SGN In-House Recruiter Hayley Mowbray has been helping SGN onboard new employees during lockdown.
As an In-House Recruiter, I work as part of the HR Service Centre and oversee our recruitment.
My job involves handling recruitment requests, advertising our vacancies, training managers in best practice interview techniques, and managing the recruitment systems that we use.
Adapting to the pandemic
The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has impacted how we recruit talent into our business.
Initially, our recruitment slowed down and the HR Service Centre's focus shifted to support the business through the lockdown restrictions introduced. We're committed to keeping customers and colleagues safe and warm, which means we’ve had to help our key workers remaining on site and those transitioning to work from home in line with government advice. Our people have adjusted well to the situation thanks to the support of our IT teams and dedicated colleagues, including those who have been redeployed to other teams to boost collaborative working across our functions.
Despite the restrictions imposed, we need to ensure our managers can still recruit the people they require. All new recruitment requests are being approved in line with safety guidelines from the government, and we are working with hiring managers to review our onboarding processes in different departments around the business.
To make sure this is done in the safest and most effective way, we have asked everyone to have interviews over Skype or Microsoft Teams, preventing the need for face to face meetings. Our offer letters, contracts and background checking can all be completed remotely which creates a nice and easy experience for candidates.
It’s been a big change having to work alone away from my teammates, but I’ve been embracing the flexibility I’m afforded to ensure I can balance work, home life and exercise more freely.