Our Transition to Remote Work

Working from home has always been part of our culture at CS Recruiting.

When I think back to the early days and how/why we made a decision to be a hybrid office, I have to chuckle because it was a silly and potentially hasty decision at the time.

 However, now that I look back, I can see that it was one of the best decisions we made from the start.

I remember meeting Beth Herberholz on a snowy day in December 2011 for an interview. Beth and I were introduced through a mutual connection and I had just made the decision that it was time to hire our first employee and start scaling the business.

 When I met Beth, she was a recent Michigan transplant and enjoying what life had to offer in the “big city.” One of the perks of living downtown was that she didn’t need a car.

Beth checked every box in terms of what we were looking for in our first employee. She was bright, motivated, had relevant experience and a good head on her shoulders. But, she still didn’t have a car. And, our suburban office was 25 miles away from her apartment in the city.

 In our initial conversation, Beth made it clear that she wouldn’t be up for a five day commute. In order to get to our office, she had to take a bus to a train and then walk several blocks to our office.

 Instead of turning away, I told Beth that we’d figure out something that worked for both of us. 

And we did.

 It was that moment when we made Beth the offer and agreed to a split schedule with 3 days in the office and 2 days at home. This model proved to work and eventually led to her being home 3 days a week and in the office the other two.

 Every employee that we hired after Beth was given the same opportunity. We had some learning curves and bumps along the way, but we figured out our remote management style and used the right technologies to keep our team in check. We learned early on that by allowing our team to work from home, we showed them that we TRUSTED them. This type of trust and flexibility shaped our culture and set the tone for our management style moving forward.

Fast forward to when the pandemic first hit, and offices closed nationwide. We watched companies in our industry crumble under the pressure and heard panic from candidates that worked at companies large and small. We heard from our network that many of these companies were not prepared from a technology standpoint…they were still using desktop computers and didn’t have the network or bandwidth to support a remote team. As business started to ramp back up, companies realized they weren’t set up to interview, hire or train new hires remotely and they didn’t have the resources to make important hiring (and retention) decisions during the height of the market. 

Since then, we’ve all seen how the pandemic shifted mindsets and eventually led to somewhat of a “new normal” working structure across the globe. Many companies (like ours) quickly realized that remote work COULD work and it was up to leadership to implement the right policies and send the right messages to keep their teams engaged and connected. We’ve seen other companies mandate in-office presence and while some essential businesses have an obvious reason to do this, a lot of companies have stuck to their office model out of sheer tradition or possibly….fear. 

Over the last several months, I’ve had many conversations around the virtual vs. office set up and I’ve been caught a bit off guard when people have challenged our decision. I’ve heard comments like “there’s no way that will work long term” or “how do you know your colleagues aren’t just sitting on their couches watching Netflix all day?” The answer is simple and goes back to the connection we established with our team on day one when we made the initial deal with Beth. We TRUST them. We set our team up for success and recognize the value of flexibility.

In addition to the general skepticism, I’ve had many clients ask specifically about interviewing and training in a virtual setting. 

Prior to the pandemic, we naturally relied on our office space for interviewing, onboarding and training. As long as we had the space, it made sense to bring candidates in for interviews on our in-office days and to have them work in-person for the first few weeks in the role. Like many other companies, the pandemic challenged us to figure out how to recruit virtually for ourselves. I won’t lie and say it was “easy,” but I will say that our team did a great job by putting a lot of thought, time and attention into making it work. Huge kudos to our Director of Recruiting, Morgan Shutman for giving this her attention and figuring out a sustainable and scalable strategy that allows us to confidently grow remotely. 

What we’ve found is that it’s just as easy (and more efficient for everyone) to conduct Zoom interviews. You can learn a lot about someone from their presence and demeanor on-screen and we’ve developed a system where we hold 1.5-2 hours for an interview and multiple interviewees jump on and off to make the best use of the candidates time. 

Additionally, training new hires virtually has become very normal to us and we are also finding value in the ability to stay focused and efficient with our training schedules. Robert Glazer writes about virtual training and provides a ton of guidance and templates in his recent book “How to Thrive in a Virtual Workplace.” If you are setting up virtual training or looking to implement a new system, I highly recommend you check it out!

If you’ve already made the transition to remote work, or this is something on your radar, it’s important to know that it is possible and the evidence will continue to build as companies take this leap and maintain growth and profitability.

Anything is possible if you set expectations, have the right leadership mentality and trust your team. 

#workfromhome #ConversationsForChange #FutureOfWork Charlie Saffro