Author: Analisse Dunne
Now, more than ever, remote employees are on the rise, with most companies having switched to ‘work from home’ procedures during COVID-19 quarantine situations. But companies and their employees aren’t just working from home, they’re also hiring from home. And it’s crucial to adapt your hiring process appropriately — and luckily, it’s not that hard to do.
Finding a cultural fit, utilizing skills assessments, and making sure all managers are on the same page with candidates are key components in hiring; and they all still apply when hiring for a remote workforce. Here are our top recruitment tips for remote hiring.
Finding a cultural fit
This consideration in recruiting is important regardless of the employment situation — you always want to make sure that someone will play well with others within your organization. However, when considering remote employees, there has to be an emphasis on not just fitting in well with the team, but in being well suited for remote work in general. Someone who is not comfortable with 100% of their work being online (for the time being or permanently depending on the circumstances and job role) may not be the best fit for a role that is currently remote.
So what makes someone well suited for remote work? Someone who is proactive, values collaboration, and can thrive in an independent work environment is an ideal candidate for a remote position. When you prepare for your initial call or video interview, draft a list of questions to tackle each of these areas.
Utilizing skills assessments
My recruitment process would not be successful without the help of different skills assessment platforms and assignments. These tools help to determine how fit someone may be for a position based on skills. This ensures that they can perform the job they have applied for based on performance and not just based on their resume. This is especially helpful when recruiting candidates for technical and or financial positions. A few platforms that I specifically utilize are:
- Coderbyte: Geared towards testing the skills of developers — candidates can also sign up for the platform to enhance their coding skills!
- eSkill: For standard job-based and subject-based skills assessments
- Traitify: 90-second anti-assessment platform that is a positive experience for candidates and employers alike
The great part about using online tools for skill assessments is that they can be used to evaluate candidates from anywhere. All you have to do is ask candidates to log in and fill out your assessment.
Related: Running effective employee evaluations for better retention
Keeping managers on the same page
Collaboration is an important component of hiring in general, but even more so when hiring remotely. This means sharing resumes, information, and takeaways early and often with managers, recruiters, and executives.
Nulab highly utilizes our cloud-based products and services to communicate and collaborate, especially when remote hiring. Typetalk, our chat app, is what I primarily use to relay candidate information and interview statuses. I also use Backlog, our project management tool, to create tasks for myself and everyone else on the hiring team to check off throughout the process.
I set up my remote hiring process like so:
- The recruiter/HR team member holds a phone screen.
- Then the hiring manager screens the candidate.
- Finally, the executive team and hiring manager hold a video interview.
The candidate gets a good idea of the company culture and how the company works while moving through this process. Along the way, sharing pre- and post-interview thoughts creates a transparent dialogue to keep everyone in the loop. Ultimately, the decision lands on executives and hiring managers alike, but it is good to get feedback from recruitment/HR to make a balanced decision. And it’s actually easier to collect and assess feedback when decision-makers are utilizing online tools.
Final thoughts
All in all, remote workforces are the offices of the future. Many companies are switching to 100% work-from-home setups, especially during the current pandemic we are facing. If your company has the advantage to hire remotely, take advantage of that by creating a seamless process that can be used for all open positions you might be hiring for. These remote recruitment tips won’t just help you find the best remote workers; they will help you find the best workers, period.