Guest PostToday’s work environment is drastically different from even 10 years ago. Technology now allows you to look for — and hire — candidates anywhere in the world. They no longer need to be in your office for the job interview or even once they’re hired. The benefit to hiring employees who don’t necessarily live in your city are numerous: you expand your reach to find the absolute best candidate for the role and you cut down drastically on expenses like relocation packages and overhead associated with an in-office employee.
Here are tips for managing what has become a virtual hiring process for many companies.
1. Be More Meticulous Than You Would for Local Candidates
No matter where the job candidate lives, you want to ensure that you’re selecting the one that is the perfect fit both for the empty role and for your company as a whole. Without in-person interviews, it can be a little more challenging to really assess someone’s competency as well as general personality.
Choose the best type of video interview for the situation. You can have a live video interview that mimics what an in-person interview would be like. Or you can ask candidates to record a video where they answer questions that you’ve sent in a one-way video interview. Focus your interview questions to get answers that will help you make an informed hiring decision.
Additionally, find out what experience this candidate has in working virtually. It’s not for everyone, and you need to ensure that you choose someone who is adept at working from home, not someone who needs constant in-person hand holding.
2. Adapt Your Onboarding Process to Accommodate Virtual Employees
You may pride yourself on your slick onboarding process, but consider how much is relevant to the virtual employee. Certainly, you can send the employee manual via email and get them to digitally sign hiring forms, but you won’t really engage them fully.
Consider pairing virtual hires with employees who work in your office. Ask the established employee to set up a video chat with the new hire on their first day to welcome them and answer questions. That person can check in with the new remote hir every few days to ensure they feel comfortable with their role and is understanding how to do their job.
3. Digitize Your Training Process
Training is key to getting a new hire up and running faster while minimizing downtime on training. Without being in the office, it can be harder to ramp up quickly, but with a learning management system, you can turn your training materials into easily-accessible online training tools that your virtual hire can plug into when they need to learn something new or get a refresher.
Create custom modules that you can tailor for each new employee’s specific role so that you can reuse them for employees that have overlap in their responsibilities.
4. Stay in Touch
As the HR point of contact, it might be all too easy to let your relationship slip away with an employee you don’t see at the water cooler, but it’s just as critical that you keep the relationship going. Schedule quarterly video check-ins so you can make sure your new remote employee doing well and is happy at the company. Ask if they are experiencing any barriers to getting their work done, as well as how they’re doing working virtually with their team. Make an effort to solve any problems they might be having to ensure that they’re engaged and efficient at their job.
Wrap-up
Hiring virtual employees is not without its issues, but if you expand your hiring process to accommodate employees who live and work elsewhere, you’ll quickly see how effective it can be.
About the Author
Christine Soeun Choi is an SEO associate at Fit Small Business specializing in digital marketing. Currently based in NYC, she has a background in business studies and math with a passion for business development. When not helping small business owners, Christine enjoys taking photos, exploring artwork, and traveling.
Josh Tolan
