Editor’s Note: The season of COVID-19 has complicated life in many different ways and careers are not immune. Many organizations have implemented remote working with team members overseeing their jobs and personal matters like children doing virtual learning or quarantining to protect family members with a high risk of respiratory illness. This is the second in an ongoing series that looks into the lives of the VALiNTRYtechnology team and how they “walk the walk” when it comes to embodying Digital Transformation.
Working for a technology company that specializes in recruiting and digital transformation has its advantages when a global pandemic hits, forcing most office jobs to work from home. That’s exactly what happened in 2020, causing the team at VALiNTRYtechnology to not only pivot to remote working, but to also “practice what we preach” in regard to seeing the fruits of embracing a culture of high performing individuals combined with a cloud-based digital backbone.
Such was the case for VALiNTRYtechnology and our recruiters like Anna Marcano. When the pandemic happened, Anna and the rest of her team, embraced working from home. However, once restrictions were lifted, Anna continued to work from home because of a high-risk family member.
What Anna quickly realized was, like many other team members, she can be just as productive, if not more, at home than at the office. “I have to put up some boundaries,” she says. “It’s important for me to have a designated workspace at home with a certain number of hours in mind for the day for me to get my work done. It helps me to focus.”
Working from home definitely gives a level of flexibility. If Anna needs to take care of personal matters, she can address it immediately, like a family emergency or merely the need to walk her dog. Yet, this flexibility is a two-sided coin that benefits her and VALiNTRYtechnology. Sometimes an urgent matter arises with a client after hours. Since Anna is already set up and plugged into her home office, she can take care of the matter quickly.
“There really aren’t any limitations to remote working for me,” says Anna. You’d think that productivity would be a major issue but that’s why it is important to have a high-performance, focused team on the front end that gets the job done no matter what. “Whether we are at home or in the office, we are a focused team,” she says.
The only real downside to remote working is the inability to casually walk over to a co-worker’s desk to spontaneously address recruiting issues that may arise. However, a powerful cloud-based collaboration platform such as Microsoft Teams almost makes up for it with features like video calls, phone calls, and the chat feature.
Just about any organization can offer remote working as an option, but for it to be effective, there need to be two key factors. First, a values-based company with a culture of trust, open communication, and transparency must be in place. This starts with the hiring process, something VALiNTRYtechnology knows a lot about. Without a team that exhibits these values, it is challenging to lead in person or remotely.
“We are blessed to have great team members such as Anna,” says Eric Lyublinksky, SVP of Information and Technology Recruiting at VALiNTRYtechnology. “It’s a testament to practicing what we preach to our clients, make sure to hire someone that fits your culture. Anna gets what we are about, and because of her, we serve our clients well,” he added.
The second key factor is a technology/communications suite enabling a team to collaborate effectively. Nothing will ever take the place of in-person communication, but collaboration products such as Microsoft Teams, which Anna’s team uses, come close. She can easily connect with her counterparts via video call or chat anytime.
In addition to collaboration tools, Anna’s team uses is V-FiTT, VALiNTRYtechnology’s proprietary system that automatically feeds qualified job candidates into our applicant tracking system (ATS). This helps VALiNTRYtechnology deliver on the goal of finding qualified candidates in 48 hours or less. Also, everyone at VALiNTRYtechnology is trained to use and implement Salesforce daily for CRM purposes but it also gives the team experience and context in finding and placing candidates trained in Salesforce. Whatever technology suite you choose, make sure it is a good fit for your organization, and constantly provide training and support to make sure everyone is proficient.
With these two elements in place, the switch to remote working can be a seamless and pleasant experience. In Anna’s case, it might even keep your family healthy as well.
Looking to hire remote IT staff for your organization? Or do you just need help finding the best IT talent to fit your unique needs? VALiNTRYtechnology’s IT Staffing experts are glad to help. Contact us today for a free, no-obligation consultation!