Remote Hiring: How to Hire Remote Workers Effectively

Build a remote hiring process out of the work itself: a written task in the job post, a home task with loose instructions, interviews with the teammates the person would work with, and a short paid trial. Each step tests one of three traits, passion, proactiveness and self-discipline, so you see how a person works before you decide. Kipwise is a 100% remote team with teammates from the Americas, Europe and Asia, and this is the process we use.

Hire for three traits and test each one

Not everyone suits remote work, and unlike tactical skills these traits are hard to train, so the hiring process decides whether your remote team works. In Remote work not working? Some people just don’t fit in remote-work we describe the three traits of a great remote worker. This is where each one shows up in our process:

• Passion, which we rank first. Enjoying the work is what keeps self-discipline going, and teammates slacking off with no manager in sight is the biggest worry when managing a remote team. We look for it in the task in the job post, in the resume and in the effort a candidate puts into the home task.
• Proactiveness. A remote manager can’t see a teammate struggling, so the teammate has to raise questions and ask for help at the right moment. We look for it in the questions candidates ask during the home task.
• Self-discipline. The home task and the paid trial show whether someone delivers without close monitoring.

Write a job post that does some of the screening

Beyond the responsibilities and requirements, describe your team’s core values and style of work. A small team with no local reputation should also give reasons to trust it, such as investors backing the company, notable clients or growth you can show.

Ask applicants to answer a few questions or do a small task instead of only sending a resume. For a sales role, ask for a sample pitch email to a potential customer; for a product manager, give a scenario and ask them to prioritize the tasks and explain why. This puts some people off, and that is the filter you want, especially on job boards: many people apply to any job that lets them work remotely, with no interest in your company or its work. Someone excited about your company will spend the extra effort.

Read the answers before the resumes. For applicants who answer well, we then look through the resume for signs that the passion is real. If a candidate says they are passionate about machine learning, did they build relevant side projects or gain related experience outside work? Everyone else gets a timely, kind rejection email. It shows you are a responsible employer, and it cuts the follow-up emails that land in support and other departments.

Link a career page in the job post. Share your company story, core values, the team, perks and benefits and open roles, add team photos from remote meetings and retreats, and ask a few teammates to tell how they work remotely for you. Buffer, Zapier and Prezly have career pages worth using as references.

Where to find candidates

Start with people who already know how you work. When you can’t see each other every day, trust matters, and someone you have worked with and enjoyed is often easier to onboard because you know their working style. Then ask your teammates, investors, partners and customers, who know how you work and what kind of person you need.

Add a “we’re hiring” link to your blog posts, social profiles and user update emails. Readers and users already care about what your company works on, and your users know the product and the pain points it solves.

Treat job boards as the last resort. Wellfound (formerly AngelList Talent) and WeWorkRemotely are places where people look for remote roles. Expect many applicants who want remote work more than they want your work, which is why the task in the job post matters.

From home task to paid trial

Give the best applicants a short home task

Depending on the number of applications, we normally pick no more than 10 candidates for a short home task. For a content marketer, it can be a 3-month content strategy and a sample blog post. For a UX designer, it might be a plan to improve the product’s onboarding flow.

Keep the instructions thin and read the questions that come back. We encourage candidates to ask instead of giving super detailed instructions, because asking the right question at the right time is how a remote worker gets a job done. A good sign is a candidate who asks who the work is for, what a good result looks like or when it is due before starting. A candidate who guesses silently and sends something off-target may do the same on the job, when you can’t see them stuck.

Cap the task at a few hours, say so up front, and pay for anything longer. A task that takes a weekend selects for people with spare weekends, not for passion, and strong candidates who already have a job or caring duties may skip it. Dedication shows in a small task done well.

Interview with your teammates

We invite the candidates whose home task impressed us to video interviews, where we pay special attention to how clearly they communicate. Whether they are flexible about the interview time, arrive on time and send a good follow-up after the interview also says something about fit.

Bring teammates into the interviews instead of scheduling one call with you. Candidates get a better picture of who they would work with, and you get a more objective picture, because a manager in a hurry to hire, especially for a role meant to free up their own time, tends to ignore red flags.

Run a paid trial

Remote hiring makes a paid trial easy, even for a candidate who has not left their current job. Depending on the role, we normally invite our best candidate to a 1-2 week paid trial before the final decision. Your team sees how the person performs in the real team environment and whether they fit the culture, and the candidate learns first-hand whether the team and the role suit them.

If the candidate still has a job, ask whether their current contract allows outside work before you offer a trial. Then put the trial in writing: what they will deliver, the hours, the rate, who owns the work and when you will decide. A trial with a vague scope ends in a vague decision, and one that conflicts with their employer’s rules can put their current job at risk.

Next, read the Remote Onboarding Best Practices and see which remote working tools can improve your remote team’s productivity.