By now, you’ve likely decided whether you’re sticking with a remote hiring process or not depending on how the model works for your particular business. Or, you may be opting for a more hybrid model instead. If it’s the former, and you’re continuing to grow your startup or scaleup, how can you make sure it’s both rock-solid to support your immediate need, whilst also being scalable for the future?
Here at Scede, we’ve been building teams remotely for fast-growing scaleups globally since 2013. We’ve witnessed the significant benefits that this can have – from elevating your employer brand to enabling access to a wider, more inclusive pool of distributed talent.
And we can’t forget the positive impact this can have on your time to hire – with more of our partners shifting to a remote-first model, we’ve recorded a 26% reduction in our time to offer thanks to the smoother virtual process that’s been adopted by many.
For startups and scaleups, these seemingly smaller gains across the board can be game-changing – and we don’t want you to miss out on that.
In this article, we share some pointers on what measures you might want to think about putting in place when it comes to building a rock-solid remote hiring process if you haven’t already.
Carving out responsibility & creating a decision-making matrix
This is SUPER important. You wouldn’t see a flight crew jump onboard a 737 without knowing who was sitting in the pilot’s seat and operating the cabin doors. Assemble a hiring team and carve out the responsibilities of each stakeholder to enforce clarity and efficiency across the remote hiring process.
Stakeholder management in recruitment is vital to running a smooth and successful hiring process.
You also need to pull together a decision-making matrix. This will ensure everybody is aligned on who you want to hire and why you’re making the hire, as well as helping to avoid making bad hires with poor decisions.
Off the back of this, create an internal scorecard, so that it’s clear and everybody is singing from the same hymn sheet. This should include responsibilities, goals, competencies, and core traits against which everybody should be assessing the candidate.
Components of this should be attributed to your company’s mission and core values. Find out what’s important to the individual and understand whether this fits or adds to your business. This is critical when hiring remotely, as it allows you to get an insight into who the candidate truly is, without meeting them face-to-face.
Curious to see how we scale a remote hiring process with our ‘One Team’ approach to recruitment at Scede? This is the article you’re looking for:
A ‘One Team’ Approach To Recruitment
Process management and tools
Every person on the hiring team assembled is responsible for their phase of the process. But you must set expectations about this in advance. Where information is documented, how you’ll communicate as an internal team, weekly check-ins, and timelines for example.
Will you use a project management tool? A Trello board to manage a hiring process checklist or Basecamp perhaps? What Applicant Tracking System (ATS) will you be using? And where does this come into play? Where will candidate feedback be stored? How will you communicate as a group – Slack or Teams? Are there timelines or Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that need to be put in place? Do you need a virtual whiteboard tool like Miro?
Having this documented and agreed upon by everyone involved will make the workflow smoother and more consistent – and avoid frustrations further down the line.
Candidate and hiring manager care
Beware of the pitfall; out of sight, out of mind. Having a fully remote hiring process can pose some risks to the candidate experience if not done well. The loss of human connection, feeling passed from Zoom interview to Zoom interview. To negate this, have one person own candidate management – and make the virtual hiring experience as positive as possible.
Interviews can sometimes be intimidating. So start by making the process super clear to the candidate beforehand. Share the interview flow with them as a visual. Let them know what tools or tech they’ll need and when. What they might need to prep in advance. A glimpse of the team they’ll be speaking to. Troubleshooting tips in case they have tech issues. Suggest a plan B in case of any connection hiccups during the call. And advice on how they can best present themselves on camera – ideal lighting, positioning, audio options, for example.
Most importantly, your job is to empower every candidate to do their best work in any interviews or tests – make sure you’re making the necessary adjustments for anyone that needs them ie neurodiverse candidates or candidates with disabilities or health conditions.
Read more about diversity hiring strategies and embedding DE&I into your recruitment process.
Use this as a way to reflect your company culture
If in a physical interview the candidate would be welcomed as they arrived, sat down and offered a drink, given a tour of the office and the opportunity for small talk with you and other team members, find a way to recreate this experience virtually. If openness is one of your values, encourage the candidate to share more about themselves, or if they have a pet, invite them to bring it into the video call.
When it comes to developing hiring managers to deliver great candidate care, ensure they’re comfortable with the process and with conducting interviews virtually. Host training sessions if need be or let them shadow a role model first.
As a rule of thumb, over-communicate. This will not only ensure a great candidate experience and also employee engagement further down the line, but it’ll mean you get the best out of them and your hiring managers as well.
Tightening the feedback loop
Finally, make sure your feedback loop is super tight. As mentioned above, align on where this is tracked and make this part of your post-interview process. Put timelines in place to ensure expectations are correctly set – both with the candidate and your hiring team.
Schedule a full debrief and walk away from this (virtually, of course) with a decision. And get back to your interviewees in a timely manner. If it’s bad news, provide them with tangible and constructive feedback. This may be via email, but if the candidate has been through a number of interview stages, a more personal approach would be to give them a call.
If it’s good news, make the moment special. Ensure you give your new hire a personal call to keep the human element there. Have their team, or manager, do a quick VC to say congrats. And then let the full onboarding process begin.
Resources:
A handy checklist for remote pre-boarding and onboarding tips
A deeper dive into how to deliver a rock-solid onboarding experience
The real secret sauce? Keep it human.
Whether you have a fully remote hiring process, or you’re running a hybrid model, the process has to be right for you. Remote hiring certainly has its benefits – particularly if done well. But don’t let it remove the human element of recruiting.
People connect with people. Recreate the mini moments of human connection and rapport building that candidates would otherwise have face-to-face. And know when a 100% virtual experience might not be right. For example, if you’re hiring for a very senior role, a final in-person interview may be preferable.
More than anything, adapt, evolve and keep learning, and you’ll surely reap the benefits of embracing a remote hiring process long-term.
If you’d like to chat about how we could partner to scale your team or put the right hiring processes in place for your company, message us using the form below to start a conversation.
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