The massive growth of technology has enabled workers in many sectors to carry out their daily tasks from any location with an Internet connection. There is no need to be tied or tethered to traditional office space. As the number of remote employees increases, you may be thinking of reaping the benefits of hiring a remote employee yourself. When you hire remote employees, you can expand your search for qualified talent in all corners of the world. Remote workers can also be more productive and require less overhead.
You always have to make great hires, but this is even more important when you’re trusting the employee to be successful from a massive distance. In this article, we provide some tips for sourcing, interviewing, and ultimately hiring remote IT employees.
1. Decide and Hire for the Right Qualities
Many employees would love the opportunity to work from home. Still, the reality is that not everyone has the right combination of required experience and skills to succeed in this type of situation.
So, before you start interviewing candidates:
- Consider what skills and qualities are ideal for remote workers.
- Work with your team or hiring manager to develop the necessary skills, qualities, and experience to make the remote worker successful in the role.
- Once you have this alignment, touch these skills while writing your job description and list.
These are the features and attributes that you can use for screening candidates during the recruitment process.
Remote workers must be independent self-starters: There will be no peeping on his shoulders. Instead, they will need motivation and drive to hold themselves accountable. Ideally, they will be dependable, reliable, and well-organized.
The best remote employees are also creative and tech-savvy: They must have the technical expertise to set up and run a home office and identify when employees need external support or upgrades to their software program. Ideal aspirants will also have the creativity and ingenuity to solve their challenges with minimal or no external help.
Communication is essential for those working remotely: Your candidates should be able to respond to all types of communication on time. In addition, they need to be able to communicate clearly and concisely in writing, and even the best remote workers are great verbal communicators.
2. Ask Questions to Uncover Great Candidates
Like hiring for any particular job, the candidate pool for remote positions will span the spectrum from wholly disqualified people to those who are perfect for the position. But when you open your job around the world, you will get a lot of applicants. And that means you will need an efficient way of sorting the mass of applications to find the people worth interviewing.
A robust applicant tracking system (ATS) allows you to include questions on your applications that help you pinpoint standout candidates. You can include simple “no” or “yes” questions based on job requirements and easily filter out candidates who do not meet the required criteria.
You can also ask open-ended questions to identify the best among the qualified candidates. These types of questions allow applicants to explain their background in detail and tell you what they can do. For example, you may ask why they are interested in the job, what they will do if they are hired, and even include problem-solving questions related to the role.
3. Avoid Knee-Jerk Layoffs
Companies may need to think twice about completely shedding employees. You can lose more value than you can save. Also, you have to allocate enough resources to replace the workforce you have lost. On average, a lost employee costs 33% of its annual salary, including the costs of finding and hiring their replacement, a 2017 study found — and it still holds up. The average hiring cost of a new employee is around $4,129, as reported by SHRM.
Think about what happens when you return to the new norm and you do not have the right employees you need to return to operational success. And consider the cost of converting talent because you have to replace them. For example, you will have to consult legal and compliance experts to ensure that you are not violating labor laws or liable for severance pay.
And while your organization is taking cost-cutting measures, specific industries are accelerating hiring. You can see your valued employees moving out of your area for more secure employment, driving them out of their viable talent pool for the future.
4. Understand and Target the Correct Behavioral Issues
As you interview potential candidates, it is essential to understand their behavioral approach. It is imperative to understand why they work remotely, how they work remotely, and their plans.
Your specific requirements will shape the questions you ask and find information about their remote work habits. An experienced remote worker knows how to do the work effectively and on time. Someone who is only affected by the possibility of working from home will not exhibit the same level of behavioral commitment.
5. Be Specific in Job Listings
Know exactly what qualities and skills you are looking for, and be as straightforward as possible on any posted job listing. More detailed and specific listings mean you will have to do less work later in the recruitment process to filter out unsuitable applicants for the role.
Often, the skills and experience you seek in a remote worker are the same or very similar to those you are looking for in an office working employee. However, remote workers have some essential characteristics that you should look for in any employee who will work entirely or mainly from home. Employees working remotely need to be exceptionally organized, adaptable, and self-disciplined. They also need to be excellent communicators.
Here’s what your job listing must have;
- A clear job title
- A job description that gives an accurate description of responsibilities, roles, and tasks
- Detail about Job; This includes whether the role is full or part-time, whether you prefer local remote workers or look globally, and whether there are specified working hours.
- Essential and preferred skills and qualifications, previous experience, and education
- About the company
- Benefits; include items such as health benefits, pension or retirement plans, and paid leave, in addition to any technology or reimbursement provided.
6. Reconsider Job Promotion Platforms
While it is good that you can reach the candidates in thousands of different ways, it can also lead to a massive surcharge of choice. Suppose your recruiting team posted a job on every board and channel they could, find and received 2,000+ applications, but usually, more than 80% of the candidates did not immediately qualify. What does it mean? It means that high volume looks good in a way, but it can also be time-consuming and is not always suitable for a particular job role.
One way to explore the platform mix is to talk to your employees, especially employees with similar roles. Ask what online platform they use the most and on which site they will look for a job. Do they know people with whom they have previously worked who might be interested?
If you want to generate brand awareness and a mix of quality candidates, focus on the big names first: LinkedIn, GitHub, and Facebook.
7. Clarify the Core Competencies Required
When hiring new employees, you should be clear about their level of competence and the responsibilities you want them to perform. When thinking about core competencies, consider the skills that employees need to work remotely with the same effectiveness as they do when working in an office.
Check their educational background, their previous experience, and the type of training they have received so far to understand how good they are in their respective fields. It will give you a sense of whether a candidate is fit for a particular role.
In addition, remote working also requires modern skills. Identify standard remote work potential that will provide you with a benchmark to evaluate candidates during the process better.
When hiring from a distance, there are some skills and qualities that require your full attention, such as:
- Effective communication
- Time management
- Collaboration
- Familiar with different cultures
- Teamwork proficiency
- Ability to work under pressure
- Self-motivation
Whether you are recruiting for any role, these skills are essential to survive in the new work environment.
8. Opt for Video Live Chat that Offers Unparalleled Convenience
Email exchange and phone calls have their own advantages, but the benefits of using video chat tools outweigh the first two communication tools. Here’s why:
- It gives you access to a more incredible talent pool in a cost-effective, immediate and intuitive manner.
- It provides the ability to interview and screen candidates at a more personal level.
- It provides more flexibility to candidates and recruiters in scheduling the application process, etc., leading to better candidate-employer engagement.
- It reduces information gaps as queries can be addressed over video in real-time with more precision.
- It enables intuitive features like screen-share, where candidates can showcase their soft skills rather than presenting dull resumes.
Use video hiring as a standard in the first interview, making it easy for you to connect with top talent without any false commitment.
Final Verdict
At this pandemic time, remote recruitment can help you save and leverage the unique skills of individuals worldwide to continue your work. In addition to the eight tips discussed above, you can improve your remote recruitment success by preparing answers to potential questions candidates usually ask.
Since the remote work environment is different from the traditional office environment, remote employees will raise issues that onsite employees will not. Therefore, be ready to respond to issues when they arise.
Remote employees who share the same work ethic and fit well into your team are likely to be more productive than those who do not. Choose people who match well with your company culture, especially when you need to hire employees for long hours.
And if you feel that managing the recruitment talent is too challenging for you, consider Powersource staffing, IT staffing and recruitment agency. To know more, book a consultation call with us.