When your company decides to go remote for your recruitment processes, there are some obvious benefits, of course.
Some of these include having access to top talent that may be located in different cities, states, and even countries altogether. You might save on cost given less overhead, and remote work gives your team flexibility like never before.
But despite these benefits, the era of remote work — particularly remote recruitment processes — can be a double-edged sword.
For one thing, you may have access to talent from all over the world, but you run the risk of getting volumes and volumes of extremely unqualified candidates.
It’s also possible to experience issues in the interview or testing stages with candidates.Let’s say your company requires candidates to complete an exam or a test. How can you completely ensure who completes these requirements honestly without looking up answers online?
These concerns are all valid. So in this post, we want to show you how to streamline your remote recruitment processes, so that you always find the best talent every single time.
5 Steps to Create a Streamlined Remote Recruiting Process
Check out these 5 steps that will help you have a seamless recruiting process even if you run a completely remote team. We also break down some steps into sub-steps to help you along the way.
1. Develop a Remote Recruitment Process Checklist
The key to streamlining anything is creating a process checklist. This is a list your company makes to visualize the logic and flow of a particular workflow or project. In this case, you’ll be developing one for your remote recruitment.
Sourcing, recruiting, and hiring processes will vary between each and every business, so here are some guide questions meant to help you perfect yours.
- Where will you source your candidates? Will you rely completely on direct outreach, or will you make public job postings?
- Once applicants send in their resumés, what is the first thing your company has to do to vet and sort through candidates?
- Will you need to conduct detailed background checks prior to interviews?
- Will you require candidates to take any exams or fulfill pre-hiring assignments? At what point should your candidates complete these — before the face-to-face interview, or after?
- How many interviews will candidates need to complete? And which persons or departments are in charge of specific interviews?
Sample of a simple remote recruitment checklist
Here’s an example of a simple remote recruitment checklist for your reference.
- Post job opening to these four job boards: Monster, LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor
- Put up positions open for hire on the company website
- Source and contact 100 qualified candidates via Leadfuze
- Filter applicants’ resumés through applicant tracker software (ATS) for most relevant skills and experience
- Email qualified candidates to complete the pre-hiring exam
- Contact successful candidates for the first face-to-face interview with an HR representative
- Endorse successful candidates to a second face-to-face interview with the management team
- Email chosen candidate/s with the complete job offer
Also, check this post for the best remote recruitment tips, especially as we embrace the new normal.
2. Write Up a Detailed Job Description
A big part of your remote recruitment process is all about clear communication about what your open jobs really entail.
When you have a detailed job description, it’s easier to weed out unqualified applicants right from the get-go, and make sure that you’re attracting people with the most relevant qualifications and experience.
Because of this, aim to make your job descriptions as complete as possible.
To help you complete all this information, speak with any relevant departments that can help. Interview them to help you fill out parts like responsibilities, experience, and attitudes they’re looking for in successful candidates.
Check out these two blog posts about creating an effective lead generation job description and writing a detailed sales representative job description (complete with a template).
A LinkedIn survey found that job seekers often looked for these elements in a job description. The top element they looked for was salary information.
What should you include in your job descriptions?
Here are some essential parts you may want to include when writing up your job descriptions for remote openings:
- Required years of experience
- Proficiency in any work-specific apps, software, and the like
- If applicable, working hours successful candidates will need to be online (if synchronous work is required)
- Specific day to day responsibilities
- Salary range
3. Embrace Automation
Automation can save you a ton of time and mental effort. This is true for virtually any kind of online business. When you can automate certain tasks in your remote recruitment process, your HR or hiring department can spend their time on more effective tasks to help engage existing employees, speaking only to the most qualified candidates, and more high-level tasks.
A few examples of automation in the remote recruitment process include:
- Sending automated confirmation emails when candidates applications successfully come through
- Vetting candidates with relevant experience and skills on applicant tracking systems
- Getting instant notifications of new qualified candidates’ applications in a consolidated team communication channel
- Sending automated, pre-written emails when a candidate is moved from one phase of the recruitment process to the next (e.g. when a candidate goes from “Passed Qualifying Exam” to “Interview Offered”)
Automation can shorten your recruitment process as a whole — all while making sure nothing falls through the cracks. In fact, having automation and the right tools might even pave the way for more thorough candidate vetting and recruiting, which can be beneficial to your company in the long haul.
In the next section, we talk about different tools that will help you with the remote recruitment process as a whole, including automation tools for specific processes.
4. Invest in the Right Tools
To make any remote recruitment process more streamlined, you need the right tools to support your business. With recruitment, you may be able to get away with repurposing existing tools that are already in your company stack but you might find gaps in certain spots.
