The Best Guide on Hiring Remote Workers
While remote working has been a thing for many years, it only became increasingly popular around 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Statistics show that many potential employees are actively seeking remote work opportunities. As a result, many physical work environments are losing out on a wider pool of talents due to the absence of remote working options.
So your best bet as an employer is to create opportunities for remote workers to join your team. In this post, we will guide you through how to hire for your remote and hybrid positions.
Remote hiring has gained wide popularity due to the amazing benefits it offers both employers and employees. But before delving into remote hiring, you should ensure that your work environment is remote-friendly. Here are a few ways that you can ensure that you have a remote-friendly culture:
Embrace asynchronous communication
Encourage your team members to use asynchronous communication to host meetings and communicate their daily tasks. Asynchronous communication provides workers with the extra flexibility of communicating with their teams without the need for an instant response.
Avoid preferential treatment
To maintain a healthy remote working culture, employers should treat all workers equally, whether remote or physical. For example, if managers offered preferential treatment to workers who were available onsite or lived closer to the office, it would send the wrong message to the team.
Ensure proper task management
To make your work environment remote-friendly, you should ensure that the task management system is properly managed. For example, workers should be allowed to focus on one task for an extended period without any distractions. This reduces the burden of random context switching and allows workers to focus on the more important tasks without any distractions from other colleagues.
There are various ways you can create a remote-friendly culture. Spend some time figuring out what works best for your business before you start the hiring process, and you will be in a much better position to hire remotely.
We know that remote hiring is not familiar ground for many businesses. So, we have outlined some of the best guides to help you navigate through the remote hiring process:
Figure out your ideal candidate
Before proceeding with the remote hiring process, you should be able to identify who your ideal candidate for the role would be. To do that, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- What kind of work experience are you looking for?
- What is their preferred work schedule?
- What is their preferred mode of communication?
- Are there any other things they are passionate about outside of work that could impact their performance at their job?
The above questions are just a few suggestions to help you determine the ideal candidate for your remote role. First, however, you should be clear about what you are looking to find in the perfect candidate. Doing so would make the entire remote hiring process more hitch-free.
Start searching for your ideal candidate
There are several places—LinkedIn, Upwork, Indeed, Reddit, and more—to conduct your search for your ideal candidate. Generally, the ideal candidate you have in mind could determine the best place to carry out your search. Interestingly, some global job boards like Indeed and Upwork allow you to use the filters to narrow down your search to find the candidates that meet your exact requirements.
Attracting remote employees
While searching for your ideal remote candidate, you should also ensure that your business has a good online reputation that can attract the right candidates to you. Ensure that your website, landing pages, career pages, and social media channels contain the following essential information: your willingness to support remote work, honest employee testimonials, your values, remote bonuses, and more.
Conducting the interview
Now that you have found your ideal candidate, how do you conduct the interview?
Many people often wonder how best to conduct interviews for remote roles. But, of course, the puzzle is always about the right channel for the interview: should the applicants appear in person or virtually? Or will asynchronous communication do the trick?
The truth is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to conducting remote interviews. Instead, you should decide on an interview process that is best suited for you and your potential employees.
However, we suggest you kickstart the interview virtually through video platforms like Zoom. Then, as the interview process progresses, you can invite the few top eligible candidates for a physical interview. This would make the interview process less stressful for you and the interviewees, as everyone could get involved without making a special trip into the office.
Also, you can use asynchronous communication for follow-ups and invite them for a second or final interview. Asynchronous communication allows you to send messages at your most convenient time.
Start new hires on a contract basis
It is always better to start salaried remote hires on a contractual basis, whether hourly or weekly. This allows you to effectively monitor how they can cope with the remote working environment before you commit to hiring them fully. And with a contractual basis, it is easier to dismiss any employee that does not meet your expectations. However, you should ensure that you do not fire too fast.
Choose a start date
Once the hiring process is completed, you should communicate a start date to the employee. You can do this through asynchronous communication. The start date is usually at the beginning of a new pay cycle, but you should ensure that you confirm a suitable date with the candidate and their direct manager. Then, the HR team can begin the onboarding process.
Conclusion
We have carefully examined the benefits of hiring remotely, and we have outlined the entire remote hiring process. But, before you hire someone remotely, you should ensure your business is ready for remote work by demonstrating some remote-friendly cultures.
