Creating climate-resilient processes and reducing carbon emissions with virtual hiring

This Earth Day we want to take a moment to celebrate our current customers and partners – by investing in virtual hiring practices they are keeping cars off the road and planes out of the skies. Whether it’s having a live video panel interview instead of multiple trips to an office, or a game-based assessment instead of a drive to a testing center – our customers are saving the atmosphere from needless CO2e emissions by implementing virtual wherever possible.

The fact is, gone are the days when businesses, governments and individuals could pretend like every choice doesn’t add up in the fight against climate change, and we’re pleased to partner with businesses that are leading the way with massive overhauls of their supply chains and product offerings for the sake of our planet.

Climate-resilient hiring processes

This year’s Earth Day theme is “invest in our planet,” and we think it’s important to recognize that in addition to being the moral choice, creating company policies that are resilient in the face of climate-induced disasters is good for the bottom-line. When thinking about avoiding critical disruption, hiring must be included in business continuity plans.

The whole world felt what it was like to pivot hiring during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and those lessons can easily be applied to natural disasters. Can your recruiters still get key roles filled for locations across the country when one region experiences a flood, hurricane or blizzard? You likely have a business continuity plan for everything – but hiring is a new area to be considered when face-to-face interviews are impossible.

Download our business continuity cheat sheet to help your team build a climate-resilient plan that can also stand up to border closures and any other unforeseen circumstances the world throws your way.

Calculating the environmental impact of virtual interviews

As HireVue celebrated its 15 millionth virtual interview in 2020 (now close to 30 million in 2022), we decided to build an internal carbon footprint calculator for concerned clients and candidates that would measure the CO2e emissions of virtual interviewing versus traditional interviewing. The calculator compares the estimated energy output for candidate computer usage (electricity), used for virtual interviews, to the travel mileage (transportation) required for on-site interviews.

This year, internal analysis estimates that the carbon footprint for 29M interviews has been reduced by 75% because of HireVue's services.

Simply by replacing the first in-person interview with virtual, hiring teams and job candidates saved the equivalent carbon emissions absorbed by 330,000 trees, or 30,000 airline passengers, in 2021. The convenience of taking initial interviews online saves time for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers, while also shrinking our collective carbon footprint. As adoption of virtual interviewing increases, the positive impact will grow exponentially.

We look forward to helping more organizations adopt virtual processes and forego needless emissions in the future. In honor of current progress, HireVue has made a donation to the Canopy Project to plant a tree for each of our employees, customers, and partners to help combat deforestation caused by climate change.

Talk to one of our hiring experts today and find out how HireVue can save your organization money, time and environmental impact moving forward.