This along with culture were the biggest drivers for coming up with a non-office way of getting together. While we developed a lot of additional training resources and tools to support our new and ramping hires that included someone to oversee training, a complete overhaul and refresh of our training materials and the production of training videos and resources, none of these could take the place of learning through osmosis and proximity to peers, something we like to call “ear hustling.” Having a place to assemble that would support training efforts was also an essential criterion.

The solution I ultimately arrived at is a sprawling, serene horse ranch in the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, situated at the base of the towering Catalina Mountains and nestled amongst a verdant desert jungle. To solve for culture, training and meaningful interaction, our team now meets there quarterly for several days at a time. Having visited Miraval Resort together as a team several years prior and experienced the undeniable power and grounding of the desert, landing in Tucson felt like a familiar friend and a logical choice. Not only is this space a place to convene, it’s also a place to regroup and reset, to brainstorm and work on our most urgent challenges in a serene setting that instantaneously quiets the distractions of the world and allows you to be reflective and focused.

Our first time at the ranch our team created impromptu morning yoga sessions to start the day under the canopy of mature mesquite trees and the soundtrack of the wild birdlife that can be heard throughout the property. They ended the workdays with walks at sunset and outdoor fires in the kiva that went on until the early hours of the morning. We bonded over run-ins with snakes (true story), we gathered kindling for fires, we ear-hustled, we made butter and tapered candles, we collaborated, we facilitated coaching and training sessions and we connected with new co-workers in person for the first time. And, we did it all without cubicles.

THE END.
Written by Jessica Vann

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Check out Katie's "Day in the Life" video on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cj8fNI4ABIK/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

This got me thinking that there is something very powerful that happens to our empathy and ability to relate and connect to others when we introduce the distance of technology. Many have spoken on the alienating and dehumanizing effects of technology and how Zoom and other similar platforms, while incredibly convenient, cannot compensate for human interaction and connection.   

With so many employers now relying exclusively (or at least mainly) on interviews conducted over a technology platform, it got me wondering if this "gaming effect" is also occurring in interview processes in today’s market and what evidence there might be for that based on the interview processes we run as a recruiting firm.  

In this episode, we welcome back Gillian Lopez, VP of Accounts and Growth at Maven Recruiting Group. Gillian works directly with many of Maven’s clients spanning Fortune 500 companies, venture capital firms, tech startups, you name it, and therefore, has a direct pulse on the market and what both job seekers and hiring managers are experiencing in today’s job market, which makes her the ideal guest for today’s topic.  

Our goal with this episode is to debunk the stereotype most people have about the kind of person who is successful as an EA. You know the type – they are hyper-organized, type A, love list making and planned their wedding at 10 years old! Campbell wouldn’t put herself into that category and mentioned she’s never fit the classic EA archetype, and yet she loves this profession and has been really successful at it. Campbell’s affinity for this role also demonstrates an important lesson, which is that there are multiple ways to be successful and, often times, being able to approach challenges and solutions from a different angle can be incredibly beneficial. So, if you’re someone who also feels like you also don’t fit the typical EA mold, or you’d like to learn how you can approach your own EA role from a more unique or innovative viewpoint, this episode is for you!   

Clearly travel as we know it has changed now that we have COVID to contend with.  There are weighty feelings around this subject and an ever-evolving list of rules and regulations to adhere to, which adds yet another layer to planning. 

But travel is Courtney's bread and better, in fact, it’s one of her favorite aspects of the Executive Assistant role so we’re talking to a bonified expert here. In view of this, today’s episode will be focused on giving our Executive Assistant listeners helpful tips and tricks for planning travel in a post-pandemic environment.  This episode is sponsored by Office Otter.

This episode is sponsored by Cabinet, the all-in-one software application for Executive Assistants. Cabinet was created for high-performing Executive Assistants who are streamlining processes, creating culture, and preventing burnout - all before lunch. 

Discover why EAs at Fortune 500 companies are turning to Cabinet to help them handle complex calendars and manage their never-ending to-do lists. Go to joincabinet.com and sign up for your free account. 

This episode is sponsored by Cabinet, the all-in-one software application for Executive Assistants streamlining processes, creating culture, and preventing burnout all before lunch!

Discover why EAs at Fortune 500 companies are turning to Cabinet to help them handle complex calendars and manage their never-ending to-do lists. Go to joincabinet.com and use start your free account. 

There are tracks within the EA role, there are tracks outside of the EA role and for those who see themselves tracking outside of the EA role, one of the paths that we’ve seen become commonly available to Executive Assistants is that of the Chief of Staff position. We’ve developed a course on “Becoming a Chief of Staff,” specifically designed for strategic Executive Assistants. So for those of you looking to further your knowledge & opportunities for advancement & community, visit www.mavenrec.com/courses.