Remote working has become the new norm given the circumstances surrounding us. Companies are being forced to adapt to different work cultures. Meetings no longer include physical interactions, conferences are no longer about networking face to face. People have shifted to video conferences and networking to stay in tune with others around them.
While the task of managing all your employees while you sit at home may not seem as difficult as it is, hiring remote employees is completely different. There are various challenges that your team will be facing while doing so. Some of these may include:
- Constantly aligning with your team and the remote employee.
- Ensuring that the right person has been hired
- Issues related to clarity in terms of roles and duties
- Evaluation of performance may be difficult
- Understanding and aligning with the company culture – creating a sense of belongingness may not be easy.
However, we’re here to help you with ensuring that you hire the perfect remote employee for your team. Here are a few tips one should keep in mind when they decide to hire remote workers:
1. Ensure that the workers looking for remote jobs have certain essential skills
While hiring remote employees, one needs to ensure that certain basic skills are present in an employee before going forward and looking at their technical skills. These skills include:
- Effective communication skills: Since the employee will be working remotely, communication with team members becomes even more essential while defining tasks to do. Effective communication skills would ensure that there is no gap in the exchange of information.
- Readiness to participate: Even while working remotely, the employee should eagerly participate in team meetings and conferences and should not refrain in pitching ideas and solutions.
- Proficiency in time-management: Remotely working comes with a lot of distractions and requirements for constant communication. This should not in any way lead to deadlines not being met timely. The employee should have good time-management skills and submit required projects as and when required.
- Ability to adapt to changes quickly
Unless one can ensure that the employee they are looking forward to hire doesn’t have these skills, there is no point in going for further interrogation. An easy way to find out if someone has these skills is to conduct a simple assessment test to check their skills.
2. Clearly defining you’re looking for in a potential candidate
Listing down what your ideal candidate is essential when you assess an employee. This will also be helpful in self-evaluation for the candidate as he will be able to understand whether he deems himself fit for the job. Therefore, apart from defining the role, it would also be an added benefit to define the personality type required, the extra skills needed, and the expectations from the employee.
3. Conduct a test exercise as a part of the selection procedure
While evaluating a potential candidate especially a remote one, a small task can be given to see whether they are able to coordinate and communicate well with the team. Another way to do so is to conduct a video interview with the top candidates and test them right there by asking them a series of questions that would put them in a spot.
4. Looking for remote workers at the correct places
Using the right source is important to find employees that would fit the best with your organizational set-up. While LinkedIn could be one professional platform to find the right candidate, here are some other platforms to look at, to find the right candidate:
- We Work Remotely: With a catchy tagline that says “Office not required,” one can find candidates from tech supports to customer service providers.
- FlexJobs: With over 50 categories to select from, they have their own screening process to help you get the most suitable options.
- Remotive: Remotive caters its focus towards personnel interested in marketing, sales, supply, product, engineering, and human resource. So if you’re looking for some from these fields, Remotive could be your best option!
- Virtual Vocations: If you’re looking for someone for a telecommunicating job, look no further. This platform also provides interesting articles on remote working.
- Dribbble: Dribble is a platform specially designed for companies looking for graphic designers.
- AngelList: If you’re a start-up looking to hire remote employees, AngelList is the top site to meet your purpose!
5. Involving the team associated in the interview:
Remote employees might physically work alone however, they need to be in constant interaction with their team and collaborate with their colleagues just like any other job would require them to. In case of hiring remote employees, every team member should be given a chance to interact with the potential candidate in order to get a better assessment of candidates as well as getting acquainted with their future team members. This is also essential because the team members won’t get a lot of opportunities to get to know each other personally.
In conclusion, we can say that the most important criteria while hiring a remote worker is not his technical skills and knowledge, but his ability to adjust to the framework of the organization. A lot of thought and time needs to be invested in terms of deciding the procedure of hiring for such employees. The above tips are what we feel would be best kept in mind during such a procedure. Let us know your opinion on the comment section below.
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