Large corporations such as Facebook, Nestle, Amazon, and Cargill are putting a halt on both domestic and international travel as a precautionary step to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Understandably, such impactful decisions will affect lives personally and professionally, but due to the fact tens of thousands of people across 40 countries have become infected with the virus in less than 60 days, the safety measure is more than justified.
In regards to recruiting, the onsite interviewing process must be altered during this time as well. From procuring applicants to achieving your hiring goals for 2020, below we will discuss how you can prepare and move forward.
How HR and Talent Acquisition Teams Prepare?
HR leaders should review and update emergency response protocols and communicate with employees accordingly. False information about the virus is running rampant, so keep everyone well-informed. Additionally, it’s important that everyone understands the threat of the virus, its rapid progression, and tips for prevention.
Counsel colleagues and team members to avoid handshakes and advise frequent hand washing. The virus is spread primarily through coughing and sneezing, and as such, door knobs, cell phones, computer keyboards, etc. can be very easily contaminated.
Companies Imposing Employee Travel Restrictions:
- Twitter – all non-essential travel (including candidate travel)
- Nike – partial restrictions
- Google – all int’l travel
- Amazon – all non-essential travel (including all onsite candidate interviews, now going to video)
- GitHub –
- Salesforce – all non-essential travel
- Square – Pausing all business travel and discouraging personal travel
- inFeedo – Pausing all non-essential travel
- Intel – All Travel and Conferences attendance or meetings with people you can’t track where they came from.
- Stripe – Paused global business travel.
- Bottomline Technologies – all non-essential travel (including all onsite candidate interviews, now going to video)
- VSCO – Paused international travel and non-essential domestic travel
- Nestle – restricting international business travel until mid-March
- L’Oreal – suspending business travel through March
- Unilever – restricting to “business-critical” travel
- Community Solutions (nonprofit) – all non-essential travel through the end of March
- Ford – restricting all global travel until March 27th
- Cargill – Suspended all non-essential business travel
- World Bank/IMF – moving spring meetings to virtual
- JP Morgan – Restricting non-essential global travel
- Atlassian – restricting to only high business impact travel
- Textio – encouraging remote work and suspending travel
- 23andMe – banned travel to affected areas as listed by CDC, instructed employees to only attend critical conferences
- Automattic – Pausing all business travel and discouraging personal travel
- Tenable – onboarding of new members is now online only
- IBM – suspending travel for internal meetings, external event with 1,000+ attendees, non-critical international travel
Companies Imposing Remote Work:
- Twitter – Encouraging all employees who are able to work from home, video interviews
- Facebook – moving to all video interviews to restrict visits to physical offices
- Square – suspended visitors + certain teams being encouraged to WFH in Seattle and SF, and Dublin, Ireland and London
- Stripe – encouraging/requiring work from home, suspending visitors, video interviews
- Amazon – all onsite candidate interviews, now going to video
- VSCO – offering optional WFH, no social visitors, video interviews
- JP Morgan – Managers requested that about 10% of staff across its consumer bank work remotely as part of the plan’s resiliency testing.
- Microsoft – Allowing SF/Seattle employees to work from home through March 9th.
- Textio – encouraging remote work and suspending travel
- 23andMe – conducting work from home drills to ensure connectivity and business continuity; empowering employees to work from home based on their own situation (response to school closures, sick household member, etc)
Companies Imposing Virtual Based Interviews / WFH:
- StayingHomeClub – a running list of tech companies WFH/travel/conference plans
- Twitter – Encouraging all employees who are able to work from home, video interviews
- Facebook – moving to all video interviews to restrict visits to physical offices, asked all bay area employees to wfh through March
- Square – suspended visitors + certain teams being encouraged to WFH in Seattle and SF and Dublin, Ireland and London
- Stripe – encouraging/requiring work from home, suspending visitors, video interviews
- ADP – Enabling work from home capabilities within impacted regions; no mandatory WFH announcements at this time.
- Amazon – all onsite candidate interviews, now going to video
- VSCO – offering optional WFH, no social visitors, video interviews
- JP Morgan – Managers requested that about 10% of staff across z m m consumer bank work remotely as part of the plan’s resiliency testing.
- Microsoft – Allowing SF/Seattle employees to work from home through March 9th.
- Official Microsoft guidance
- LinkedIn tells Bay Area employees to work from home through March, if possible, and is also asking employees to postpone all non-essential business travel and will not participate in external events in March and April
- Textio – encouraging remote work and suspending travel
- 23andMe – encouraging work from home; empowering employees to work from home based on their own situation (response to school closures, sick household member, etc)
- Ellucian – suspending all in person interviews; utilizing video based interviews across all global positions. Remote work is encouraged/supported
- Grammarly – SF, New York, and Vancouver employees mandated to work from home; Kyiv employees encouraged to work from home; conducting all candidate interviews by video
- Indeed – all employees requested to work from home (same parent company as Glassdoor)
- Glassdoor – all employees asked to work from home until further notice (same parent company as Indeed)
- Salesforce – encouraging Seattle Salesforce/Tableau employees to WFH through March. strongly encouraging all employees across California and New York to work remotely for the month of March
- Google – Asking all north american employees to wfh until 4/10
- Nordstrom – Encouraging employees to work from home if they can
- Boeing – encouraging Seattle-area employees to work from home
- Confluent – supporting WFH and empowering candidates to interview remotely.
- LinkedIn – Bay area employees asked to work from home through March.
