The Way to Hire Remote Workers: The Ultimate Guide

Hiring remote workers has become more and more popular for many positions, especially computer-based work like programming or graphic design in which it’s not necessary for the employee to be on site to fulfill their job duties. In fact, some candidates today expect that they will permitted to operate from home or another area of the choice. Research done by Indeed in 2015 showed that candidate occupation searches comprising the term”Remote” had risen 85 percent in two decades.

Allowing employees to work remotely can increase your candidate pool for job openings and reduce overhead costs. But, hiring remote employees can be challenging for firms that aren’t utilized to it. Our guide can help you bring on a distant workforce who’s just as successful and productive as onsite workers.

Whether hiring remote or on-site workers, Indeed is our top recommended job board for smaller businesses. Click here to find a $50 charge for a sponsored job posting.

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Prepare to Hire Remote Workers

Before you begin looking for and reaching out to remote candidates, the very first thing you should do is get prepared.

Have an Employee Value Proposition that Covers Remote Working

Having an employee value proposition is a part of any audio hiring strategy. An employee value proposition (EVP) is your company’s overall value to current and prospective employees relative to other employment choices they might have. It’s a mixture of business mission, culture, benefits, and compensation and is usually part of a larger employer branding plan.

To appeal to distant workers, your EVP should place extra focus on flexibility and assisting remote employees feel like part of the team. For remote employees, this is a crucial facet of an EVP and how they are going to evaluate your organization versus other choices. Here’s an illustration EVP from Help Scout, a help desk and mail marketing software, whose whole team is free to operate remotely. Notice how Help Scout explains that remote workers benefit the business as a complete and permit better work/life equilibrium:

Create Work Description That Speaks to Remote Workers

A fantastic job description will more than simply list the candidate and role requirements you’re searching for. A good job description sells candidates on why your company is a great location that they should want to work at it and speaks in a voice which relays your distinctive culture.

For remote workers, very similar to a EVP, that signifies an emphasis on flexibility which is typically an integral reason they wish to work remotely. It is not just a flexible work place. It is about using a culture which values productivity within facetime, and a culture that focuses on strong communication and self-motivation.

Boost Your Employer Remote Know-How

Along with just selling your business, you want to have the ability to offer your company’s capability to manage remote workers. Remote workers often feel detached and alone. Some companies are better than others in handling remote workers. So you would like to be able to offer remote candidates confidence which you’re able to handle working with employees remotely successfully.

This could take the kind of the number of employees work remotely or the processes and tools you use to keep remote employees in the loop. You should be sure that you mention this on your project description, EVP, and during the interview.

How to Locate Good Remote Nominees

Alright you’re all prepped to find candidates. How can you find good ones? Here are a couple tips.

Expand Your Network Beyond Local

For almost any job opening, you would need to reach out to your community, including present worker referrals, family and friends, business partners, etc.. Employee referrals would be the maximum quality resource for new hires. For onsite job openings, this is usually concentrated around your geographic area. But for remote workers, you want to broaden your thinking. Candidates round the world are possible workers.

Can Video Interviews

When you are interviewing remote candidates, it’ll be hard, if not impossible, for them to meet you in person. Doing an interview over video would be the next best thing. Glip is a free team messaging and video conferencing software that can help you easily associate with prospective hires. As soon as they join the team, they can utilize Glip to collaborate remotely alongside in-house employees. Click here to get started at no cost.

See Glip

Update Your Website & Use Indeed Remote Hunt

If you post job openings or your own site, then you’re going to want to update your site once you are prepared to hire for a remote position. If you’ve got a Truly Careers page, then it will update automatically when you post or quitting a job on Indeed.

If you are posting on Indeed, our recommended job board for smaller companies, you’ll want to leverage Really’s remote search functionality.

Use the word”Remote” on your job title and job description, and then place”Remote” in the Location field when submitting the project. By way of instance, your job title can read,”Marketing Manager — Remote OK.”

