Hiring remote employees for your business can pose a challenge when you’re unable to meet the candidates in person. If your applicants are local, perhaps you may conduct traditional interviews, but most companies hire remote employees all over the continent, and even overseas.
In the absence of direct, personal interaction, here are several tips for staffing your business with qualified remote candidates.
1. Be Willing to offer a different Position to Applicants
When an applicant seems to have great potential, but you know you’ve got a better applicant for that position, think about whether you can offer this person a different position. When you have a remote business, you might have plenty of roles to fill that don’t require specific expertise, such as virtual assistant.
According to Under30CEO, virtual assisting is a great option for entry-level employees. If an applicant has a positive attitude, but he or she is not a good fit for the particular job, offer the person a different, entry-level or near-entry position.
You can advertise entry-level positions, but there’s no guarantee you’ll encounter applicants that have a winning attitude.
2. Run a Full Background Check
According to data published by BackgroundChecks.com, 72% of businesses run background checks on their employees. This is a critical step in the hiring process.
No matter what industry you’re in, you don’t want to hire a worker who’s been convicted of crimes like embezzlement, forgery, bribery, market abuse, or insider dealing.
People can change and leave a criminal past behind. But it’s impossible for you to know who has genuinely changed and who has not. When you can’t meet someone in person to get a sense of who they are, it’s better to err on the side of caution.
Run a background check on all remote employees as a condition of employment. Just make sure to follow all federal and state laws regarding background checks for employment.
3. Small Budget? Look for fast Learners
Sometimes you’re better off filling a position with someone who is a fast learner and jack-of-all-trades rather than an expert. For example, if you don’t have the budget to hire an expert for every position you need, a jack-of-all-trades could help you immensely.
Ideally, you should have a dedicated PPC ad manager, social media manager, and website developer. However, if that’s beyond your budget, a jack-of-all-trades may get you by until you can gather the funding to fill each position separately.
4. Contact all References
Check all business and personal references for your applicants. Some people might have a rocky history with a job.
That’s not always a red flag, since some individuals are just not a match to the job they were hired to perform. Still, references can provide insight into your candidate’s attitude.
The ideal remote candidate might not have a perfect work history with former employers, but perhaps they were respectful and professional even if they were fired.
Avoid hiring people who explode in anger after termination, even if those people appear to have been taken advantage of by their former employer.
Avoid Hiring Candidates with Tempers
Attitude is crucial. Angry people often seek revenge, and since you can’t control remote employees as well as you can monitor in-house teams, it’s preferable to avoid a potentially vengeful situation altogether.
Some disgruntled employees log into the company network and delete data. For example, a former medical center employee gained access to his former company’s network on an administrator account, deleted company data, and disabled user accounts.
He was sentenced in February 2021, put under house arrest, and fined more than $13,000.
5. Require a Custom Upload to Online Portfolios
It’s all too easy for people to claim ownership of an online portfolio that’s not actually theirs. Unfortunately, this happens frequently.
Verify ownership of any online portfolio to which your candidates claim. Make portfolio verification part of your screening process.
When you extend an interview invitation to candidates, instruct them to upload a .txt file with a specific file name that contains precise text on their web server. If they can’t upload files, ask them to create a new page and make the URL match the required file name.
Also, make sure to list your portfolio verification requirements in your job advertisements to disqualify applicants who rely on other people’s portfolios to get hired.
Be Selective with your New Hires
Try to avoid having to act out of desperation. No matter how much you’d like to hire someone for a certain position, filling a position out of desperation is a bad move.
It takes only one bad hiring decision to create a major problem for your company.
Be selective about the employees you hire. Place a priority on hiring qualified candidates who also display a team-oriented attitude.
Laila Azzahra is a professional writer and blogger that loves to write about technology, business, entertainment, science, and health.