Useful Tips for Hiring Remote Workers
More workers are working from home now than ever before. With the ongoing pandemic situation, companies have to ensure their workers’ safety by letting them finish their tasks at home. This also means that when a company is looking to hire new people, the only option is hiring workers remotely without getting to test their performance in person. This can be intimidating for you as an HR rep or a hiring manager, but it actually increases the company’s geographical coverage and lets you recruit people from all over the world. It will also widen your search for skills and let you find millions of candidates who offer the same desired expertise. Here, we share with you a few tips that will help you master this process and find the right people that can add to the value of your business.
Design the Best Remote Interview
Online or remote interviews need to be well-handled and as professional as face to face interviews. The interview is the first impression a candidate gets of the company, so you have to make sure you represent the business you are working for in the right way. This starts with preparing the tech tools needed to conduct the interview in advance and making sure that they work properly before talking to the interviewees. The questions that you ask in the interview should be scripted, and you should be prepared to answer any questions from the candidates about the business process. If you are leading a hiring team, make sure that they have the right equipment and tools that will help them run a smooth online interview. The point is to put as much effort as possible into facilitating a smooth interview that will send the right message to the candidates about the nature of working with a professional company.
Look for Remote Working Skills
Working from home is not a manageable task for everyone. Before choosing candidates and running the interviewing process, you will need to write down a list of skills and qualities that are needed for working remotely in your type of business. Then discuss these qualities with your hiring team in order to look for the right calibers when running the recruitment process and talking to the candidates. You should be looking for people who have the ability to focus on their work-related tasks independently without needing corporate supervision. The new hires need to be people who can be trusted with organizing their own workday and taking care of the regular tech obstacles that every employee faces during their shift. You need workers who can set up a home office and work independently while maintaining a professional level of communication with their superiors.
Use the Interview Questions to Find the Best Workers
Finding the right caliber of people who can manage their schedules while working from home is a bit of a challenge. This is because no matter how hard-working an employee is in the office, they might not show the same enthusiasm while working remotely. To tackle this point, you will need to use your interview questions to look for self-managing qualities in the candidates you talk to. A normal one-on-one interview will consist of basic product knowledge questions mixed with some work-related behavioral questions that will identify the needed candidate. However, in remote interviews, you need to ask the right questions that will help you spot self-direction weaknesses and determine whether your interviewee is ready to work remotely and independently or not. For example, ask them if they have any previous experience working on their own and how they would manage their time while working on their projects.
Invest in an HR Onboarding Software
The onboarding process of new hires takes hours of creating credentials and registering new names on the system, not to mention the paperwork. That’s right, remote onboarding starts with new hire paperwork that takes excessive effort from the hiring team who try their best not to misplace any piece of information. Fortunately, there are plenty of employee onboarding software services that can help you make this process easier for you and for those you hire. With these software systems, the process of communicating new employees’ details and personal information will be easier for the hiring team. The goal of the onboarding software is to provide a smooth transition for new hires into their new positions so that the HR department would spend less time going through endless paperwork.
Don’t Lose the Office Formalities
You might think that since you or the hiring are interviewing remote workers, that you can conduct a normal work-from-home online meeting with your candidates. While this is not entirely incorrect, it’s better to deal with the interview in a professional manner just like you would if it was held on the company premises. This means that you and the hiring team need to dress professionally to represent a good image of the company to the candidates. When attending an online interview, make sure you are sitting in a room with no clutter or distractions in the background. It’s also needless to say that nobody should be interrupting your interview or walking behind you, this could give off the wrong image about the company and indicate low professionalism.
Make the Candidates Feel Comfortable in Their Interviews
The best way to spot real talent and skills is to make your interviewees feel comfortable during the interview so that they can represent themselves openly. Aim to create a welcoming environment in your office or in the place you are interviewing the candidates. This will help them express their skills more openly without feeling intimidated and missing important points. This will also allow you to evaluate their body language and eye contact in a better way just like you would do at office interviews.
Hiring remote workers might not be the easiest task, but with the right strategies, a good hiring manager can find the best candidates who are ready to work from home. The best applicants are those who are willing to adhere to work ethics and commit to their schedules without needing supervision at home. You should look for self-starters who can stay motivated while working remotely. Once you spot these qualities in an interviewee, be sure that you have found a candidate with the needed skill to handle the job for you.
