Remote work is a growing phenomenon that has recently evolved quite rapidly due to COVID-19 & the further danger of SARS-CoV-2 variant. Most of the organisations still have their employees work from home. Due to an increase in certain businesses & demand for niche talent; hiring & Onboarding has gone virtual. “Remote worker” & “Digital Nomad” are the most popular terms to describe remote employees right now.
As an employer you would usually be hiring from your local talent pool, but if you are not getting the right talent then you would want to look at a larger pool which but would be working remotely.
With a remote recruiting process in place, you can always find brilliant talent nationwide & maybe even a global talent pool, drawing them into your business as your dedicated & talented remote workforce.
A typical Remote Recruitment process would consist of 7 stages
- The Job Description
- The Telephonic Interview
- The Video Interview
- The Technical Assessment
- The HR Interview
- The Offer Process
- The Virtual Onboarding
Each stage of the recruitment process is self-explanatory, however is further explained thru various tips that are mentioned below.
Here are 10 Tips to Improve Your Remote Recruitment Process
- Have a Clear Job Description:
It is important that any job Description that you have is clear about the position, roles & responsibilities, and benefits, it is doubly important that a remote job Description be clear with the duties and tasks to be performed by the employee. When you are attracting prospective employees, they need to know exactly what they are committing to before they sign on to work with your company. Be prepared for open ended conversations with in-depth questions about the job description & the expectations from candidates and explain more about the company in an interactive back-and-forth interview process. When someone is committing to your company for the long term, both client & the candidate need to ensure that they are a good fit to the organisation.
- Plan Up for Success:
When you plan well in advance to hire remote employees, be prepared for logistical questions that may differ from those that are important to employees working from office. With remote workers, setting work hours and work timings is important. Some companies would have overlapping hours, and they may need to work at unconventional work hours to connect with the rest of your team. Your prospective employees may have questions about the technology that you would use to support their integration into your workplace. Tools like skype, zoom, slack, basecamp, outlook, Microsoft meeting etc. Create a clear summary of expectations & workflows that would enable your team to articulate to candidates so that they can understand what it is to be a remote worker for your organization. Clarity of expectations helps you ensure that you have the right fit.
- An Offer Which Candidates Cannot Refuse:
When you hire you not only look for skills & cultural fit but also look for someone who is highly motivated to contribute to your organization’s development. One way to increase an employee’s enthusiasm & commitment to your organization is to develop unique & desirable benefits. Offering company benefits, an attractive compensation package, innovative training & flexible work hours all make your company irresistible. Position yourself as a company that has a great team & the business is breaking new ground in its field & offers a substantial & rewarding position which will attract the long-term brilliant talent you want.
- Look for a Wider & same time Deeper Talent Pool Funnel:
Increase your hiring funnel size If you are looking for niche talent that is not easily available in the market, you may look over several candidates, assess whether their work is fit for your business, and decide on the person you would like to work with. However, when you are looking for a resource who has specific skills, focus your time and energy on developing a larger pool of interested & qualified candidates. You have the entire world to choose from, so take this opportunity to really look at the full spectrum of hiring options. This will allow you to not only find someone whose skills are a perfect fit; it will also allow you to find someone who works well with other employees in your organization.
- Seek Performance driven employees:
When you are hiring, put the focus on Performance. Look to networks of qualified candidates who would like to work for your company on a long-term basis. When you are hiring a remote employee, hire in the same way as you would a long-term local employee. Look at their skills, but also look at their fit with your company & their history and enthusiasm about committing to you for the long term. They should have significant achievements in the roles in their previous organisations. Employees who are committed and connected & directly under your management will have higher quality of work & are more productive.
- Find Excellent Communicators & Technology Adaptors:
When you are hiring someone, who is not going to work in your office, be sure that you hire someone who works well independently, has good communication skills and is well adept with the technologies that you use and need for your business. Whenever you are recruiting for remote work, make sure candidates have experience working with tools or are eager to learn them. If you use zoom, Microsoft team or Skype for meetings, hire someone who understands how to communicate well in a virtual face-to-face meeting. If your company’s workflow is based on joint projects over email for example tools like Basecamp or Slack, hire someone who knows how to use these tools or can adapt quickly to them. Digital communication skills are essential.
- Find excellent Soft Skills:
As an employer, you need to know that your employees will not only do your work but do it well & in ways that makes your company proud. Look for people with great track record of balancing skills, innovation & communication. Your remote employees need a clear and thorough understanding of your organization’s goals, vision, focus & direction, work ethic & a commitment to represent your organization to the best of their abilities. This translates into the importance of not only seeking candidates with excellent resumes & strong technical abilities but also candidates with great soft skills. Communication abilities, self-reliance, time management, among others, are skills necessary to make companies and remote teams successful.
- Have a Robust Interview Process:
One of the most important aspect to improve the remote recruitment process is having a well-defined interview process. Interviews are the foundation that determines if a candidate will be a great remote employee or not. It is not about having a set of questions prepared and asking them the same to everyone. But it is the feel-good factor and about establishing a connection with candidates, knowing more about them and their personalities. Preparation is necessary because if you think that by improvising, you will get the talent you want, you are wrong. Having a robust interview process is to know what kind of candidate you want to hire, with what technical skills & abilities. Having this understood makes interviews more direct, you will know if you need to test a certain skill first or later and what questions to ask the candidates. Using skype and zoom you can conduct the HR interview. You could also have technical experts conduct video interviews and ask the candidates to write codes online and submit on a compiler to see if the codes are correct and have assessments online to test the candidate’s skills. Having virtual team interviews are extremely helpful. Having other members of the company ask questions and see how the candidates answer & behave will lead all to discuss whether you think the candidate will make a great fit or whether it is better to keep searching.
- Have the Right Remote tools to work with:
Once you have hired your remote worker, you may need some help structuring your HR policy and onboard this person as a member of your team.
- What tools will help this person to communicate well with the team?
- What processes should you have in place to ensure that work flows well even though some team members work in other parts of the world?
- Use Consultants & Hiring Specialists:
If you are looking for new specialist staff, you might use a recruiting agency to find the people you need to fill your roles. The same applies for remote recruiting. You are still looking for talented new employees, and you need to find people with specific skill sets. If you are looking for an employee with significant & specific IT skills, do not be afraid to work with subject matter experts and HR Consulting experts who can help you shape your search for new employees and ask the right questions & pinpoint those candidates who would be the best fit for your organisation. You would need to seek help in developing training programs that will allow your new employees to integrate seamlessly into your workplace.
When you are looking for strategies for hiring remotely, you need to source candidates very differently. You are not hiring an employee who will be in the office full time, so you need to hire someone who is independent, self-reliant, ethical, innovative, and highly flexible. However, you need to also look for someone who has strong commitment and is performance driven in nature. Therefore, it is important to seek out employees with strong skills, a keen interest in your specific posting, and a commitment to work according to the company processes while growing into your company culture.