6 Challenges to Remote Hiring and Ways to Overcome Them

Within the United States, more than 4.3 million people are currently working as remote employees. Remote jobs have significant advantages over conventional office jobs. Sixteen percent of the organizations worldwide are now fully remote. Yet, the challenges to remote hiring persist.

Eighty-five percent of hiring managers think that remote hiring will be a part of the organizational future. Despite these figures, hiring managers report that the remote hiring process can be tough and overwhelming. Here are the most common hiring challenges that managers face when recruiting remote employees. 

1. Remote hiring challenge: Sifting through countless applications

Over the past decade, the number of remote workers has increased by over 160 percent. Due to the fierce competition in the job market, hiring managers need to sift through thousands of resumes to shortlist the ideal ones. Naturally, selecting suitable candidates for remote positions becomes tedious. And so, hiring managers must be clear about their expectations to ease the selection process. Well-written and detailed job requirements can help eliminate the profiles that do not qualify for a given remote position. Managers can also optimize the remote hiring process with an AI-based Application Tracking System (ATS).

2. Remote hiring challenge: Time zone differences

Time zone differences

A global talent pool allows hiring managers to find prospective candidates from far-off places. However, this geographical freedom results in time zone differences. Time zone differences can cause inconvenience in scheduling interviews and conducting real-time assessments.
And hence, hiring managers should optimize time zone overlaps for live interviews and real-time evaluation. Interviewers can also use automatic scheduling tools to match the interviewer’s time zone. These tools let candidates choose a time that works best for them and the company. Taking these steps can help hiring managers limit the productivity gaps caused by time zone differences.

3. Remote hiring challenge: Vetting and skillset evaluation

Hiring managers always select candidates that possess adequate job-specific skills, no matter the position. Naturally, a thorough evaluation of skillset, experience, and expertise is vital for hiring a remote employee. But accurate skill assessments and evaluations are challenging to conduct in remote settings. 33.1 percent of hiring managers expressed that they struggle to find the best candidates in a remote environment.
Employers and hiring managers can work together to improve unclear evaluation methods. For example, they can design dedicated test projects for employing remote candidates and preparing skillset evaluations. Similarly, conducting customized skill assessments can also help in vetting candidates effectively. 

4. Remote hiring challenge: Onboarding difficulties

Onboarding new employees remotely can be tricky. Most new joiners are likely to feel overwhelmed during the first few days at the job. As a result, hiring managers may observe lower productivity with the new employees struggling to understand the workflow. Research states that newly hired employees have approximately 25 percent productivity in their first month after training.
As a hiring manager, you hold the key to augmenting this number. You must make extra efforts to establish a smooth onboarding process to enhance employees’ learning curve. As a prerequisite, hiring managers must plan and conduct introductory sessions with the new joiners. Introductory sessions can help new joiners understand the workflow and processes. These sessions can also help in building a healthy and transparent company culture.

5. Remote hiring challenge: Contractual legalities

Every remote company must draft legal contracts for its remote employees. And thus, hiring managers and employers consider contractual legalities a tedious task.
However, all remote employers must thoroughly examine the labor laws of individual countries to achieve compliance. Employers can also use standard templates for drafting contracts and speeding up the contractual process. What’s more, hiring law and compliance experts can help fine-tune the specifics of the contract.

6. Remote hiring challenge: Salary disbursement

Salary disbursement

30.6 percent of remote workers expressed economic anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. It goes without saying that proper salary disbursement is essential for employee retention and job satisfaction. Unfortunately, transferring salaries to remote employees can be a complicated offshore challenge. Tax laws of countries, international money transfers, accurate salary calculations, and invoicing can cause serious hiring and compliance issues. These issues can complicate the salary disbursement process for any remote business.
Remote payroll and compliance providers can solve these problems. Such payroll solutions can significantly ease the HR team’s responsibility of managing contracts and salary profiles. 

Remote hiring poses many challenges. However, every remote company can tackle these challenges with the right remote hiring strategy in place. AI-powered application tracking systems can speed up the screening process of remote employees. Automatic meeting schedulers can reduce timezone differences for conducting interviews. Test projects and customized skill assessments can enable better skillset evaluation and an efficient vetting process.

Strategically planned introductory sessions ensure a smooth onboarding process. Following standardized templates can reduce contractual misinterpretations, whereas remote payroll service providers can ensure punctuality and accuracy in salary disbursement. Following these standard practices can help hiring managers overcome remote hiring challenges with ease.

FAQs:

1. What are the benefits of remote hiring?

The benefits of remote hiring as a hiring manager are:

a. Remote hiring allows managers to pick the best from a global talent pool.
b. Remote hiring offers better flexibility for performing specific tasks.
c. Remote hiring improves work-life balance and job satisfaction.
d. Hiring managers report better productivity from remote workers.

2. What are the challenges of a remote hiring process?

Some of the common challenges to remote hiring include:

• A large number of applications makes it difficult to go through individual resumes
• Time zone differences hampering communication and productivity
• Absence of effective skillset evaluation methods for remote applicants
• Onboarding difficulties hamper productivity during introductory phases
• Contractual legalities of different countries add to the complexity of remote hiring
• Complicated salary distribution due to various nationalities, currencies, and time delays involved

3. How to overcome the challenges of hiring remotely?

Some ways to overcome the challenges of remote hiring are:

• Use AI tools to speed up the process of screening candidates based on their resumes
• Use automatic scheduling tools for hosting interviews with remote candidates
• Ensure proper planning and scheduling for evaluating the skill sets of potential employees
• Host introductory training sessions to tackle onboarding difficulties of remote employees
• Follow templates and hire HR/Law experts to ensure compliance with international employee laws
• Use payroll and compliance management software to ensure timely salary disbursement for remote employees

As a hiring manager, which of these challenges have you faced, while hiring remote workers?

• Sifting through countless applications
• Timezone differences
• Vetting and skillset evaluations
• Onboarding difficulties
• Contractual legalities
• Salary disbursement

Vote

• Turing helps companies hire from the top 1 percent of 1.5M+ developers across the globe. The company eliminates the hassle of interviewing hundreds of software developers and helps employers find the perfect candidate in just 3-5 days.
• All Turing developers work in a time zone that overlaps with the Pacific Standard Time (PST). As a benefit, managers hiring for companies in the US can coordinate in real-time with remote developers.
• With Turing, companies can hire pre-vetted, Silicon Valley-caliber software engineers at affordable prices.
• Turing eases the onboarding challenges associated with remote hiring by training all matched developers in soft skills, workflow, and time management.
• Turing takes care of drafting and maintaining the contracts for all matched remote software engineers.
• Last but not least, Turing manages the salary disbursement of remote software developers on your behalf. And thus, companies and their hiring managers experience a hassle-free payment experience with Turing.

Are you an engineering leader or a hiring manager looking to build your remote engineering team in the cloud? If yes, head over to the Hire Developers page today!  

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