Best Practices for Hiring a Remote Team

Remote work is here to stay. If I had a pound for every time I heard that! However, numbers prove that prior to the pandemic, remote work had gained significant grounds in many businesses, and was touted as the future of work.

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Therefore, in this post, we’ll run through the best practices for hiring a remote team.

Hiring a remote team

Whilst you’re welcome to read our comprehensive walkthrough on successful remote recruiting, it’s worth noting that hiring and recruiting are not the same. 

The terms are used interchangeably, but they are different.

Hiring involves soliciting and reviewing applications when there is a need to fill a vacancy in your business. Essentially, it is all about seeking and evaluating candidates to suit a specific role in your company.

On the other hand, recruiting is a long-term strategy that involves attracting exceptional professionals to your business and convincing them that your organization is the right fit for their aspirations and capabilities. Recruiting provides you with a healthy talent pool so that you won’t make hasty hiring decisions.

Tips on hiring a remote team

Hiring remote employees needs an approach that helps you find the appropriate job skills as well as the competence for the remote working environment. So, these practices will equip you to make top-notch remote hires.

1. Create a spot-on job ad and description

At the forefront of the hiring process is an effective detailed job advertisement and description. The job description should be in sync with your expectations, goals, and aspirations. It should, of course, include the fact that the roles are remote as well as any exceptions.

Some tips to create functional job descriptions include:

• Implementing SEO and making good use of relevant keywords
• Using videos for job ads
• Detailing the responsibilities of the role
• Indicating the compensation and other benefits

If you happen to have a remote work policy, it would make a lot of sense to ensure that the job description coincides with the work policy.

2. Make the application process peculiar

When hiring a remote workforce, it is necessary to come up with a unique application process that gives and takes. This means that the application process should inform the candidates about the organization while simultaneously educating the company about the candidate.

Therefore, instead of merely asking the candidates to turn in their CVs, you could ask certain questions that shed some light on their capabilities and thought processes. The questions should be related to the job and its surrounding circumstances (remote work, for example.)

You could incorporate a little test by asking them to pitch an idea to a hypothetical CEO.

The value of such remarkable application processes lies in the fact that it serves as a filter. This is because only candidates who are truly excited about joining your organization will go through the process – weeding out unsuitable candidates.

3. Meet and examine the candidate

When you have sorted out the candidates that you’d like to actually engage with, then comes the time for interviewing and testing.

Since the team will be working remotely, it might be necessary to attempt different interviewing methods to get an insight into how the candidate will handle them.

Video interviewing software is all the rage right now. Use them to interview each candidate to get an idea of their proficiency in technology. We recommend both one-way and two-way video interviews as they both have their strengths.

The old trusty email is also a good method of assessing a candidate since it will be the main form of communication should the candidate get the job. Communicating via email will give you an idea of:

• How quickly the candidate responds to emails
• The candidate’s capacity when it comes to written communication

During the interview, keep an eye out for softer skills such as interview etiquette, proactivity, discipline, and self-drive; organizational skills, communication skills, tech-savviness, a team mindset, and the ability to work alone.

Also, watch out for less desirable tendencies such as self-centredness, incompetence, poor communication skills, and distraction. These signals are indicators that the candidate might perform poorly as a remote employee.

Go ahead and set a simple work test to give you an idea about whether they can actually do the job, as well as how they’ll perform in a remote setting.

4. Ask around

As a manager or business owner, it’s in your best interest to check in with the references provided by each candidate. Such people are treasure troves of information that even interviews might not reveal.

When discussing with the references, ask questions pertaining to remote work – the candidate’s remote skills and experience. Their responses will give you an idea of what to expect from the candidate.

Once that is sorted out, you can also inquire into their general skills and capacities.

In closing, hiring a remote team should neither be stressful, nor boring. Make sure you apply these tips for a streamlined and functional remote hiring process.