A Guide to Hiring Remote Employees for Your Small Business

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working has been a trend for small businesses. Small business is often run on limited resources, budgets, and office space. Every amount they spend is essential, and they need to make the most of it.

However, small businesses can access experts and specialists from different locations for a low price with a remote workforce. It helps them save overhead costs, equipment expenses, and office space. Thus, it is not surprising that 16% of companies in the US hire remote workers only.

Still, hiring remote employees for small businesses takes steps to be effective. Worry not, as this article will help you identify 5 steps in hiring employees effectively.

Why Hire Remote Employees for Your Small Business?

For a small business, hiring a remote workforce gives you the freedom to manage a team from your home. It can also help you minimize human resource expenses and save time. Likewise, there are other reasons to hire a remote developer.

1. Easy to connect with remote workers

Contrary to common belief, connecting with a remote employee is easy. Thanks to technology and new tools, a remote team can easily connect and collaborate anywhere in the world with cloud computing, devices, Wi-Fi, and communication tools.

2. Increased Productivity

Remote workers have shown more productivity than those who work in the office. This is probably due to great work and life balance, the luxury of working from home and not facing a commute daily, and healthy mental and physical health.

In fact, according to a two-year Stanford study, remote workers experienced “an astounding productivity boost that is equivalent to a full day’s work” every week.

3. Improved Employee Retention

With all the benefits of remote working employees, the previous study has also shown that remote working increased employee retention by 50%. Small businesses can now avoid the painful process of recruiting, training and retaining repeatedly.

5 Steps in Hiring Your Remote Employees for Your Small Business

While it is evident that there are significant benefits to hiring remote employees, you need to remember that it also comes with many challenges. Hiring remote employees is much more different from hiring office employees. It takes a lot of processing, screening, and research to find the perfect mention. You cannot supervise them the way you can with an office worker and walk right into their desk.

Thus, you must plan it carefully if you are interested in hiring remote employees for small businesses. Consider your industry, location, market, needs, and other factors. Here are five steps on how to remote hire staff for small businesses.

STEP 1. Think of your ideal remote employee

The first step in hiring remote employees for small businesses is creating a checklist for your ideal employees. Not every remote worker is perfect for every company or role. Even if the person has the education and experience for the job, the person might not have the right skills for a remote developer. In addition, only a few have the attitude and discipline to make the remote setting work.

When hiring a remote employee, make sure to include:

• Business-specific needs
• Company core values and mission
• Job scope
• Technical skills required.

Include these points in your ideal candidate profile and the required technical skills. After you’ve created the job profile, it’s time to decide how you will evaluate applicants. You probably have a standard test or interview questions to test technical skills. But soft skills needed to be a remote employee are harder to test.

STEP 2. Look for platforms to find remote applicants

After creating the job description for the position, the next step in hiring remote employees for small businesses is looking for candidates. You can either hire a remote employee on different platforms or outsource with a third-party agency.

If you plan on hiring multiple remote workers for your small business, then contracting an agency is the better option. Most outsourcing companies will manage all needs, including managing the team, providing the equipment needs, paying the remote employees, etc. However, note that outsourcing may be more expensive than hiring an individual remote employee.

Otherwise, there are many websites where you can find a remote candidate by posting a job vacancy. Websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, and Upwork are great for finding a candidate. You can also try posting the job vacancy on your very own website.

STEP 3. Sift through the applicant’s resume

Next, once you post your job vacancy, it’s time to sift through the applicant’s resume. Take time to review each resume that was submitted. Carefully look at their education, job history, the industry they worked in, and skills. Carefully look at the projects they handled before and watch for similarities with your needs.

If some of them do not match your requirements, remove them from candidacy.

STEP 4. Interview candidates

And once you find your few selected candidates, the next step in hiring remote employees for small businesses is interviewing them. Since you are hiring a remote employee, interviews can be difficult. But with technology, you can easily do it through Skype, Zoom, or a Phone Call.

Here is the usual interview process for remote hiring.

1. Pre-screening. Do an initial screening call to weed out less qualified applicants from the test. Ask them basic questions about their previous employment, experiences, and qualifications
2. Schedule a video interview. After finding your final list, it’s time to do a video interview. A video interview is excellent for evaluating a candidate’s body language and expression. You will be able to tell if they are being honest in their discussion or what they think of the job position.

Furthermore, you need to ask the right questions during the interview. Consider asking the following questions to the applicant.

• Do you have prior experience working remotely?
• What’s your motivation when working remotely?
• Do you have a working space at home?
• Which tools are you going to use to do the work?
• Have you faced any challenges while working remotely before?
• What’s your preference for communicating with the rest of the team.

STEP 5. Hire your remote employee

The last and final step to hiring the remote employee! But before doing that, make sure that you do your background check with the candidates. While remote employees do not work in your real life, they possibly are handling the company’s sensitive information. So, make sure to do a background check with your remote employee. Here are a few things you need to check:

• Verify their identity.
• Check if they have any criminal records.
• Authenticate their previous employment and education.

Hire Your Remote Employees with Us!

By now, you are ready to hire your remote employees! Remember that remote working provides many benefits and opportunities to your small business. Just make sure you choose the right employee and team to handle your business.

Hire your remote developer now. Contact us and tell us more about your project!