Finding high-quality talent that’s a seamless fit with your organization is always a challenge. You want to ensure that the candidate you hire can handle the work and fit in with your culture. However, when you’re hiring remotely, you make that decision without ever meeting the applicant face-to-face.
Needless to say, you want to ensure that your remote hiring process is polished and fine-tuned. Doing so will increase your chances of success, as well as save you and prospective employees plenty of stress and frustration.
How to Improve Your Remote Hiring Process
Continually Evaluate
Improving your hiring process starts with identifying flaws in your current one. Where are things getting stuck? When do wires get crossed or where do things slip through the cracks? What typically gets lost in the shuffle?
Take the candidate’s perspective—or, if you have some willing participants, have employees do it as well—and move through your existing hiring process. Consider asking new hires to provide feedback on their recent experience.
By seeing how things look from the other side, you’ll get a much better grasp on any bottlenecks or issues that could confuse applicants. With that information, you’ll be able to make tweaks that improve your hiring process, rather than simply change it.
Repeat this evaluation every few months to stay ahead of any concerns that pop up.
Try the Job Out
Do you know exactly what you’re looking for in a candidate?
Sure, you likely have a basic understanding of the core duties of the role. But when it comes to what sort of details they’ll be handling and what specific skills they should possess, do you feel like you have in-depth knowledge of what you’re hiring someone to do?
The best way to confirm your knowledge is to familiarize yourself with what the company needs in a new hire for a specific role. How do you determine that?
Discover a better way to recruit remote talent
Founded in 2007, FlexJobs is the most experienced remote & hybrid hiring platform.
- Unlimited job posts
- Low, flat membership fee
- Access top-level remote advice
- Unlimited resume searches
- Reach the right candidates
- And so much more!
Whether you take on those responsibilities for a while or ask another employee or department to absorb the duties of that role, some hands-on experience will give you much greater insight into what’s actually needed in this new hire.
Write a Detailed Job Description
For any position, writing a detailed job description is essential. But this perhaps carries even more weight for remote roles.
Taking on a new role in a virtual company is different than starting at an in-person office. It’s harder to shadow existing team members or learn the nuances of company culture.
It’s crucial that new hires have a comprehensive understanding of what the position requires and what sorts of things they’ll be responsible for on a daily basis—before ever signing on the dotted line of an offer letter.
Your job description is your secret weapon here. When in doubt, the more details you can provide, the better. It’s better to be far too specific than far too vague.
When you have a completed draft, pass it around to others who are familiar with that role (especially if they handled some of those responsibilities for a while) so that they can make suggestions or changes.
With that extra effort, you’ll be armed with a clear and accurate job description to put in front of prospective candidates.
Incorporate Other Team Members
In addition to asking other team members for their input on job descriptions, it’s wise to include them in other parts of the hiring process as well, especially final interviews.
Maybe your employees won’t be sharing a desk or battling over the thermostat, but they’ll still work together, so it’s important that you get a feel for how that team dynamic will play out.
In the later interview stages, include some of the team members the new hire will work with. Give your employees a chance to ask questions and get to know the candidate a little bit.
Doing so will give you and the rest of your team a better feel for whether or not this person would be a good fit with the group and your culture—whether they ever make it into the office or not.
Check Your Reputation
Your employer brand is its identity and reputation. While identity is all about what your company does and why it does it, reputation is what can improve (or hinder) your remote hiring process.
Most job seekers these days do their homework on employers before ever applying for an open position. They research what previous candidates say about the interview process and what past and current employees say about working for you.
Make sure you’re projecting a positive brand image. Research your company and see what employees are and are not saying about you on social media and anonymous review sites. Also, address concerns internally and externally to ensure that people aren’t just saying your company is a great place to work but that your company actually is a great place to work.
Be an Open Book
Because the remote hiring process is so different from the in-person hiring process, communication with candidates plays a crucial role in how they feel about working for your company.
Once you’ve selected which candidates you want to interview, send along all of the relevant information they’re going to need. That could include:
- The mission or vision statement of your company
- The history of your company and its growth plans
- What technology platforms you’ll use for the interview
- Who is going to call whom (e.g., HR will call the candidate) and who will be present in the interview
- What the overall hiring process entails (phone screening, a project, meet with a supervisor, a second project, an offer) and how long each step might take
- Letting the candidate know what the next steps are at the end of each phase
Like the job description, it’s better to overcommunicate the information than under-communicate. This way, it’s clear what the candidate can expect. And it’s an excellent way to give candidates an idea of how the company communicates in general.
Find Remote Employees
Finding the perfect remote employee all starts with having a refined and well-oiled hiring process. Use these tips to improve your own, and you’re sure to find the best fit for your remote roles.
If you’re ready to improve your remote hiring process, FlexJobs can help. Our database of remote talent gives you a head start on connecting with candidates that want to work for flexible companies like yours.
Connect With Remote Talent
Don't forget to share this article with colleagues!