Here, we want to show you different tools that can round out your online recruitment processes. Keep in mind, though, that we don’t necessarily recommend having every single type of tool listed in this section.
Instead, determine your needs as a company based on the recruitment checklist you created back in Step 1 of this post. Then think about what tools can help you support each of these steps in your checklist.
Sourcing cold job candidates
If part of your recruitment process involves directly reaching out to qualified candidates, then you need robust software that not only helps you find leads but also gets their most updated contact information.
LeadFuze is one of the candidate sourcing tools you’ll want to consider. Think of it like LinkedIn Recruiter, only you get access to remote talent that may not currently have LinkedIn profiles.
You’re able to narrow down your search based on specific keywords for a certain job, and negative search terms allow you to filter out unqualified leads for your roles.
Need Help Automating Your Sales Prospecting Process?
LeadFuze gives you all the data you need to find ideal leads, including full contact information.
Go through a variety of filters to zero in on the leads you want to reach. This is crazy specific, but you could find all the people that match the following:
- A company in the Financial Services or Banking industry
- Who have more than 10 employees
- That spend money on Adwords
- Who use Hubspot
- Who currently have job openings for marketing help
- With the role of HR Manager
- That has only been in this role for less than 1 year
Applicant tracking system (ATS)
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) can aid in monitoring where individual candidates are in your hiring process. These tools help you track different prospects while having direct access to any relevant information about them.
Some applicant tracking systems even come with robust scanning tools that automatically filter out unqualified job applicants. They’re equipped to scan candidates’ resumés or applications to search for matches based on keywords that you set.
For example, if you’re searching for potential remote employees that have experience in SEO writing, then any applicant who doesn’t have SEO-related keywords and experience in their resumés may not pass through your ATS filters.
An alternative to Applicant Tracking Systems are project management apps like Trello or Asana, which are flexible enough that you can build your own applicant tracker within these software tools.
Testing software
Does your recruitment process include testing potential hires? There are a few options that might do the trick.
If you just need simple quizzes for applicants to answer on their own, you can set up a quiz on popular form building apps like Google Forms or Typeform. These simpler quizzes are great for determining candidates’ initial skills, such as English proficiency or knowledge about certain software.
Of course, you might need something more comprehensive. Tools like Criteria are made to help recruiters get detailed information about a candidate’s personality and various skills, both hard and soft.
Appointment scheduling
Avoid the email ping pong by using appointment scheduling tools. Apps like Calendly or Acuity Scheduling are useful for managing interview schedules with remote candidates since applicants are given the option to choose from a range of times they might be available to speak with a member of your recruitment team.
Virtual conferencing software
Robust video conferencing software can help you not only speak to candidates with ease but also give you the option to record your interviews for reference later.
Popular apps like Zoom are often more than enough to cover these needs, but if your company is already using Google Suite, for example, then their native Meet app makes a good alternative.
Miscellaneous automation tools
If you’re currently using a slew of tools, you may be able to connect them using automation software. Zapier is a popular choice among business owners because of its integrations with thousands of apps.
Using these types of tools can open you up to more possibilities for your remote recruitment process. Here are examples of a few incredible ways you can use Zapier for automating redundant steps in your recruitment.
- A Zap connecting Gmail and Trello allows you to send an automated email to a candidate when they’re moved from one list to another (e.g. Qualified Candidate to Test Offered). And you can repeat this process for every step in your process.
- Applicants who send in their resumés to a certain email address or form can immediately be uploaded into a background check app.
- Candidates that have completed most interview requirements but are not chosen for the job offer can be automatically uploaded into a Google Sheet or CRM for reference in the future.
There are, of course, several different ways you can automate your recruitment. Start with the tools that you have, then see just how they might be able to connect and save your team time.
Don’t Forget Your Employee Onboarding Process
You’ve found the right person for the job, and they accept — congratulations! But your job isn’t over just yet.
Your remote recruitment isn’t complete without an employee onboarding process. This is how you really get your new hire into the heart of your company. Needless to say, the easier you can onboard new employees, the sooner they can start doing productive work for your business.
Some steps you don’t want to miss in your employee onboarding process include the following:
- Create a checklist for different tools and accounts your new hire might need access to, e.g. Slack for internal communication. If your employee is joining a department with a specific tool that only they need — e.g. your accounting team collaborates on cloud accounting software like Wave — include those in your onboarding list too.
- Have onboarding documents like training manuals or video lessons that show employees what to expect at their new job.
- Make a handy directory of people your new employees might need access to. Include their contact information and exactly who they need to get in touch with for certain concerns or queries.
The beauty of having a streamlined recruitment process is that you can seamlessly take your new remote hires to onboard without skipping a beat. So take the time to list down everything you don’t want to miss when a new person joins you, so you make the most of everyone’s time.
