Improving Online Meetings and Interviews

As remote work becomes more prominent in everyone’s lives, we’re bringing you new tips and articles on making your remote workforce more successful and efficient from the hiring process to running good meetings.

Today, some key tips on running better online meetings and interviews.

Technical fixes for online meetings and interviews

Shortly after the pandemic hit, the “Zoom” shirt gained new currency as people took to sprucing themselves up from pajamas and into a nicer button-down. For savvy executives, think beyond the shirt and you’ll be well on your way to improving your basic online meeting setup:

• Sound may be the most overlooked component of successful online communication. Most mics on board computers are omnidirectional and will pick up a lot of background noise. Any sort of mic that is closer to your mouth (such as a headset or earpods) will be a vast improvement, but if you really want an impressive setup, consider acquiring a USB mic that will run you between $50-200 (a perennially popular option is the Blue Yeti).
• Lighting is another area that will greatly enhance the image you project on camera. Even lights you have already can be employed to improve illumination, granted they are placed close to you (even better if you can arrange a light source to bounce softer light toward you from a light surface like a wall). Adjustable “ring” lights favored by influencers can be found on Amazon for less than $100 and will greatly enhance the professional image you project during a business meeting.
• Consider your background: Ideally find a quiet space where you can remove distracting personal items, and even “stage” a professional-looking desk (even if you are working from home).
• Optimize settings: Zoom has settings that will enhance your facial features and bring up low lighting, as well as some key audio settings to make sure your communications are as clear as possible.

Building Better Meetings

Even before the pandemic, meetings could be a painful part of corporate life. They can be long, unfocused and consume a lion share of your working day.

The solution? Encourage your team to schedule fewer meetings and keep them to a tighter timetable. Some important tools in that effort:

• Encourage all in your team to have an agenda arranged in advance of the meeting.
• Assign responsibilities to all involved in the meeting. Avoid meetings where some attendees are passive.
• Use shared documents to come to agreed-upon outcomes in the meeting.

Schedule Fewer Meetings

As we detailed in a recent article on WordPress’s long-time distributed workforce paradigm, there is a better way. And that is to attempt to build a workday that is somewhat asynchronous, so that workers can be able to design their day in a way that best suits their individual tasks. Read our article on the subject: The Five Levels of a Distributed Workforce from the Founder of WordPress

Building Better Online Interviews

We here at ACCUR are well-versed in conducting online interviews, and over the years have developed a time-tested framework for interviews:

• For the interviewer: begin your interview with a strategy that revolves around allowing your candidate to talk and disclose as much information as possible.
• For the interviewee: this is your moment so make sure you’ve spent the time to present yourself virtually in the best possible frame, including the considerations above for sound, background, lighting and settings. Also prepare talking points that you can bring out to point to specific accomplishments and project work. Finally it’s always good to have intelligent questions that show you’ve done your research about the target company and are prepared to align your qualifications to business goals. Read our article on the subject: To Conduct Effective Candidate Interviews, Focus on These Four Goals