Adam Masur, VP Marketing at Credly gives a fresh outlook on the ways of finding and hiring the top talent from the remote industry and yet so, doing it efficiently.
Hiring the right people for your team is crucial when building a solid foundation for achieving success. Your team members will inspire, motivate and amaze you. They will challenge you to show up as your best self and bring new ideas, solutions and skills to the table. Ultimately, your team will allow you to recognize what an honor it is to work with them each and every day.
The challenge lies in finding and hiring these people, especially in a dispersed environment. Not only are teams working remotely, managers are leading remotely, and the hiring and onboarding processes have become remote as well.
The unique position of an entirely remote workplace requires a slew of additional best practices to find outstanding new hires for your team.
- Incorporate your team early and often
Change is inevitable when adding a person to your team. Like most things, the key to managing this change is good communication with your team.A new employee can change the workflow or team dynamic, so expect and encourage questions from your team about the role a new hire might fill. Eliminating ambiguity and resolving conflict is hard enough in-person, and it is even harder when everyone is working remotely. Spend time with your team and communicate with them often about the hiring process to ensure a seamless transition for everyone, from the beginning of the interview process to onboarding new employees. Your team will be off to a great start even as they take time to adjust to a new member.
- Seek out remote working skills and experiences
It’s crucial to find potential employees who already have the skills and experiences that make them successful in a remote environment. Keeping in mind the nature of your team, ensure candidates have skills that will enhance your organization. For example, if your team is highly collaborative and communicates via chat regularly, you’ll want to make sure a new hire is a team player with good communication skills. The same goes for a more independent team: seek out a new employee who can hold their own. To do this, you will need to understand a candidate’s background and what they need to learn to be successful on the team. See if they have digital credentials for proof of their skills, and utilize behavioral interviewing to check for specific skill sets and find the perfect fit.
- Video. Video? Video!
Let candidates know you’ll be using video for the interviews, and send them the link and platform information well in advance. This sets your candidates up for success and gives them ample time to prepare, eliminating some of the nerves and stress associated with interviewing. One time, a candidate popped up unexpectedly in an online meeting of mine the day before their interview. This was the first time they had used the platform, so they wanted to practice to ensure everything would work smoothly the next day. This candidate scored an extra point in my book for being prepared. On the flip side, one candidate joined their interview while walking across the lawn to sit in the car; their phone was propped up on the dash, so I could still see their steering wheel. While they may have been in the driver’s seat of their car, they were not exactly in control of the interview and had not arranged a better quiet place to have the conversation. This candidate did not score any points in my book for preparedness.
- Panel interviews
While in-person peer-panel interviews can be intimidating for a candidate, a remote panel interview has proven to be extremely effective, especially if the position you are hiring for is remote. However, be sure to have a structured approach to the interview, and prepare your team well for the entire process. This lets candidates know you will also prepare them well in their role. Decide in advance which panelists will pose which questions, and every person on the panel should follow-up after the interview. This simplifies the comparison process in order to find the best fit for your team.
In the days before the interview, provide the candidates with a list of the interviewers. Let them know they have five minutes at the beginning to introduce themselves and explain why they find the position and company appealing to them. Move onto the interview questions, but be sure to leave enough time for their questions. This approach will help you maximize your time with the candidate and ensure you’ve covered the most important ground when you reconvene and make your hiring decisions.
In an increasingly remote workplace era, finding the right employee for your team is crucial to achieve success. Your interview and hiring process must involve additional best practices to reflect the remote environment.
As an added benefit, the search for a new employee allows everyone to think critically about what skills and experiences are needed to be successful within their roles, team, and overall company.
You can then begin your search and hire the candidate who reflects these qualities, has what it takes to work remotely on your team, and ultimately inspires you every day.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Masur
Vice President of Marketing at Credly
Adam Masur, Vice President of Marketing at Credly, is driven by a passion for optimizing the way marketing teams and technology work together to grow businesses. A veteran of EdTech and SaaS marketing, with experience at both large companies and start-ups, Adam has always been fascinated by how people figure out where they want to go in their careers, and how technology can help them get there. Adam holds an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Electrical Engineering from University of Rhode Island. Adam is based in New York City.