2020 is the year that not only changed how companies worked but also how they hired. A significant part of the global workforce needed to stay working at home due to the pandemic, and many companies experienced the benefits of having virtual teams.

However, implementing remote work arrangements implicates challenges that companies need to learn how to overcome. Firstly by starting to define remotely what the hiring process will be like – knowing how to hire remotely has become a skill that few possess. Why? Because even though hiring virtually means that you have a bigger talent pool, it’s more challenging to filtrate good candidates from great ones and know which one will be the right fit.

Steps: How to Hire Remotely

Whether you need a developer for your IT team or a talented salesperson these steps will help you hire the candidate you are looking for.

Step #1: Define your Ideal Candidate

Your first step towards the recruitment process should be defining your ideal candidate. This way, you know exactly what you are looking for.

For example, suppose you need a developer for your team; besides knowing what type of programmer you want (Xamarin, Clojure, PHP, etc.,  you should highlight the qualities and abilities that are negotiable and those that aren’t. This way, you’ll have a strong system to help you choose the most talented candidates from those who aren’t the best option.

Step #2: Write an Effective Job Ad

Job descriptions matter a lot more than companies think.

When job seekers read your job ad, it takes them a few seconds to know if they want to work in your company or not. This doesn’t mean that you need to write a whole testament regarding what working for your company is like. The best practices regarding writing job descriptions have in mind what readers want to know, which means:

• About the role
• Compensation (optional)
• Time zones (this is particularly important when hiring remotely)
• Desired skillset
• Information about the company

Step #3: Look in the Right Places

Knowing how to hire remotely is about attracting talented candidates with the right job descriptions but also by looking for them in the right places. However, before your HR teams start looking everywhere for candidates, you have to know what type of remote contract you want to offer. This means whether you want to hire a freelancer or a full-time employee.

Freelancers -The best ways to hire freelancers are through popular platforms such as Upwork, Toptal, We Work Remotely, Fiverr, and People Per Hour, among others.

Full-time employees – The best places to look for talented remote employees are:

• Job boards
• Social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook)
• Recruitment agencies that specializes in finding full time remote workers

Step #4: Make Successful Interviews

When hiring remotely, conducting successful remote interviews is what defines if a candidate is good enough or not. Keep in mind that interviews should never be improvised. They require preparation, thinking the questions through, and ensuring that your camera/sound or any other technical aspects work.

During interviews, depending on the role you want to hire, it always helps to make more than one round. For example, if you are the manager looking for an employee to be part of your team, you could make the first interview by asking all the things you consider essential after browsing their resumes. If you like the candidate, you could do a second interview with members of your team. This way, you can make an objective decision by hearing what the others have to say.

This is important in highly collaborative environments. For example, when teams need a new developer on their team, they need to make sure that the developer is talented enough and knows how to work as a team.

Step #5: Haven an Onboarding Process

The final step through hiring remotely is having a strong onboarding process. It’s easy when you hire an on-site employee to show them the office, the different rooms and introduce them to the team.

This is a bit trickier in a remote environment because the candidate might feel lost if there is no strong onboarding process. And this could have significant long-term consequences on their performance. 

Did you know that great employee onboarding can improve employee retention by 82%?

When bringing a new remote employee, there are different (and fun) ways to structure your onboarding. There are things part of the protocol that most companies need to provide their new employees in onboarding like documentation, employment contract, policies, etc. But to change things up, you can set video calls for them with other employees; this way, they can meet someone new. Or set up a virtual happy hour at the end of their first week to break a bit with the formal structure.

Wrapping up

The remote work reality is challenging for many companies, especially those who weren’t used to it. Knowing how to hire remote employees is now becoming part of a company’s duty, not only because of the pandemic but also because they are starting to see the benefits of having a distributed workforce. These steps will help you structure your recruitment process successfully.

Author’s bio:

Sharon Koifman is the founder and president of DistantJob — a boutique staffing agency that helps recruit full-time remote employees. He believes every company, from the biggest enterprise to the newly-launched garage startup, should have access to the world’s top talent