Post Indices On Remote-Specific Job Boards

There are a range of websites which focus specifically on remote job opportunities. None have the reach of a website like Really, but you can get lucky. If you’re using a talent management program or recruiting software, you can automatically post your job to multiple websites with one click.

Here are some distant job posting websites you should consider:

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1. FlexJobs

Price: Free if approved, premium positioning $199

July 2017 Visits: 2M

FlexJobs focuses on top quality chances. It has the highest traffic of any of those websites focused on distant job opportunities.

See FlexJobs

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2. SkipTheDrive

Price: $79 for 30 times

July 2017 Visits: 104K

SkipTheDrive has a wide variety of positions. It will not possess the greatest audience and has its job launch from the Job2Careers web site.

Stop by SkipTheDrive

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3. We Work Remotely

Price: $299 for 30 times

September 2017 Visits: 936K

We Work Remotely is a fairly active, straightforward site. It primarily concentrates on web-related technical remote positions, especially programming jobs.

See We Work Remotely

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4. Working Nomads

Cost: $149 for 1 endeavor, $387 for 3 jobs, $545 for 5 jobs

July 2017 Visits: 146K

Working Nomads has a couple thousand jobs across many different positions. But the majority of the places have been in management and development.

See Working Nomads

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Besides sites focused just on distant workers, you can also check out freelancing websites as well. These sites also cater to remote work but on a more piecemeal, part time basis. If you’re searching for administrative assistance, you can assess websites which focus on digital assistants as well.

How To Assess Remote Candidates During The Recruiting Process

When evaluating candidates for remote function, there are a few criteria to look for in addition to the normal job qualifications.

They Need To Be Productive At A Distance

When evaluating candidates for distant work, the first thing will be receiving confidence they can be successful working remotely. Can they have a history of working remotely? Are they great at self-motivating and being proactive? Often, folks with a background in startups and freelancers are used to being productive at a distance.

Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, told Harvard Business Review,“We’re especially interested in how well candidates self-motivate, how well they communicate in writing (because the majority of us work liberally, we rely heavily on instant messaging), and also the way they deal with mistakes.”

They Need To Be a Great Remote Communicator

In addition to being remotely, you’ll need someone who is proficient at communication. You won’t have the ability to chat around the water cooler to have a feeling of how they are doing so communicating well at a space is critical to allow remote workers to be successful. Do they look well organized? Can they articulate clearly and concisely? Are the comfy with contemporary communication tools like Skype, Slack, or Zoom?

Heal the Interview Just Like Function

Throughout the interview process, you can find a feel for productivity at a distance by delegating them a intricate task with a deadline. The complex task will test to see if they could get themselves motivated despite the challenging work. The timeline is going to check due to their ability to be proactive and get things done quickly.

Also, you can check for communication abilities by making all of your interactions a combination of video conferencing calls and text messages. At Fit Small Business, we’ve successfully hired dozens of remotes by performing video interviews and giving distant candidates a test project to complete during the interview procedure. The test job closely resembles the kind of work the person will be doing if hired.

“Ask for an interview on Monday. In the interview, surprise
them with a true custom issue that you have right now at your company and ask them to come with an answer by Friday. Pay for this solution and their timing. In a week, you are going to know whether that’s a fantastic match for you or not.” –Cristian Rennella, CEO & CoFounder, elMejorTrato

Try Before You Buy

To take evaluation a step farther, you can even hire them on a contractor basis for a while. This will permit you to get a sense of their productivity and communication abilities before committing. Mullenweg agrees. “The most significant shift we have made is requiring every last candidate to use us three to eight weeks on a contract basis. Candidates do real tasks alongside the people they’d actually be working with when they had the job.”

How To Manage & Motivate Remote Employees

Once you’ve found your hire with a distant functioning”operating system” will make things move more easily. Including having both workflow tools and processes.

