Owl Labs, a collaboration technology firm, found that 16% of companies are fully remote. They also found that more than half of companies worldwide are “hybrid”, offering remote and in-office options.

Here’s another tidbit: According to economist Nicholas Bloom, 42% of the United States workforce is now working from home full-time. About 86% believe they’d be less stressed in a flexible job.

Whether you’re recruiting for one role or an entire virtual team, hiring remote employees requires a different approach. It’s not just about finding the right skills; you also need to determine if a candidate is suitable to work in a virtual environment.

To help you find the right talent and build high-performing virtual teams, here are a few tips on hiring a remote employee or three.

Refine your hiring process

Hiring for a remote team essentially means hiring for a certain set of skills needed to excel at remote working. A few of these remote working skills are:

• Great communication skills
• Powerful collaboration skills
• Strong organisational skills
• Good time management skills
• Self-discipline
• Accountability

If a candidate doesn’t have these, it’s no use to take them further in your hiring process. Without these skills, they’d inevitably be a bad fit.

Evaluating your candidates for these skills is even more important. Because unlike technical knowledge, you can’t just upskill your candidates; they need to possess the skills already.

There are several ways to test for these. For example, pre-employment tests are a suitable evaluation tool for such skills. With a pre-employment test, you can evaluate candidates for all the skills they need to be successful in their remote roles.

These tests might look deceptively simple but they can unlock invaluable insight to help you make shortlisting decisions.

Another thing to look for when hiring remote employees is their comfort level with video chatting because a lot of these meetings and collaboration in remote teams happen via video calls. Thus, testing for video compatibility is a crucial part of the remote hiring and working mix.

Personality traits matter

Thinking about who’d make an ideal candidate is key for any open role whether it’s for an in-office position or a remote one. This exercise, however, plays a key role in hiring remote employees because it specifies the remote working traits that candidates must have.

If you believe a certain personality type will work best with you for a specific remote role, include it in your job description. In fact, encourage job hopefuls to take a personality test and then consider applying. You can even recommend a personality test tool you like.

This way, a lot of potential candidates might back out of the running if they don’t feel like they’re a good fit. Remember, it’s not the quantity of applicants that matters; it’s the quality.

Source candidates properly

Rather than posting and promoting your open roles on traditional job boards like Indeed, LinkedIn, or Monster, try websites that are popular specifically with remote workers.

Examples include:

• Remote Workmate – Unlike job boards where you do the searching yourself, we handle the heavy lifting for you, including recruitment, screening, and payroll.
  
  
• We Work Remotely – A job board with categories that span across design, sales, marketing, DevOps, and others, this job board is a great place to find remote talent.
  
  
• AngelList – A top place for startups to find and hire remote talent for a range of roles.
  
  
• Stack Overflow – Its job section, specifically, is a great place to find software developers looking for remote work opportunities.
  
  
• Remote.co – Like We Work Remotely, this site also hosts jobs across various roles.
  
  
• Remotive – Another popular job board with remote workers looking for positions in software development, sales, customer support, product, and marketing, among others.

Additionally, try these suggestions on how to get exposure as a remote employer so you can build your virtual talent pool and source better candidates over time:

• Submit your business in remote startup directories (like those listed here). Note, however, that some may charge money.
• Get included in roundups like: “X Businesses That Hire Remotely”.
• Get mentioned in remote work communities (e.g. Facebook groups for virtual assistants)

Help candidates decide if they’re suitable for remote work

While remote work isn’t for everyone, you can help applicants rule themselves out. The best way to go about this is to give them an inside look into how your business works remotely.

You can do this by making educational resources that show how your virtual team functions, and how you put a unique approach to remote work.

Talk about the equipment and software you use, your processes, how you give feedback, and more. Then place all this content prominently on your jobs page and link to it from your listings.

Here’s an example: Zapier, a fully remote company, has produced many resources describing its remote work culture. This content can be useful for job hopefuls considering working for them. Applicants that fit well will feel encouraged to apply, while others may realise otherwise.

Consider culture and values fit

Determining a candidate’s fit for your organisation’s culture and values isn’t easy, even if you meet them in person. Now imagine doing it remotely, where your interaction is virtual. Nonetheless, considering culture fit is crucial in making quality remote hires that stay with you.

So how do you evaluate someone for intangible concepts such as culture and values?

The first step is to define your culture and values. And then translating these ideas into assessment tests, surveys, or interview questions that you can actually score candidates on.

For example, for the fully distributed company Hotjar, one of their culture values is “Always be learning“. To assess candidates regarding this, they ask: “What have you learned in the last year?”

Similarly, you should start by identifying how you work and what you value. It’s only after you do this that you’ll be able to evaluate your candidates based on these principles.

Hold at least three interviews

Distributed companies approach remote interviews differently. Most, however, hold at least three interviews.

Here’s how Buffer – another fully distributed company – conducts interviews to determine the best candidate:

• Culture and values interview – Focuses on finding how aligned a candidate is with Buffer’s culture. Here, Buffer follows a structured interview by asking candidates the same questions in the same order. Buffer knows and have documented what elements to search for.
  
  
• Experience interview – Includes a short exercise so that Buffer can evaluate the candidates on a true work product.
  
  
• Final interview – Focuses on the key element of the role that Buffer believes might need more time and attention. For instance, a code walkthrough for developer roles.

Consider that having multiple interviews means your hiring period might take longer than 10 days. You’ll have to balance this with the risk that the top candidates are usually off the job market within 10 days.

That being said, some companies are intentional in following such hiring cycles and spacing out the interviews so that they can interact more with their candidates.

Offer a paid work trial

After finding your top candidate, don’t offer them a job just yet. Instead, extend a contract for a trial period or a job trial pre-agreed conditions. This arrangement lets you see how a candidate is for a job, how well they can learn, and how seamlessly they fit into your remote work.

Automattic, a remote company, offers all its candidates a trial process that pays $25 an hour. This helps the candidate and employer ensure that they’re a good fit for each other.

Tip: To make a trial period easy for your candidates, allow them to work on weekends or during their free time (just like Automattic does).

Remember: Unless an applicant can thrive in a remote working environment, it doesn’t matter how perfect they may look for a role. So when hiring remote employees, use messaging that helps candidates decide if they’re considering or pursuing a job opportunity where they can excel.

You should also use pre-employment tests and analytical interviews to find the best matches. These are your best tools because in hiring remote employees, you don’t always have the benefit of meeting candidates in person.

Team up with us

For best results, skip the do-it-yourself recruitment and partner with Remote Workmate. We handle the heavy lifting for you (including onboarding and payroll), making hiring become much easier.

You can actually choose from our pool of top candidates right away. Simply click the button below to browse a wide range of profiles on our Hotlist page.