- Expedia – Encouraging Seattle employees to work from home
- WalkMe – Candidate interview travel suspended, moved to video interviews
- Bullhorn – “suspended” handshakes, a switch to Zoom meetings where ever possible and implemented an external visitor process that sees our policy communicated to visitors 24 hours before a meeting, encouraging cancellation or online meetings where symptoms may be experienced. No office closures yet though.
- Adobe – Asking Seattle and Bay area employees to work from home through March 23rd
- Box – Work from home for all locations
- Catalyst – Work from home (NY) on a week-by-week basis
- Eli Lilly and Co – encouraging all U.S. employees to work from home if possible
- Okta – directed Bellevue, SF, San Jose, London, Paris, Amsterdam employees to wfh.
- Airbnb – SF employees encouraged to work from home and no approval needed. Seattle office closed.
- Lyft – SF and Seattle employees encouraged to work from home
- eCarta – work from home, Seattle and SF office shut down
- WSurveyMonkey – allowing employees flexibility to work from home through March 20
- Coinbase – optional WFH starting 3/9, also providing $250 stipend per employee for video conferencing equipment
- Pure Storage – work from home, Seattle / Bellevue, Mountain View
- TMobile – work from home, Seattle / Bellevue
- Genie – work from home, Redmond
- REI – Seattle, work from home
- Houzz – WFH in Bay Area, but offices will still be open for those who want to work in office. Will be monitored on a week to week basis
- Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – asked DC employees to telework
- Stride – WFH strongly encouraged in SF (only office location), but office will still be open for those who want to work in office. Will be monitored on a daily/weekly basis
- LA Times – Restricting employee travel and encouraging work from home
- ButcherBox – mandatory WFH starting Monday 3/16
- Handshake – encouraging all employees to work from home 3/9 to 3/20 (reviewed weekly to determine if we extend)
- Drift – WFH required across all offices (Boston, SF, Tampa and Seattle). Reassessing every Friday.
- Washington Post – asking employees to wfH
- Dolby – option to work remote
- Reflektive – All domestic and international travel on hold, no visitors in offices, supporting work from home, all interviews done remotely. Reassessing every weekend.
- Spotify – All employees required to remote work through March
- Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago – non-critical employees asked to work remotely for 2 weeks (start March 12) then reevaluate.
- Mozilla – Strongly recommending work from home for all employees until 3/27, will be reviewed and extended if needed. PNon-essential travel for two weeks canceled.
- Mattermost – Majority of staff is remote, recommend WFH for SF.
- Nextdoor – all global employees sterviews strongly encouraged to WFH, all interview remote
- DNAnexus – All employees strongly encouraged all to WFH from both SF and Mt View offices
- HelloBetter.de – Instituted work from home for all global employees
- PolicyGenius – Optional WFH
- Confluent – requiring WFH globally; all interviews transitioning to remote.
- Hometree.co.uk – running wfh mandatory policy until further government advice for all employees.
- Sisense – Highly Encouraged Work From Home for all locations.
- Thrive Digital – Team members recommended to work from home until March 31st, however our office remains open (for now). In-person interviews have been rescheduled to video calls. Non-team member office visitors are restricted.
- WalkMe – All employees have been notified that they can work from home if they feel more secure. Currently, the offices are open. A full day of remote work is implied in the Tel Aviv office to test the systems on Sunday (work day).
- Internxt – All employees are encouraged to work from home
- GoCardless – all offices closed until further notice
The above information came from a crowd-sourced document from Lars at Amplify Talent (here).
How to Update Applicants?
When notifying applicants to setup interviews, inform them of the provisions being made in the interest of keeping everyone safe during this time. For instance, plan to replace in-person interviews with telephone or video interviews instead. This prevents unnecessary contact and travel for everyone involved. In addition to interviews, consider canceling unnecessary in-person sales meetings and non-essential gatherings.
How Will Your Team Prepare for this Impact?
Companies of all sizes are reevaluating their policies to permit employees to work from home, when the dynamics of the work environment allow this option. Likewise, when employees are outfitted with necessary work-at-home tools and guidelines, employees will be more apt to remain at home when sick. During this time, it may be wise to also reexamine sick leave, and either increase the number of days or waive limitations altogether. Otherwise, staff will likely show up for work. Maintaining steady lines of communication among team members will alleviated uncertainty and provide direction as things continue to unfold with the coronavirus.
How This Will Impact Hiring Goals in 2020
While the full effect of the virus on hiring and the economy at large is yet to be seen, preparation is key to ensuring your work routine is minimally impacted. Fortunately, the internet has put the world at our fingertips, making remote-work and streamlined communications possible in a variety of ways. Further, this has the potential of being a crucial public safety tactic that could make a huge difference for many.
Current Challenges I’m Facing as a Sourcer
- I’m predicting that our Summer recruiting efforts we’ll slow down. I’m noticing that my screens and applicant rates are slowing down. The virus fears will make candidates stay where there at for the time being.
- I may lose my competitive advantage when prospecting for candidates.. A huge selling point is having them come onsite and meeting with the hiring manager. Maybe send them — a tee shirt or something to sell the culture?
- Developer interviews have to do white boarding examples. This has become a pain for us at Amazon.. So, just working through those challenges.
- If you are moving to virtual interviews. Having the candidate test there speaker/wifi connection the day before.. We’ve had a lot of issues with this.
- Prepping your interviewers too — over Skype is way different them interviewing someone onsite. You may have dogs/babies etc – they need to be more flexible with these challenges.
- On the positive side it will make more companies reconsider there work from home policies!
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Recommended Reading:
Josef Kadlec Interview Spotlight
Breaking SourceCon Seattle Goes Digital
How to Write a Resume that Doesn’t Get Sent into a Black Hole