The Right Remote Candidate: 7 Signs
Getting and hiring the right remote worker can be a difficult task for most businesses and organizations. In most cases, it requires deep research and effort to get the right candidate. Not only must you confirm that the candidate is good for the job role, but you must also ensure they acquire all of the relevant skills and abilities. You must know if the potential employee can be productive and thrive in a remote work environment because hiring a remote candidate is quite different from hiring someone to work in an office. And these signs also show candidates what they need to display to get hired.
Due to the global pandemic that has forced many businesses around the world to adapt to working from home in 2020, recent news shows that remote work is here to stay. This has forced organizations, business leaders, and recruiters alike to be able to find and recognize qualities that indicate a candidate will be successful in a remote role.
What Is a Remote Candidate?
A remote employee is a person who is hired by a company or organization but works outside of a formal office environment. This could imply working from home, at a cafe, local co-working space, or in any city across the globe.
Remote workers need a unique set of skills and abilities compared to local office-based workers with self-discipline and focus which are part of the most essential abilities they must possess. Most remote workers have positive traits that make them great at working independently, and as any recruiter knows, most candidates will tell you a few hidden and sometimes not-so-hidden things in their CV.
When assessing a possible new hire, knowledge of these seven traits can serve as favorable signs of their future success in a remote work environment:
Communication Skills
Working remotely depends mainly on written communications. You must communicate completely in texts, emails, and chats. If a prospect finds it difficult to relate to themselves using the written word, it’s safe to say that they’re not fit for the remote life.
Even when you communicate verbally, it is vital to be precise and effective.
When it comes to examining this ability, pay close attention to the candidate’s cover letter and any email they have exchanged with you. These two things should give you answers about their communication style, and you will know whether or not they come across eloquently on paper.
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
Team brainstorming occurs in virtual environments, but when working remotely, it’s vital to be able to examine and solve issues on your own; without needing to walk down the hall to ask a coworker a question or to contact another employee or a director instantly for assistance. The ability to analyze problems and find solutions on their own is a big help when dealing with minor issues.
Result & Quality Orientation
A perfect candidate should be both result and quality-orientated. These individuals are usually visionary and results-driven and will often take the crucial steps to accomplish their goals and targets.
Employees who have these qualities focus on achieving tasks and pay attention to detail to ensure that their work is accomplished within the urgent deadlines at a favorable standard.
When determining whether a candidate has these skills, they are likely to:
- Be very open-minded and have healthy relationship-building skills
- Illustrate a flexible approach to projects
- Set practical objectives to improve themselves
Prioritization and Time Management Skills
Prioritization is one of the most essential skills of a remote worker. A great remote worker understands how to get things done and when to deliver. They can recognize the most important tasks, and they’re able to finish urgent work very fast without delay.
However, an individual who can prioritize the right tasks and exhibit good time management skills will do well working remotely.
When you conduct interviews for remote jobs, you can examine a candidate’s ability to prioritize by asking questions like: “How do you organize your work when you have to attend to many projects/clients simultaneously?” Their answers will tell you what you need to know about their prioritization and time management.
A+ Technology Skills
The use of technology has become one of the most valuable skills for any organization.
Remote working is evolving alongside digital transformation, and the use of digital apps is empowering remote workers. Occasionally remote workers need to use simple or various communication and collaboration platforms, such as Slack, Zoom, Google hangout, Skype, and many more.
Furthermore, for those in a more advanced tech company, They need to be familiar with cybersecurity and cloud technologies in a business system. Remote candidates who can’t handle these tools should not be considered at all.
Remote Working Experience
Most of the ideal thing to look for in a CV for a remote candidate is previous remote work experience. With the rapid increase of remote working jobs growing daily, the number of remote workers is falling, especially those with plenty of experience.
Moreover, it’s the soft skills and traits listed above or additional skills gained during other work experiences that suggest if a candidate has what it takes to be an excellent and competent remote worker.
Trust
Lastly, all good relationships and partnerships are based on trust and sincerity, and without it, they fall about because trust is needed for any organization to succeed.
There is no typically agreed set of rules or measurements to examine it. So, determining trustworthiness will mean that using your good judgment will be necessary to trust the candidate. However, if you can see a remote working candidate has held a position of trust in a previous work experience, this can signify that they were trusted by another business to get their job done effectively; you can use this as a criterion to judge their trustability.
Conclusion
Hiring remote employees can be a difficult and time-consuming task, and you’ll have to invest your time and materials to cover all of your bases fully to ensure you have the information you need to make an informed hiring decision because hiring the wrong candidate can affect and destroy your organization. For remote candidates, find ways and answers to demonstrate these seven sets of skills during your interviews for remote positions, and you will set yourself up for success.
This article was written by BorderlessHR for HackerNoon and was edited and published with permission.