Hiring top talent for your remote team is not as easy as you think. Candidate sourcing, evaluation, onboarding, and tech adoption are just a few of the many challenges hiring managers face today. What makes it worse, good candidates often have multiple job offers as companies are increasingly hiring remote workers.
How can you secure talented employees for your remote team? You have to act smart and amp up your hiring game.
In this post, you’ll find seven tips for improving your recruitment strategies to attract top talent for your remote team.
Without further ado, let’s dive in:
7 Tips to Attract Top Talent
1. Train Your Hiring Managers
Good hiring managers know how to build a rapport with job candidates and recognize their true potential. But hiring remote employees is a bit different as most job candidates will be interviewed online. And even experienced hiring managers don’t always get the most out of the remote interviews due to everything being done online from small talk to skill assessment tests.
Therefore, it is always better to prepare your hiring managers for taking remote job interviews.
Following are some critical areas your hiring managers should excel at:
- Learning to use tech tools
- Reading body language through the screen
- Adopting remote interviewing etiquette
- Making a two-way conversation efficiently
When you’re going to hire for a technical role, make sure that your hiring managers are well-versed in assessing candidates’ skills remotely.
More and more companies are hiring remote employees, so the competition is out there. Equipping your hiring manager with the best remote hiring practices will help you secure top talents.
2. Build a Culture for Remote Employees
Building a culture for remote employees plays a critical role in attracting top talents.
That said, you should ensure to let job candidates know that your company is set up to support remote employees. And all the information regarding how you go the extra mile to make your remote team feel connected should be readily available to job candidates. This will convince them you care about hiring and working with remote employees.
Here are some pointers that can help you shout out that you have a real remote culture:
- Amplify the success stories of your exiting remote employees through multiple channels
- Create remote employee-focused content and share it on your social channels
- Explain job candidate activities/programs your company implement to make remote employees feel the part of the company
If you want to hire and retain talented remote employees, you should think about the long-term and build a work culture that nurtures remote employees.
3. Create Succinct Job Descriptions
Gone are the days when a company used to get a flood of qualified applications if it is hiring for remote positions. Now, you have to compete for the attention of top talents because there is a growing trend of hiring remote employees.
According to research, 80-90% of job seekers only look at job descriptions before making up their minds to apply for the job. Therefore, you must create succinct job descriptions to attract qualified talent and ward off those who are not fit for the job.
The key difference between an on-site job description and a remote job description is that you need to add more requirements, such as country limitations and time zones to the remote job description. Some of these details can be deal-breakers for both employers and employees.
So create a succinct job description, including relevant job title, remote work requirements, job responsibilities, and how to apply for the job. Doing so can save you a boatload of time, which you will otherwise spend on weeding out unqualified applications.
4. Have Intuitive Collaboration Process
Good employees these days often weigh the pros and cons of each offer before making the final decision. During the interview, if candidates feel that they have to figure out the collaboration process themselves, it can change their minds.
So you should have an intuitive collaboration process and convey to the job candidates that they will be provided with the essential training to do their jobs efficiently.
Also, your hiring managers should make job candidates feel that there will be multiple communication channels to assist remote employees in better performing functions of their jobs.
5. Plan Meetup Opportunities
Remote working offers multiple benefits to both employers and employees. This is the main reason behind the exponential growth of remote working.
However, working remotely sometimes makes remote employees feel left alone. In fact, 20% of remote workers struggle with loneliness.
So planning your remote employee benefit package in a way to make them feel connected goes a long way. If it is feasible, try to include meetup opportunities like company retreats in the remote employee benefit package. Also, you should have regular remote team building activities in your company.
The more candidates feel that your company focuses on remote team building activities, the more they are likely to join you.
6. Show Career Growth Plan
Candidates prefer working remotely because remote working allows them to have flexibility, time-saving, health, happiness, and more. But it doesn’t mean that candidates are not looking for moving up a career ladder.
When you are trying to build a remote work culture in your company, you should also make a career growth plan for remote employees you will hire. And when you share employee growth plans with successful candidates, they will understand that your company cares for their growth as well.
Also, having a monthly/bi-monthly/annual performance bonus for remote employees can motivate them to join you.
7. Offer Inspiring Interview Experience
Last but not least, try to offer job candidates an inspiring interview experience. Many candidates openly discuss their experience and employers concerned. With the growth of social media, any negative information spreads like a wildfire.
So any untoward incident getting online attention can influence your company’s reputation among potential candidates who are good at what they do.
On the other hand, a positive experience can build your rapport among potential candidates because 52% job candidates check social media and the company’s site before applying for a job.
Here are some quick points to improve interview experience:
- Be accommodating with candidates schedules
- Ease candidates nerves
- Implement candidate feedback survey
- Be honest about the timeline
- Provide detailed feedback (with their areas of improvement)
- Appreciate candidates for showing up
Remember, candidates perceive your company culture through job experience. So don’t make a miss here.
Hire Top Talent for Your Remote Team
Most companies are hiring remote employees these days. So allowing employees to work remotely alone won’t move the needle. Follow the above-mentioned tips strategically, and you will certainly notice a positive improvement in your remote hiring. And if you are looking for ways to attract a software developer, especially the global ones, we got you covered.
