Top Remote Hiring Problems and How to Fix Them

As many companies across the country continue to phase into working from home, they must also learn new ways to hire from home—and it is hard to do remote hiring.  If you’re used to fielding walk-ins, hosting a table at career fairs, and posting flyers at your favorite breakfast joints, the world of recruiting now looks very different. Remote hiring often brings on a slew of problems related to unfamiliar sourcing channels, new online communication requirements, entirely reworked interview processes, and difficulty assessing company culture fit. Luckily, we’ve worked with hundreds of companies to improve their remote hiring practices to support you through these issues and help you hire quality candidates even if you can't meet them.

Problem 1: You’re Sourcing In The Wrong Places

Sourcing is an issue for normal hiring, as well as remote hiring. If you're looking for an HVAC technician, you must consider where your ideal candidate is job searching. Every channel hosts a particular crowd, and the majority of blue-collar workers favor different ones than white-collar workers. For example, you’ll find more than 37,000 job posts for a marketing manager on LinkedIn, but less than 4,000 for an HVAC technician.

But the numbers aren’t your only problem. Every company posts blue-collar roles on Indeed, Monster, and other similar job sites, but they still aren’t getting the right candidates. These sites are geared to get you lots of applicants with options like “click-to-apply.” Job seekers can submit up to 120 applications in an hour and hope that the hiring manager on the other end likes what they see. Most won't even read the job description; they'll look at the title and apply, leaving you with all of the work to look over hundreds of unqualified candidates.

If this all sounds familiar, you’ll be happy to know a solution exists. Team Engine has a built-in Intelligent Hiring Assistant that assesses every application and filters out applicants who are not a good fit so you never even have to see them. For information that might be missing, our automated assistant will send out a text message to get you the answers you need to see. Once you log in, you will only need to look at the best-fit candidates. Team Engine is here to cover all the bases for you. It's so easy to use you can do it from the office, your new dining table office, or your phone.

Problem 2: Broken Communication

When it comes to remote hiring, it's difficult to have steady communication throughout the hiring process. Emails in the best circumstances have only a 20% open rate. When it comes to blue-collar workers, the numbers are even lower, often because email just isn’t a significant part of their work responsibilities. And no one is answering phone calls for random numbers any more thanks to robocalls (robocalls have increased by 108% year over year). Thankfully, there is a simple solution: text messaging. According to Rebrandly, text messages have a 90% open rate—much better than the 20% for emails. If you're going to be the first to reach those high-quality candidates, you get to them with text messages. But who wants to text a bunch of people they don’t know from their personal cellphone? Nobody. Imagine the “oops! I didn’t mean to send you that!” texts and the not-so-happy texts at 3 am when they find out they didn’t get the job.  

Software like Team Engine solves this problem by letting you send text messages through a local number from your computer. Just log in, type in your message, and send it. Replies are attached to job applicants’ profiles and you won't have to deal with any random calls on your cell phone, keeping your business life and personal life separate. (Better yet, Team Engine does automated messaging. You can set up a message to go out to someone when they apply; that way, when you log back in, you can filter for them being responsive.)

Problem 3: Confusing Interview Processes

According to the Society of Human Resource Management, it takes 42 days to fill an open position. Yet, the top candidates are gone within ten days, so something doesn't match up. A lot of time and money is wasted when positions aren't filled, but there are ways to shorten the process and land the best candidates. With remote hiring, you can't meet the candidate for an in-person interview, so take that out of your process. Turn your hiring process into something simple for you and simple for your applicants. Team Engine already sends out automated messages for you that screen the candidate. Set up what questions you need to know, and have the software screen them for you. Once you have someone that you're interested in pursuing, text them to either set up a phone call or conduct the interview through text messages. From there, you choose your best candidate and hire them. Using Team Engine shortens the process from 42 days to as little as 18 days.

Problem 4: Assessing Company Culture Fit

Now that you've shortened your hiring process and start to conduct text-based interviews, how can you tell if someone fits in with your company? A positive company culture with happy employees is essential for low employee turnover. Just one rotten egg can spoil everything.

Using Team Engine, ask questions about applicants' values during the automated screening. Define what you're looking for, and base your questions around those skills. Some example questions to ask are:

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how organized are you?
• Do you consider yourself a natural communicator?
• Give an example of a time you showed leadership.

Once you know what you're looking for, it'll be easy to weed out the people that don't share the same values as your company.

Team Engine was built to help blue-collar companies hire in all aspects. As times are changing, we are here to help in any way that we can. Improve your remote hiring, and hire only the top candidates with Team Engine. If you're ready to get started today, connect with one of our software specialists to learn more about Team Engine and remote hiring.