Remote hiring has taken over as the “new normal.”

With remote work on the rise, remote hiring practices have become integral to recruitment for many organizations worldwide.

Although remote hiring offers various benefits, it is not always a smooth ride for agency recruiters.

Recruiters must deal with constant curveballs that get thrown at them. From sourcing candidates to finding the ideal remote hiring techniques, you’re bound to face numerous challenges throughout this process.

Remote hiring is something recruiters should consider adopting more seriously as 74% of professionals expect remote work to become standard.

To help you achieve the best outcome and deliver a positive candidate experience, recruiters should follow some of the best practices to ensure a smooth remote hiring experience.

1. Be Collaborative & Communicative

Increasing your collaborative efforts is crucial—especially when remote hiring.

One of the benefits of working remotely as a team is that it demands improved collaboration and communication.

To hire effectively and work efficiently as a team, make sure you strengthen virtual collaboration and foster stronger bonds through clear and consistent communication.

In addition, improved collaboration and communication efforts reflect well on candidates as they will be kept in the loop and will feel more engaged throughout the process.

You’ll soon realize that you’re receiving better feedback and overcoming challenges easily.

Always remember—communication is critical when it comes to remote hiring.

Communication and collaboration is still the biggest struggle for 21% of remote workers.

Most importantly, to effectively implement this practice, make sure your recruitment software facilitates collaboration as a team.

2. Maintain Honesty

When you’re hiring remotely, maintaining transparency and creating a proper communication channel suddenly becomes extremely necessary.

Physical communication makes it much easier to pick up on communicative efforts through gestures, body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. However, working remotely can often lead to miscommunication.

Ensure you are maintaining clarity and honesty with candidates, clients, and co-workers. In a remote hiring model, honesty is of the utmost importance so that candidates know exactly what to expect.

Today’s job market is all about consistent and honest communication. In fact, it is what shapes the overall candidate experience.

Adhere to your candidates’ concerns and be clear about your intentions to avoid misunderstandings.

3. Build a Centralised Recruitment Plan

It is crucial to design a recruitment plan or guide for everyone to follow in a remote work setting.

In fact, in remote hiring, you need the process to be more structured and centralized so it is easy to follow for everyone, irrespective of their location.

Your recruitment plan should help your team manage time while maintaining consistency and producing the desired output. To build a centralized recruitment plan, consider the following tips–

  • Select a common communication platform or tool for consistent communication. Use tools like Slack, Skype, Microsoft Teams, or Google Hangouts.
  • Schedule daily or weekly sync-ups for the team to ensure no one lags.
  • Plan opportunities for the team to get together virtually or physically at happy hours or monthly meetings.
  • Select a platform that keeps all your data in one place and can be easily accessed.

Maintaining a structured recruitment strategy makes collaborative and remote hiring much more productive.

More productivity = satisfied candidates!

4. Create a Remote Onboarding Roadmap

With remote hiring practices, make sure you don’t neglect your onboarding strategy.

Recruiters often forget that hiring doesn’t end with a hired candidate.

Your approach to onboarding is a telltale sign of your work culture and employee experience.

With remote work practices becoming the new normal, ensure you augment your onboarding strategy to effectively serve your recruitment needs.

Like remote hiring, your remote onboarding strategy should be well structured and pre-planned to avoid confusion and keep new hires at ease.

For a smooth remote onboarding experience, consider the following factors–

  • Organizational: Ensure you provide your new hires with a central repository of information. Onboarding through digital documentation is an efficient and scalable practice as it can be repeated and instills the basics of your workflow.
  • Technical: Give new hires access to the tools and platforms they’ll require and encourage them to use them as early as possible. Getting new employees familiarised with these tools builds confidence and helps them feel more productive.
  • Social: Design any formal or informal channels for communication, making them feel more engaged. Socialization is essential to remote hiring as it can help team members feel more connected to their new teams, even though they don’t share a physical office.

5. Enhance the Candidate Experience

Providing the best candidate experience should be a recruiter’s top priority during remote hiring.

Empathy and good communication are critical for bridging the gap between digital and physical setups in a remote setup. Therefore, basic etiquette like maintaining eye contact, proper body language, and paying attention should never be overlooked.

In addition, make sure you give time to candidates to address any issues or ask questions. Most importantly, maintaining clear and consistent communication should be the very first step to remote hiring.

6. Consider Backups

In a virtual environment, technical issues are always bound to happen no matter how much planning is involved.

Ensure a backup plan is in place for any technical errors to facilitate your workflow. While interviewing candidates, let them know what to do if they are dealing with a poor internet connection, sound quality issues, and other common problems that may arise.

In fact, 39% of employees have technology issues during the onboarding process.

In remote settings, connectivity issues and other distractions are prevalent barriers. Deal with such issues patiently and stay well prepared.

With this etiquette guide to remote recruitment, hope you’ll be able to quickly adapt to remote work practices while providing the best possible experience for job seekers.