9 Qualities to Look for When Hiring People for Your Remote Team
An in-demand business idea and effective model ensures a stable revenue. Yet there’s one investment that a lot of online businessmen overlook that could bring even more profit if acquired successfully - model employees.
Some employers hire candidates for their extensive skills. But beneath the expertise can lie a multitude of subpar qualities. At the start, everything goes smooth sailing. Next, virtual drama happens on the team. It doesn’t only cause a financial setback but it also makes the business owner lose their patience.
All of this could’ve been avoided if they knew what to look for during the hiring process. So, don’t be this business owner. Have a list of the good qualities you should find in a job applicant. Below are some of them.
1. Self-motivating
When hiring members for your remote team, every individual must have the ability to work and act without being told. This should be the first thing you must find in applicants because motivating a remote worker is much harder than motivating an in-office employee.
2. Disciplined
In-office employees may be exposed to distractions such as office dramas or another workmate’s interruptions. But, they’re easier to manage this way because a supervisor keeps an eye on them.
For a remote working team, this is very difficult to do because you can't monitor them. That’s why you have to see if your applicants can follow a regular sleeping schedule, set aside personal responsibilities during the day, and follow a set deadline.
3. Flexible and Adaptive
Your business might require some impromptu tasks or you might need an assistant that works at the same time as you. If the prospective candidate lives in a different timezone, try to ask them if they can work at a specific time of the day. Also, ask them if they can be available for some impromptu tasks.
4. With strong written communication skills
It would be counterproductive to use Skype or Zoom all the time while your team is working. As an alternative, you’d be communicating in text via email or chat. It is important that they can understand your instructions clearly and send their queries which are easy for you to comprehend.
5. Highly responsive
Even when the deadline is set, this doesn’t mean that a remote team member should cut off communication with you. Every member of the remote team must be able to reply promptly during working hours when you require information or answers to the current situation.
6. Can make good independent decisions
To avoid getting countless messages from your team members asking what to do, see if the applicants can:
- Search for solutions to problems on their own.
- Prioritize urgent and unimportant tasks.
- Yield good work quality with confidence.
- Be easily held accountable.
7. Highly attentive to detail
When hiring, send a sample task description that’s long and demanding. Include some unusual instructions. For example, instruct a freelance virtual assistant to use both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel when making an online inventory. Then add an instruction where they’ll need to insert a picture of a kitty on a specific cell.
Look at their final work if they followed every instruction given. Did they use the right font and font size? Was there a picture of a kitty at cell **?
8. Reliability
Emergencies will happen in the personal lives of every team member. Sometimes such emergencies would cause the inability of an employee to finish a given task. To prepare for this, look for candidates that are willing to step in and take up the mantle of an absent colleague in case of such a situation.
These candidates must also be easily trained to know every member’s job description.
9. Tech savviness
Remote workers will spend most of their time using phones and laptops. They must have a good understanding of how to utilize both software and hardware. A good example is possessing the intermediate skill to use Mailchimp, HubSpot, WordPress, Kajabi, HTML, and other platforms that their task will use.
Just like the first point in #6, all members of the remote team must have the ability to solve problems on their own without having to be assisted by your IT team.
The best workers in the world aren’t those with skill but the ones with good character. Skills can be taught and it’s better to hire a diligent candidate than an expert in a field who's lazy and unpunctual. So don’t hire the best, hire the right one for the team!