Have The Tools Needed For Remote Work

Having the right tools is essential to productive remote employees and making them feel like part of the group. They ought to help emote workers feel at the loop and also connected. Here’s a listing of a few tools Which May help with remote staff:

Tools for Remote Employees

Type of Tool	What It Is Used For	Who To Try out
Communications	Use for periodic video check-ins with remotes. Facilitate one-on-one and group conversations.	Glip, Slack, Google Hangouts
Document Management & Collaboration	Work on files remotely but collaboratively. Allow for asynchronous commenting instead of using email.	Google Docs, Microsoft Office
Project Management	Track progress of distant worker tasks and help handle prioritization of tasks.	Basecamp, Trello, Asana
Performance Management	Provide clear communication of expectations and feedback about progress.	Little Improvements, Cornerstore, Trakstar

Communicate Clear Expectations

Ensure that you make clear exactly what the remote working is assumed to be achieving. This may take the kind of shared to-do lists, objectives, or work product to be produced.

“My suggestion for hiring distant workers is to get a clear range of work with clear deliverables. The less regular contact you have with remote workers, the more difficult it is to judge if they’re fulfilling their’role,’ so the more you need to judge them by defined effects. A range of work moves everyone’s thinking from positions to projects.” –Robert ​McGuire, Owner, McGuire Editorial Content Marketing Agency

Have Regular Check-Ins

Set a schedule of regular check-ins. Here at Fit Small Business, we’ve got a flourishing team of remote employees because they meet with their supervisor in a daily movie call. During this call, the employee and their supervisor cover what work was completed the previous day along with the schedule for now.

Use Progress Reports

During your check-ins or through a progress report, track productivity from the listing of to-dos which you have created for the remote employee. In addition to daily informal assessments, establish a more formal performance management system with quarterly or biannual performance reviews.

Make Remote Workers Feel Like Part of the Team

Besides routine check-ins, make certain that there are touch points which are focused on making the remote employee feel as part of the group. This could consist of social video conference calls, addition in team-wide upgrades, or regular in-person meetups using the bigger team. At Fit Small Business, we’ve got a company-wide video interview every Friday where everyone shares what they accomplished weekly. Remote employees frequently says that this motivates themhelps them connect to other employees, making them feel as a part of the team.

“What sets our business apart and that which we find extremely important is that although we’ve got babysitters throughout most important cities who do not report every day to the office, we meet everybody personally and host get togethers so that we can create a strong group.” –Rachel Charlupski, Founder, The Babysitting Company

Establish A Buddy System

Another good remote workflow is creating a buddy system. Assign one peerreviewed, aside from the employee’s manager, to be a buddy. This will permit the remote employee to ask questions and get timely feedback on their work from peers. It is less formal than connections using a manager. Remote employees generally feel more comfortable asking newbie queries to a peer as opposed to a supervisor.

Get Feedback from Remotes

Regularly solicit feedback from remote workers to be certain they have what they have to be effective and feel like part of the team.

Should I Hire Remote Workers?

Hiring distant employees can open the amount of available job applicants and create more satisfied workers, but it’s not for everyone. Here are some pros and cons to help you determine if remote workers is right for your business:

Pros & Cons Of Hiring Remote Workers

Pros	Cons
Attract more candidates Employees such as the flexibility of remote function Reduce overhead like leasing and amenities Works well for certain positions, like tech, graphic design, writing, and freelance positions	Requires you to get the right processes and resources for remote workers Requires you to trust workers to be productive without direct oversight Not appropriate for a number of places, e.g. retail sales, production, etc..

Bottom Line

Leveraging remote employees can be a excellent way to bring in more qualified candidates while reducing overhead costs at the same moment. But hiring and managing remote workers successfully requires you to get the appropriate hiring and workflow processes and tools in place. A free video conferencing and staff messaging software such as Glip can assist you throughout the procedure from video-interviewing to cooperating with distant workers alongside the rest of your team as soon as they’re hired. Click here to get started for free.

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