Best Tips For Hiring Remote Employees For Your Company
Hiring employees can be a difficult task in normal times – let alone when there’s a pandemic causing havoc across the world.
With businesses around the globe moving to widespread remote working, and there being no realistic prospects for moving back to place-based working soon, it’s likely that the business is going to be hiring some kind of remote worker in the months ahead, especially as employee turnover hits.
With that in mind, here are some of our best tips for hiring remote employees for your company
1. Practice with your remote interview software ahead of time
Making sure that both you and your candidates are familiar with the remote software that you’re going to be using ahead of time will help to make the process run much more smoothly.
Email out details of how to access the interview platform to candidates in plenty of time, and give them a basic explanation of how to use it. It can also help to set up a dummy call with another member of staff ahead of time where you practice the logistics of running the interview, like setting it up, launching it, working out microphone and camera issues and pacing.
Run through a list of things that could possibly go wrong in a remote interview, come up with a few solutions and try to run them during the dummy call.
2. Analyse the remote working requirements
Remote-working will call for a different set of skills and experience than those needed in workplace-based roles, and that completely changes the strategy you might use to recruit employees normally.
With that in mind, it makes sense to spend some time thinking about the role you are recruiting for, and what type of remote-working skills employees will specifically need to do it well.
For some roles, there may be a particular set of skills that you’ll need employees who are working remotely to have, but in general any kind of remote work needs an employee to be reasonably skilled in:
- Using digital technology
- Holds good communicating command over email, video call and telephone
- Being organised and self-reliant
Prioritize candidates who can show that they have these skills already – or those that can prove they are willing to develop those skills.
3. Make sure you and your candidates are familiar with your interview software
Making sure that both you and your candidates are familiar with the remote software that you’re going to be using ahead of time will help to make the process run much more smoothly.
Email out details of how to access the interview platform to candidates in plenty of time, and give them a basic explanation of how to use it. It can also help to set up a dummy call with another member of staff ahead of time where you practice the logistics of running the interview, like setting it up, launching it, working out microphone and camera issues and pacing.
Run through a list of things that could possibly go wrong in a remote interview, come up with a few solutions and try to run them during the dummy call.
4. Practice remote interviews ahead of time
It seems rather obvious to say it, but when you’re hiring remote employees, you’re going to be conducting remote job interviews, so it makes sense to get some practice in beforehand if you’re not used to running them completely virtually.
Why is this important? Well, interviews are obviously one of the most important interactions potential employees have with your business. An interview isn’t just about you deciding if you and your business want to hire a person – they’re also about a person deciding if they want to work for your company. So, the first impressions of a company that an interview provides can make or break whether or not a high quality candidate chooses to accept a job offer at your company.
Think carefully about the layout of the room that you’ll be broadcasting from, and what type of impression it makes on the candidate. Pay attention to those tricky remote interview logistics too: It is better to check the webcam height ahead of time and make sure that the audio and video settings are all working correctly.
(Credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-writing-on-notebook-4145190/)
5. Use interactive tasks in remote interviews
Using interactive tasks in the remote interviews can help you to get a much better idea of a candidate’s level of skill and experience. Some remote interview tasks might seem quite difficult to run online but they aren’t impossible at all.
For example, if you’re recruiting for a remote work recruiter, you could set up a shared spreadsheet, populate it with some data and errors and ask the candidate to spot the input mistakes. Likewise, if you’re hiring an IT specialist, you could set up a network task or coding task to test their abilities.
6. Build a strong digital brand to attract high quality candidates
The type of remote candidates that you attract to job vacancies rests on the strength of the brand and your marketing.
A digital employer brand basically describes the values and principles that you embody as a business – it’s the fundamental principles that guide the way that you work as an organisation.
Having a strong, intelligent and visually appealing brand is really important when you’re trying to attract and retain the very best remote working employees – especially when you don’t have the chance of meeting a candidate in a face-to-face setting.
There are lots of different ways to develop your brand. Some of the simplest include:
- Researching your competitors and capitalising on their weaknesses
- Focusing on your Unique Selling Point (USP)
- Developing your brand imagery and a unique voice
- Posting consistently on social media
7. Market your vacancies in the right digital places online
Getting the word out about remote roles can be tricky in the best of times, let alone during a pandemic.
You’ll need to think carefully about the individual requirements of the role you’re recruiting for, and the online-habits of your target audience – those high-quality candidates that you’re searching for.
Do some research into where they find out about the latest job vacancies and target these places.
Of course, your strategy for where to advertise your job vacancy will depend on the unique characteristics of the role you’re recruiting for but some general places to target are:
- Your own user-base (email lists and databases)
- Your blog
- Partner organisations
- Recruitment websites
- Industry/ sector-specific forums or listings
Remote Hiring
It almost goes without saying that you should post details of your vacancies, along with information about how to apply for them, on your social media accounts, like Facebook and Twitter, too. This will help you reach a larger audience, and thus, a larger pool of potential candidates.
Using remote hiring hashtags can help a lot in reaching candidates who have an interest in working remotely, as can posting job vacancies in groups devoted solely to people looking for remote work.
