Remote staff selection from offshore has many similarities to onshore recruitment. You may already be familiar with these processes.
For the most part, the recruitment process is the same, but there are some significant differences. Employers first screen candidate resumes and conduct two to three levels of interviews that involve the recruiter, hiring manager, and perhaps a senior executive.
The difference in process between onshore and offshore hiring lies mainly in how the enterprise uses technology to glean insights about the candidate, in the absence of face-to-face interviews. To help you choose staff who will work remotely, we have put together some tips.
Interview Tips
Once you have shortlisted the candidates with the right qualifications for the role you need to fill, the next level is choosing the best candidate who would be the right fit for your team. Here are some tips to make offshore recruitment run more smoothly:
1. Use Technology to Your Advantage
A video interview is the best insightful method to determine the personal qualities of your candidates. Make sure the video interview is more than a few minutes to thoroughly investigate the way your future employees communicate and respond to your questions. Have at least one staff member to ask questions and one staff member to observe the interviewee. You may want to record the interview so you can reference their responses later.
2. Eliminate the Wrong Fit Within 20 Minutes
Review the basic responsibilities you need by asking for a description of a task in detail. For example, for a security expert, ask how they would make a training video for your employees so they would be password savvy. And then review the logistics of employment that you require such as hours, start date, payment schedule and other confinements that may define the working situations. Be frank and ask the question, “Have you worked remotely before?”
3. In-depth Questions
Once you are convinced the interviewee is a good fit, you are ready to continue the interview to seek out pertinent information in depth. Make sure you have some open-ended questions to allow them to expound on their areas of expertise. Such questions such as the following are beneficial:
- Tell us about the success you have had in the past.
- What do you do when you come to a snag?
- How did you recently overcome a problem?
4. Airtime for Any Candidate Concerns
It is also important to ask if the candidates have any questions, to give you an idea of their concerns. This will give you a view of their needs and whether they continue to be a good fit for your situation.
Traits and Skills to Look For
While you need specific tasks to be completed, staff who work off-site will likely not have as much availability to seek direction from your management team, primarily if they work in a vastly different time zone and culture. Some of the personality traits that are needed in this situation may be different from the traditional employee. The best remote staff:
1. Have the Confidence to Be Self-Starters
Confidence to complete tasks often comes from experience. Staff who have successfully worked in this type of situation will have developed the mindset to ascertain the details of the job quickly so they can take the responsibility to get started and see the project through to the end. Use questions such as:
- Tell us about a time when you were responsible for completing a task.
- How did you get started and how did it finish?
- What were the issues you encountered along the way?
- How did you get assistance?
2. Are Excellent Communicators
Due to the situation, you can expect that communication skills will be at the forefront of understanding what needs to happen. Is their written communication clear? Do they take part in the back and forth of your conversation? Do they follow up with a thank you email? One excellent question to ask potential candidates is to request if they have learned anything in the last few months. Do they tell their story in a logical and engaging manner?
3. Have a Growth Mindset
Your company needs staff who are eager to master new ways of doing things. They need to show an interest in your type of business and have a willingness to expand their understanding. Ask questions such as:
• Tell me about your interests. Can you teach me anything about this interest?
• How did you overcome the mistakes that you have made?
4. Make best use of technology to collaborate
During the recruitment process, watch out for telltale signs of your candidate’s work ethic and motivation. Because of the remote nature of outsourcing, the candidate must show some tech-savvy qualities.
- Do they promptly confirm interview schedules and arrive or log into the video interview reasonably early?
- Did they promptly email you the deck of work samples as they promised?
- Are they making the best use of technology to coordinate with you regarding recruitment requirements?
5. Complete Projects on Time
In the end, you are happiest when the task is completed well and on time. How do you know if a person has that drive for excellence? During the interview, you can talk about measuring performance. You can ask questions such as:
- In the past, how did you know you were a valued employee?
- What are your strategies for working to deadlines when working remotely?
Assimilating Your Corporate Culture
Although the outsourced individual technically works for a company in their own part of the world, they need to feel they would be a good fit with your enterprise. You may have the best candidate in terms of skills and knowledge, but he or she also needs to fit your corporate culture to enable them to succeed and fulfill their role with excellence. Also, this person will represent your company in their part of the world, so it is a good idea to familiarize them with your company culture, whether it is traditional and hierarchical or a casual and candid.
1. Be Welcoming
One of the easiest ways to make that connection is to assign a knowledgeable and welcoming junior staff as their go-to person. That way, the remote staff member can get comfortable with an individual so that they will be encouraged to communicate freely about their role. As for your chosen onsite staff member, this is an excellent way to develop management skills.
2. Provide Explanations
Another way to bring an understanding of your corporate culture to remote staff members is to make a training video that explains the company, its practices, and any other important aspect of the enterprise.
3. Give Feedback
Have a professional assessment process in place to provide feedback to the staff located off-site. It is much more efficient to grow the knowledge of your well-trained staff through encouragement than to start from scratch with a new employee.
Training and Support
Training is essential to better understand the competency and interests of your offshore worker. Here are some best practices to follow:
- It is much simpler for all concerned that the worker is provided with a single sign-on for all educational experiences. It is also vital to track accomplishments and offer some incentives for continued diligence.
- “Four out of five organizations now use video learning to capture and share internal practices and improve their learning programs,” according to People Fluent, a company that constructs online training programs.
- Make sure your training is accessible from any device. Include your on-site and outsourced staff in the same training and meetings to encourage cross-communication.
- Concentrate on building training sessions that are scalable with different pathways for different tasks.
- Support your staff by including them in meetings using the appropriate technology, providing them with an on-site contact individual in your company and being sensitive to their time restraints.
You now have many tools to successfully move forward with outsourcing staff to grow your business.
Are you considering outsourcing some of your operations? We can help you! Contact us to start a conversation.