What traits do you look for in candidates for a remote job?

Remote work is a working style that allows professionals to work outside of a traditional office environment. It is based on the concept that work does not need to be done in a specific place to be executed successfully. When things go awry on a remote team, that can often mean that you’re stuck making important decisions on your own. When an employer asks you this question, she wants to know if you have the resourcefulness and judgement to make independent decisions when you have to.

Keep in mind that over-communication will always prevail over no communication at all, especially when you can’t meet in person. As a direct consequence, candidates will enjoy a much smoother experience. Overwhelm your candidates with information and you will bore them. What’s more, your employees are your best brand ambassadors. In other words, being able to keep great people around will contribute to attracting more. Great candidates are likely to be vetted by more than one company.

What’s the Key to Making Sure a Project Is Successful When Working Remotely?

Being a remote worker is a skill in itself so add it to the list. You could phrase it as “comfortable working remotely” or “highly experienced in remote work roles.” Not everyone has these skills and experience so stating it clearly can give you an edge over the competition. Make it clear that you don’t just have remote work experience but that you truly enjoy this style and thrive in a remote work role. If the cover letter or CV are badly worded, your chances to move forward in the hiring process decrease a lot. Being strongly technical, we pay a lot of attention to code.

• Use an automatic time tracking tool like PaymoPlus to record your entire workday.
• Check out our productivity at work guide to see what worked for people who tend to procrastiwork.
• Autonomy and self-discipline are absolute requirements for remote workers.
• I put down everything in written form and then use a video call to further clarify my thoughts.
• A concern many folks have about remote work is that inevitably, no matter how much Slack is stressed, two employees will bump into each other in the office and share information or make decisions.
• Your productivity skyrockets when working in an environment that has decreased distractions.

Be sure to mention you’re comfortable picking up new things. Discuss how it benefits your work .It’s helpful to make your “best” in the response something that will benefit the company. That is, you want to talk about what you like about working from home — and how it helps the company, too. For example, you might mention that you’re able to get more done in the early morning hours, which would be eaten up by a commute in an in-person role. I really like the flexibility in hours that a stay-at-home position offers. Being able to set my own hours allows me to work when I am most alert.

A strong(er) employer brand

But being able to adapt to change is foundational to working in a remote team, particularly if the company you are joining is a distributed team spread across time zones and geographies. When you don’t have the benefit of working work from home experience at the same time as your colleagues, you need to learn to be communicate async. As a remote worker, there will be several collaboration and communication tools like Slack, Basecamp, and Zoom that you will need to use.