Tips for Hiring Remote Workers

Remote Worker Hiring Tips: "Stay home, stay safe" is not the only message buzzing around these days. But "remote work" is likewise on the mouth of every techie. It seems as if the revolution of remote work is unstoppable. As technology is growing rapidly the world is becoming increasingly connected. And with this, the future of work is also changing. Today, companies of all sizes are exploring the style of "remote work" and setting up remote teams with 100 percent work efficiency.

Remote development is becoming popular among organizations as apart from providing the remote workers with the flexibility of work, it also helps to deliver successful products more quickly.

According to the Gartner report, mass remote working in the US could remain after COVID-19.

What is remote working? - Remote Worker Hiring Tips

Remote work is a style of work which allows working professionals to work outside of an office environment. Remote employees are called "remote workers" Apart from the office, they can work remotely, such as home, co-working space, coffee shops, or any other place.

It leads to:

• Better talents
• Cut on costs
• Improved productivity and a lot more

To quote Laurel Farrer, President of the Remote Work Association and CEO of Distribute Consulting, "There are both right and wrong ways to implement remote work. If you’re holding back because you’re only looking at the wrong examples, you are going to miss out on many rewards.”

So, if you're looking at remote hiring, here are a few tips for equipping you to do great remote work.

Tips for Hiring Remote Workers

1. Look for the right fit for a remote team

It is quite a tough task to hire a remote team. Employing employees simply means searching for a set of skills necessary to excel in remote employment.

Few of the remote working skills are:

• Excellent communication skills
• Powerful collaboration skills
• Having a sense of Accountability
• Good Time Management skills
• Strong organization skills

It is necessary to evaluate your candidates based on these skills, as these are equally important for the candidate to clear the test apart from the technical skills. Based on those skills, candidates can showcase their true potential.

You can also test your candidate for all the skills they need to succeed in their remote roles using the pre-employment assessment solution. The test will unlock the real insights that help you make decisions about shortlisting. In addition to this, video conferencing tools (Zoom, Slack, Teams) also test candidates for the comfort level as many meetings happen via video calls.

Also read: Best tools for Remote Working

2. State clearly what you are looking for in the ideal candidate - Remote Worker Hiring Tips

It is important to search for an "ideal candidate" and it plays a greater role in remote hiring, as it states the key remote working qualities that candidates must have. Many potential candidates may be dismissed because they don't feel like a good fit. It is important to write it out about your ideal candidate description to quickly list the correct candidate. Remote profiles could also require specific time zones and requirements for locations. The time and location should be clearly stated so candidates can check whether they are comfortable and if they can't apply for the position.

3. Choose the right platform to look for the right candidate

As so many candidates are actively looking for remote work opportunities, they already know the "top go-to places" that are not job portals such as Monster and Indeed or platform LinkedIn.

So, if you want to get the right candidate, don't post your remote jobs on those channels. Choose these job boards to select the best ones:

• WeWorkRemotely: This job portal is one of the top search platforms for the best professional remote talent. With categories that span Design, Sales, Marketing, and DevOps help you select the best talent based on your needs.
• AngelList: Best location for startups with all the latest skills to find and hire remote talents.
• Stack Overflow: A ready-to-go job board to hire developers looking for opportunities to work from home.
• Remote.co: Like WeWorkRemotely, this job platform also hosts jobs across multiple teams and roles as well.
• Remotive: Remotive is a popular job portal that looks for remote working roles.
• Upwork: Upwork is also a commonly used platform for remote workers to have multiple job profiles posted.

Organizations need to try out these work platforms to hire the best remote professionals.

4. Managing remote teams is not easy

91 percent of people who work from home feel that they are more productive than when they were in an office. List out some methods that help you enjoy the benefits of Remote Working.

• Hiring: Recruiting top talent anywhere with job portals. Recruiters can also check on LinkedIn, WeWorkRemotely, and StackOverflow.
• Managing: Managing distributed agile teams of all sizes. Collaborating in-house and remote teams to work on a niche product.
• Tracking: Connecting and tracking help you to monitor the everyday screens of remote employees. This can be done via tools like Webworktracker.
• Sharing Screens: Sharing screens and let teams share each other’s code while developing systems.
• Remote tools: Remote tools like Teams, Zoom, Slack, and Basecamp help remoter workers work synchronously with each other.
• Meeting: Daily scrum meeting on Teams and Slack helps to engage and communicate teams even remotely.
• Brainstorming: Working remotely helps you to get extra time to brainstorm creative ideas. Encourage your teams to collect ideas and share them on Evernote.
• Sharing: Help remoters to share content on drive and cloud so that it can be easily accessible to everyone.

5. Determine whether the candidate fit for culture and values

It's hard to understand whether candidates are fit for the culture and values of your company, even if you meet candidates face-to-face. But it is even more challenging when it comes to remote teams since there is only virtual interaction.

So how do you measure someone fit for culture and values? Firstly, you have to define your culture and values for this. Then convert those ideas into evaluation tests, surveys, or interview questions where you can actually measure the skills of your candidate.

To shortlist the best candidate that meets your software requirements, skill-testing should be done taking into consideration all aspects related to remote work.

6. Discuss SOW (Statement of Work) - Remote Worker Hiring Tips

The job description should clearly describe the complete details of the work (SOW) so that the candidate can easily understand it. The SOW document also helps with the candidate's potential to match the right and desired skill set required for the project to be completed. Also to be described in the job description are the limitations, pressure, and workload associated with the job.

According to a research, about 99.8 percent of the workforce in the information technology sector is unable to work from home and only 0.2 percent are champions of 'Work from Home' and exhibit high productive attributes.

The year 2020 portrays people no wanting to work remotely. Ninety-eight percent of respondents told us they would recommend remote work to others.

Remote working comes with both challenges and benefits, although how to manage it varies from person to person.

Benefits of Remote Working

Remote working is nowadays the fastest growing trend. Nearly all of the world's companies, particularly software development and IT companies, benefit the most from this trend. The development of a hybrid team composed of onshore and offshore developers is currently a trend in the IT industry. Remote hiring comes with many benefits for businesses and employees alike.

By 2028, over the next decade, 73 percent of all teams will have remote workers.

Let's look inside this:

• Increased productivity over onshore employees
• Reduced journey times and other costs
• Employee satisfaction improved
• Easy team-scaling
• Speedier project completion due to extended working hours
• Access to a bigger talent pool
• Reduced upfront costs for the infrastructure of the project
• No legal proceedings for recruiting remote workers
• Better retention rate among employees

A survey of 317 CFOs and Finance leaders by Gartner, Inc. on March 30, 2020, revealed that 74 percent will move at least 5 percent of their former on-site workforce to permanently remote post-COVID 19 positions.

Conclusion

Handling a remote team is quite a challenging task, but the benefits it provides can bring flexibility to the employees, and thus great expenses are reduced. Just follow those steps to ensure success before moving on in the recruitment process.

We are following a 4 step process at Yugasa Software Labs to hire remote developers. We also offer dedicated, immediate availability of solo specialists who work as part of your internal or distributed team following your process to go. Keep in touch with us to get the best remote team.