4 Tips for building a fully remote interview process

To learn more about creating an agile recruitment process, read how we helped JYSK perfect their remote recruitment process. Even though people are getting more used to remote processes, it’s never a bad idea to make sure that candidates are aware of why things are done in a certain way. When asked about screening candidates with pre-recorded interviews for entry-level positions, Malin Westman from Volvo Cars had a great example in mind.

As the only global PEO with a dedicated, in-house recruitment team, Horizons sources, hires, and onboards your global workforce. And as specialists in remote work, we accelerate your ability to hire remote professionals across all industries. Questions such as these will allow you to learn a great deal about a candidate. Even though you can’t meet your potential hires in person, utilizing platforms like Skype and Zoom are just as effective in determining a person’s strengths and suitability for the job on offer.

Emphasize Job-Specific Skills

Conflicts arise whether employees are working remotely or in a physical environment. In remote environments, companies need to build trust by showing their willingness to listen, absorb, and move to solution-driven conversation without retaliation. By asking about conflicts directly in the interview process, we can understand how a person might handle awkward and/or uncomfortable situations. We can also see how they share feedback — in a critical or constructive manner. Review the candidates resume, the hiring rubric, and the interview questions you plan to ask.

Based on the remote position that you’re hiring for, you can start by compiling a list of skills and traits that a new employee should possess. When compiling this list, don’t neglect the fundamental traits that are required of a remote worker – such as teamwork, technical knowledge, and of course, communication skills. If you or the candidate are working from home, a common issue that can arise is bandwidth. If multiple people are online in a house at the same time, this can occasionally cause delays with video conferencing tools. To address such issues, you can opt to disable the video function on the application you’re using during the interview. This way you’ll still be able to maintain a conversation with the candidate, albeit without the visuals. Alternatively, you can reschedule the remote interview at a time when fewer people are online.

Hold a kick-off meeting

We think the best first impression for a candidate to make is with their potential manager. The main goal of these conversations is to see if the candidate would be a great value add to our team. We’ve also learned that when we open certain roles, like engineering positions, and rely solely on active candidates, the pipeline lacks diversity across gender and race. We’ve shared our diversity and inclusion strategies and have had greater success when we focus primarily on recruiting top talent from underrepresented groups.

Begin with simple questions that help you get to know the candidate better. Then dive into more challenging questions once the interview has had some time to settle in.

Employee Resources

Below, find out how to hold effective virtual interviews, including the benefits, best ways to prepare, how to make candidates feel comfortable during the process and more. Over 5.7M job seekers have scheduled virtual interviews on Indeed,¹ and 88% of employers in an Indeed survey said they have conducted video interviews. Keeping up with the technological changes is the responsibility of every business. https://remotemode.net/ When it comes to remote interviews, they are convenient, fast, and provide a lot of opportunities for the candidates. One of the biggest hurdles for remote job interviews is losing the internet connection. It becomes more complicated when the candidate lives in a rural area with limited internet. Similar to the in-person approach, the remote hiring process is another method for candidate screening.

We strongly filter for candidates who are extremely self-motivated, thrive when working individually and are clear communicators via digital channels . Hiring remote workers can be very different than on-site since the interviews happen off-site. We are using technology to overcome the shortage of not being able to meet in person.

Prepare your interview panel

Instead of flying out these candidates for interviews, the hiring manager can keep their options open with remote interviews. Remote interviews are a proven means of saving time and resources while ensuring you recruit the best talent for your organization. However, before you conduct any remote interview, there are a number of aspects to consider. These include selecting the right interview platform, familiarizing yourself with the questions that need to be asked, and ensuring that you have a backup plan if technology fails. After the conclusion of your remote interview, ensure that you explain to candidates the next step in the process. Ask the candidate if they have any final questions and thank them for their time.When it comes to providing feedback, never leave candidates waiting for weeks – or indefinitely – with no answer.

This interview could be with someone from the leadership team or a player from another team who will collaborate heavily with this role. While the project is certainly an important piece of the process, it is not the sole determining factor for moving to hire. The hiring team considers the project score combined with feedback from earlier stages to decide who moves on to the final stage. To ensure this, the hiring team collaborates on the questions they plan to ask well in advance of scheduling any interviews. We have a bank of questions to ask at this point, but we always update and add new ones along the way. While the opportunity to hire the best people anywhere in the world is incredible, hiring for a remote team does have its unique challenges.

The Remote Hiring Process

Now at 10 years old, we’re grateful we attract numerous qualified candidates each time we open a new role. However, we’ve also learned that some of the best hires are candidates who weren’t even looking for their next role until we contacted them. For just about every role at Help Scout, we ask candidates to complete a short project in order to better assess skills and collaboration style. Since it takes time and remote interview process effort to hire, we change up the teams depending on who is available, who has experience hiring, and who is excited to be involved. This is your chance to really sell the opportunity and get someone excited about your role and your company. Determining whether candidates have the skills to succeed in a remote company. Creating a process that allows us to get to know candidates without ever meeting face to face.

We only hire remote workers and use a similar process for all positions. We advertise job offers on StackOverflow Careers, Github Jobs and a few other prominent job boards, clearly highlighting that it is a 100% remote job. People apply through a form in our website that creates a Trello card in a big board that we use to track candidates during the whole application process. A good idea would be to create a guide with useful tips on how candidates can prepare for a video interview. It’s likely that some candidates will drop out of the hiring process if they have to invest time to record a video of themselves instead of the more traditional application form or phone screen.

How to navigate through the remote job interview process and get hired

The lead hiring manager should get together with the recruiting team and plan out the day of the interview. The coronavirus pandemic isn’t dying down at any point, meaning that remote interviews will remain a frequent method for screening. Doing a video interview in a familiar environment reduces those feelings of nervousness and gives the team a better impression of their candidates. From appearance to speech, the hiring team takes everything into account and looks into the candidate’s behavior.

• Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, shares some inside tips on how they run interviews at the final stages.
• This way you gain more valuable information from your candidates, and will understand whether they’re a good fit for that specific position or not.
• At Help Scout, we love to make offers over video chat whenever possible, so the hiring manager will email the finalist and ask if they have a few moments to connect for some good news.
• We follow a four-step screening process with multiple team members, filtering out and interviewing candidates at various stages.