How far will you go?
Well according to our recent LinkedIn poll searching for insight about how far you would travel for a job interview - that really depends on your age and the results are doing nothing to help improve some of the negative perceptions of Generation Y/Z.
There is some comfort in our findings, with the overall results showing that in post Covid world candidates are still willing to travel the extra mile for career progression with 56% of respondents willing to travel “as far as they need to” for an interview. 22% would also be willing to travel between 1-2 hours, but then we start to fade away as we reach 13% of people who would drive less than 1 hour for the interview.
But perhaps the most disappointing statistic is that 10% of respondents think that “face to face interviews are pointless” and should instead be done over a virtual platform. We dug a little deeper into these particular respondents and are not entirely surprised to find that this bias exists from Generation Y/Z making up 80% of this response which is staggering.
As a search specialist we think this is really disappointing.
Chris Lewis – Healthcare Manager at RMG said – “The results were comforting and surprising to the same extent. For me when I interview candidates, face to face meetings are imperative to truly understand a person’s cultural fit, see how they conduct themselves and gives valuable insight into their true qualities, you don’t get these things through an online platform. The comfort for me comes from the fact that the vast majority agree with my thoughts, but the number of people that have no desire to return to face to face meetings was very surprising. Covid led to an acceptance that online platforms can be useful when initially screening a candidates’ credentials, but a face-to-face approach is the best route to a correct hiring decision.”
Perhaps there is a role that employers can play to address this reluctance which is to cover reasonable travel costs for those they interview. A report by published several years ago by Graduate Fog cited travel expenses as a reason that graduates were unwilling to travel far for interviews, and with the current fuel crisis it’s easy to see this as a genuine issue.
We hope that when challenged these candidates would be more open to face to face interviews. As a special search firm, we fully support the desire for work life balance with at least some remote working, something that we have formalised ourselves. But, for the younger generation who are early on in their careers, being around some of the more established colleagues is fundamental to growth, for at least a portion of your working week anyway.
In summary a robust hiring process, like the new normal working week, doesn’t have to all be done face to face, nor should it all be done remotely if you can avoid it. The answer lies in a sensible balance.
If you are reviewing your hiring process and would like to speak to one of the team about how to capture the most efficient combination of virtual and in person interviews or working week, then we are happy to share our processes with you. Please contact info@rmg-uk.com today for more information.