Key Takeaways
Creating a streamlined recruitment process for remote employees can be a challenge, but it opens your business up to top talent from all over the world who can grow your business in surprising ways. Use this post as a reference for when you’re building your own hiring system, and soon, you’ll be filling all those open roles in no time.
When your company decides to go remote for your recruitment processes, there are some obvious benefits, of course.
Some of these include having access to top talent that may be located in different cities, states, and even countries altogether. You might save on cost given less overhead, and remote work gives your team flexibility like never before.
But despite these benefits, the era of remote work — particularly remote recruitment processes — can be a double-edged sword.
For one thing, you may have access to talent from all over the world, but you run the risk of getting volumes and volumes of extremely unqualified candidates.
It’s also possible to experience issues in the interview or testing stages with candidates. Let’s say your company requires candidates to complete an exam or a test. How can you completely ensure who completes these requirements honestly without looking up answers online?
These concerns are all valid. So in this post, we want to show you how to streamline your remote recruitment processes, so that you always find the best talent every single time.
5 Steps to Create a Streamlined Remote Recruiting Process
Check out these 5 steps that will help you have a seamless recruiting process even if you run a completely remote team. We also break down some steps into sub-steps to help you along the way.
1. Develop a Remote Recruitment Process Checklist
The key to streamlining anything is creating a process checklist. This is a list your company makes to visualize the logic and flow of a particular workflow or project. In this case, you’ll be developing one for your remote recruitment.
Sourcing, recruiting, and hiring processes will vary between each and every business, so here are some guide questions meant to help you perfect yours.
- Where will you source your candidates? Will you rely completely on direct outreach, or will you make public job postings?
- Once applicants send in their resumés, what is the first thing your company has to do to vet and sort through candidates?
- Will you need to conduct detailed background checks prior to interviews?
- Will you require candidates to take any exams or fulfill pre-hiring assignments? At what point should your candidates complete these — before the face-to-face interview, or after?
- How many interviews will candidates need to complete? And which persons or departments are in charge of specific interviews?
Sample of a simple remote recruitment checklist
Here’s an example of a simple remote recruitment checklist for your reference.
- Post job opening to these four job boards: Monster, LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor
- Put up positions open for hire on the company website
- Source and contact 100 qualified candidates via LeadFuze
- Filter applicants’ resumés through applicant tracker software (ATS) for most relevant skills and experience
- Email qualified candidates to complete the pre-hiring exam
- Contact successful candidates for the first face-to-face interview with an HR representative
- Endorse successful candidates to a second face-to-face interview with the management team
- Email chosen candidate/s with the complete job offer
Also, check this post for the best remote recruitment tips, especially as we embrace the new normal.
2. Write Up a Detailed Job Description
A big part of your remote recruitment process is all about clear communication about what your open jobs really entail.
When you have a detailed job description, it’s easier to weed out unqualified applicants right from the get-go, and make sure that you’re attracting people with the most relevant qualifications and experience.
Because of this, aim to make your job descriptions as complete as possible.
To help you complete all this information, speak with any relevant departments that can help. Interview them to help you fill out parts like responsibilities, experience, and attitudes they’re looking for in successful candidates.
Check out these two blog posts about creating an effective lead generation job description and writing a detailed sales representative job description (complete with a template).
A LinkedIn survey found that job seekers often looked for these elements in a job description. The top element they looked for was salary information.
What should you include in your job descriptions?
Here are some essential parts you may want to include when writing up your job descriptions for remote openings:
- Required years of experience
- Proficiency in any work-specific apps, software, and the like
- If applicable, working hours successful candidates will need to be online (if synchronous work is required)
- Specific day to day responsibilities
- Salary range
3. Embrace Automation
Automation can save you a ton of time and mental effort. This is true for virtually any kind of online business. When you can automate certain tasks in your remote recruitment process, your HR or hiring department can spend their time on more effective tasks to help engage existing employees, speaking only to the most qualified candidates, and more high-level tasks.
A few examples of automation in the remote recruitment process include:
- Sending automated confirmation emails when candidates applications successfully come through
- Vetting candidates with relevant experience and skills on applicant tracking systems
- Getting instant notifications of new qualified candidates’ applications in a consolidated team communication channel
- Sending automated, pre-written emails when a candidate is moved from one phase of the recruitment process to the next (e.g. when a candidate goes from “Passed Qualifying Exam” to “Interview Offered”)
Automation can shorten your recruitment process as a whole — all while making sure nothing falls through the cracks. In fact, having automation and the right tools might even pave the way for more thorough candidate vetting and recruiting, which can be beneficial to your company in the long haul.
In the next section, we talk about different tools that will help you with the remote recruitment process as a whole, including automation tools for specific processes.
