Do you know how to hire remote employees? Remote staffing sounds great, but is it reliable? If you’re like most people, you’re probably afraid the hiring process will be too complicated. Perhaps you worry it will take you too long. Your fears are legit, since a lot of entrepreneurs find it hard to hire efficient remote employees.
While we offer the best (autopilot) solution at the end of this article, some people insist on doing their own hiring and management. If you like doing things the hard way, we have a few tips to help you make the process just a bit easier and smoother.
The best remote employees have lots of experience
Do you have the time to hire a cheap employee from a third word country and train him or her from the ground up? While some people like torturing themselves, most wise entrepreneurs would say “no”. They would say something like “I need the worker to have at least base knowledge and experience.” Make your hiring easier by looking at contractors who are already experienced.
It doesn’t really matter whether you’re searching on Fiverr, Freelancer, Craigslist, TaskRabbit or Gorkana – avoiding inexperienced contractors saves you time and effort.
Be careful when reviewing resumes, references and portfolios. It’s possible that your potential employee could have falsified those records. If you have any doubts regarding the authenticity of your employee’s records, contact their previous employers. But don’t just leave it at that. Interview your potential contractor over Skype and if possible, test their knowledge.
“But how can I know if they’re good at SEO or Ruby when I don’t know anything about these skills myself?” There’s an easy answer to that reasonable objection.
As it turns out, there are higher-level experts in every field that are supremely apparent and obvious. These are the people that come up on the top of every search on freelance websites. These are the people that have seemingly outrageous hourly rates.
Here’s a secret hack. You can hire a high level SEO or Ruby professional by the hour. And you can have them do your testing. It’s true that hiring an experienced CMS or SEO professional will cost a lot of money. But you’re only hiring them for a couple of hours max. It’s no big deal, especially if you end up with a great CMS or SEO contractor afterwards.
Setting high standards is your best bet for finding qualified employees
Let’s imagine that you need someone to write blog posts and you decide to look for them on popular freelance websites or job boards. I will compare two job posts so that you can see the difference between an effective and an ineffective job post.
An ineffective job post
“I am looking for someone to write blog posts for my fitness blog at least twice a week. The blog posts need to be informative and your English needs to be good.“
An effective job post
“I am looking for a professional writer who will write at least two blog posts weekly for my fitness blog. I will only accept native English speakers. You must have a portfolio so that I can check out your previous work.
This is going to be a long term job; prepare to be tested for competence. I expect discipline, organization and courtesy. Please do not apply for this job if you don’t conform to these standards. Thank You!”
Guess which job post is going to attract highly qualified article writers? The ineffective job post will attract too many low-skilled contractors that hope to land any kind of job. As a result, weeding out low-skilled applicants from the developing world would cost you lots of time.
Look at the effective job post, isn’t it appealing? If you were a non-native English speaker and a low-skilled applicant, would you apply for this job? It’s highly unlikely that you would. The effective job post discourages unskilled contractors from applying in the first place.
Writing the effective job post only takes a few extra minutes. But it makes a big difference when you are assembling your final list of candidates.
What are your budget constraints?
Smart companies look for remote employees because of the financial benefits (among others). Let’s face it, there’s no need for you to provide an office to a remote employee. And if it’s a freelancer from the developing world, it gets even cheaper.
The cheapest options for finding remote staff are freelance websites. On websites like Freelancer, Fiverr and People Per Hour, you’ll find contractors who will work for less than $1 an hour, depending on the job.
The most expensive staffing option is working with staffing companies. If you, for example, need programmers or SEO experts, you can easily find companies that employ such experts. But as you probably already know, these staffing companies are extremely expensive.
It turns out that the cheapest staffing option is too risky and the expensive option is, well… too expensive! But is there a ‘middle of the road’ staffing option available? Good that you asked.
Author: Dave Nevog