Hiring a remote team has a lot of cost advantages, but the process is fraught with risks of hiring the inappropriate set of people. Hiring the perfect team for your project is not a single task. It is an ongoing activity to give you positive outcomes for your project. Here are some useful tips:
Post the Job Well
Define the position and description in detail. A general position does not attract suitable candidates and ends up being a waste for both the hiring manager and the candidate.
Highlighting the positive aspects of the business and the role can be helpful in attracting skilled candidates.
Where to Find Candidates?
The best place to look for candidates is to find companies who hire them for you. A suitable IT outsourcing company can provide trained local or offshore candidates to choose from. You can also look for people in your existing networks, social groups or even your user base.
Understand Your Geographical Preference
You can hire remote teams from across the globe. If choosing to go outside the country, choosing a location where the pricing or the cultural difference is not very high, is the right approach.
Interaction Level
Have a Skype call with each and every candidate you wish to hire. Make sure that the candidates have good interaction and communication skills. It is very important to hire remote workers who respond promptly and are problem solvers.
The Ability To Take Responsibility
Make your judgement on the comfort factor in taking up a task and completing it without much help. Giving a sample task and understanding the ability to complete it independently is very helpful.
Speed of Execution
Knowing the speed with which the candidate is completing the task is helpful in understanding whether he/she will be able to deliver on time or not. Giving a speed test in the hiring process is recommended.
Written Communication Test
Every member of the remote team must go through a written communication test. A remote worker has to keep sending out email communication to the client for communicating progress and status updates. Only an effective communicator can send out accurate information and understand the feedback better.
Knows How To Prioritize
Every task in the project, needs to be prioritized. The interview process is helpful in understanding whether the candidate is being able to prioritize his/her tasks well.
Asking questions which require the candidate to demonstrate decision making capability is very useful.
Promptness
Judge a candidate on his/her promptness to solve a query. A remote worker must be agile and must be solution oriented. This is very important when hiring in a remote location. Some of the queries require urgent attention and such remote workers ensure there are no gaps in the delivery.
Pleasing Personality
Hire people who are happy and confident about what they know. They should be able to handle pressure without getting bogged down. The chosen candidates must be self-starters and highly motivated.
Adaptable
Every employee you hire in your remote team must be open to change and learning. In a dynamic business environment, you are looking for people who can upgrade themselves regularly and can help you with the right solutions.
Should Work In A Team
Productivity is usually a result of team effort and collaboration rather that a few good individual performances. One should prefer to hire people who can work together in a team and bring out better results in a collaborative environment.
Skill Set
Make sure, every candidate is an expert in the skill set he/she is being hired for. Also, it's a good idea to look at a persona's education background to see if they are continuously improving their skill set.
Combination of Skills
It is always advisable to hire for a combination of skills. Every individual would have his own level specialization. A variety of skills and working styles must be chosen to leverage from these effectively.
Stability and Focus
Look for people who shall make your project a success. Understand their goals and vision and choose wisely. Make sure you hire people who are looking to learn and grow. An unstable remote team can really make things unmanageable.
Make It a Continuous Process
Hiring people for your remote team is an ongoing activity. Regularly reviewing performance and making sure that it is meeting expectations is very important. Learning from the current hiring and improving the quality of people in the team, has to be done on a regular basis.
Give Performance Benchmarks
Every remote worker must be given benchmarks to achieve, with respect to performance.
Team goals must also be defined. Training sessions can be organized to provide the necessary training to achieve predefined goals.
Hire Experienced Professionals
While getting remote employees for your project, you should ensure that you are looking for trained or experienced professionals. Remote workers are not easy to train on the job and one must prefer experienced and result-oriented professionals.
Reporting
Ensure that your remote team is comfortable with the prescribed reporting formats. Detailed employee reports help in tracking work-in-progress and productivity.
Cultural Match
Look for people who fit into your company culture. This makes communication easier and simplifies the overall process.
Hiring the right sort of remote teams for your projects can drastically improve the profitability of your business, but hiring remote teams must be strategic to give you positive results.
Ved Raj is a business enthusiast. He writes about startups, remote teams and outsourcing. He is working as a Marketing Manager with ValueCoders. ValueCoders is a leading provider of remote development teams.