4. Invest in the Right Tools
To make any remote recruitment process more streamlined, you need the right tools to support your business. With recruitment, you may be able to get away with repurposing existing tools that are already in your company stack but you might find gaps in certain spots.
Here, we want to show you different tools that can round out your online recruitment processes. Keep in mind, though, that we don’t necessarily recommend having every single type of tool listed in this section.
Instead, determine your needs as a company based on the recruitment checklist you created back in Step 1 of this post. Then think about what tools can help you support each of these steps in your checklist.
Sourcing cold job candidates
If part of your recruitment process involves directly reaching out to qualified candidates, then you need robust software that not only helps you find leads but also gets their most updated contact information.
LeadFuze is one of the candidate sourcing tools you’ll want to consider. Think of it like LinkedIn Recruiter, only you get access to remote talent that may not currently have LinkedIn profiles.
You’re able to narrow down your search based on specific keywords for a certain job, and negative search terms allow you to filter out unqualified leads for your roles.
Applicant tracking system (ATS)
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) can aid in monitoring where individual candidates are in your hiring process. These tools help you track different prospects while having direct access to any relevant information about them.
Some applicant tracking systems even come with robust scanning tools that automatically filter out unqualified job applicants. They’re equipped to scan candidates’ resumés or applications to search for matches based on keywords that you set.
For example, if you’re searching for potential remote employees that have experience in SEO writing, then any applicant who doesn’t have SEO-related keywords and experience in their resumés may not pass through your ATS filters.
An alternative to Applicant Tracking Systems are project management apps like Trello or Asana, which are flexible enough that you can build your own applicant tracker within these software tools.
Testing software
Does your recruitment process include testing potential hires? There are a few options that might do the trick.
If you just need simple quizzes for applicants to answer on their own, you can set up a quiz on popular form building apps like Google Forms or Typeform. These simpler quizzes are great for determining candidates’ initial skills, such as English proficiency or knowledge about certain software.
Of course, you might need something more comprehensive. Tools like Criteria are made to help recruiters get detailed information about a candidate’s personality and various skills, both hard and soft.
Appointment scheduling
Avoid the email ping pong by using appointment scheduling tools. Apps like Calendly or Acuity Scheduling are useful for managing interview schedules with remote candidates since applicants are given the option to choose from a range of times they might be available to speak with a member of your recruitment team.
Virtual conferencing software
Robust video conferencing software can help you not only speak to candidates with ease but also give you the option to record your interviews for reference later.
Popular apps like Zoom are often more than enough to cover these needs, but if your company is already using Google Suite, for example, then their native Meet app makes a good alternative.
Miscellaneous automation tools
If you’re currently using a slew of tools, you may be able to connect them using automation software. Zapier is a popular choice among business owners because of its integrations with thousands of apps.
Using these types of tools can open you up to more possibilities for your remote recruitment process. Here are examples of a few incredible ways you can use Zapier for automating redundant steps in your recruitment.
- A Zap connecting Gmail and Trello allows you to send an automated email to a candidate when they’re moved from one list to another (e.g. Qualified Candidate to Test Offered). And you can repeat this process for every step in your process.
- Applicants who send in their resumés to a certain email address or form can immediately be uploaded into a background check app.
- Candidates that have completed most interview requirements but are not chosen for the job offer can be automatically uploaded into a Google Sheet or CRM for reference in the future.
There are, of course, several different ways you can automate your recruitment. Start with the tools that you have, then see just how they might be able to connect and save your team time.
Don’t Forget Your Employee Onboarding Process
You’ve found the right person for the job, and they accept — congratulations! But your job isn’t over just yet.
Your remote recruitment isn’t complete without an employee onboarding process. This is how you really get your new hire into the heart of your company. Needless to say, the easier you can onboard new employees, the sooner they can start doing productive work for your business.
Some steps you don’t want to miss in your employee onboarding process include the following:
- Create a checklist for different tools and accounts your new hire might need access to, e.g. Slack for internal communication. If your employee is joining a department with a specific tool that only they need — e.g. your accounting team collaborates on cloud accounting software like Wave — include those in your onboarding list too.
- Have onboarding documents like training manuals or video lessons that show employees what to expect at their new job.
- Make a handy directory of people your new employees might need access to. Include their contact information and exactly who they need to get in touch with for certain concerns or queries.
The beauty of having a streamlined recruitment process is that you can seamlessly take your new remote hires to onboard without skipping a beat. So take the time to list down everything you don’t want to miss when a new person joins you, so you make the most of everyone’s time.
Key Takeaways
Creating a streamlined recruitment process for remote employees can be a challenge, but it opens your business up to top talent from all over the world who can grow your business in surprising ways. Use this post as a reference for when you’re building your own hiring system, and soon, you’ll be filling all those open roles in no time.