How do you conduct effective remote interviews? Looking for remote interview tips?
If you’re new to remote interviewing or want to improve your process, keep reading this article. In this article, you’ll discover 12 amazing remote interview tips.
Here’s the List of Remote Interview Tips
- Review Your Current Interview Process
- Create a Definitive Plan
- Introduce Candidates to The Company Virtually
- Prepare Your Tech
- Plan your Time Frame and Be Appropriately Dressed
- Choose an Undisturbed Space
- Take Feedback After the Interview
- Don’t Reinvent Your Questions
- Have a Back-Up Plan in Place
- Don’t Waste Time Interviewing Unsuitable Candidates
- Discuss the challenges of Remote Work
- Behavioral Assessments
Why Should You Conduct Remote Interviews?
By now, most organizations have implemented work-from-home or remote working for their employees! With the need to maintain social distancing, remote interviews are fast becoming ubiquitous.
While working from home has hassles of its own, the real challenge occurs in recruiting individuals. No matter how experienced you are in interviewing people, the shift to an entirely remote recruitment plan is going to be a tough nut to crack.
80% of recruiters have been using video in the interview process.
You have to be prepared with your questionnaire and video conferencing equipment and align other things right in time for the interview. Even if you do all of this successfully, it is complicated to analyze a candidate from their nonverbal cues from video conferencing.
But, there’s nothing to worry about!
Remote Interview Tips
You can still conduct successful virtual interviews and hire the best employees for your organization. Just keep these smart tips in mind!
1. Review Your Current Interview Process
If you’re shifting to remote interviewing, it’s a good time to re-evaluate the process you already have. Is it effective? Is it structured? What can you do better?
Most companies don’t have a dedicated hiring process. It’s not about meeting another person. Your process should allow candidates to move reasonably quickly through a clear sequence of steps that feels personal to them.
Keep the communication clear while you’re hiring remotely. These are basic elements that candidates will need to know ahead of time:
- Who will they be meeting from your team?
- What should they prepare?
- Will it be an audio call or a video call?
- Will you want them to share their screen at any point?
- What tools or apps will you want them to use? And do they need to download and test them ahead of time?
If you want to hire great talent, then improve your remote interview process.
2. Create a Definitive Plan
Since you can’t go asking questions from desk to desk, you should formalize the hiring plan with your entire team. Start by asking the most relevant questions about the new hiring strategy and then work on them one by one.
Consider whether the candidate needs to go through a pre-assessment or what communication channels you need to have in place for conducting the interview.
3. Introduce candidates to the company virtually
While you’re hiring virtually, create a branded content package that candidates can review in their free time to get a feel for the company’s culture and values.
Here are things you can consider:
- Include major company announcements or press and media coverage.
- Employee profiles,
- Glassdoor reviews.
- Customer testimonials.
- Team celebration photos and videos.
- Benefits and perks.
4. Prepare Your Tech
The foundation of remote interviews is tech. This is one of the parts of the remote hiring process that will demand most of your attention.
Make sure you have a good internet connection, along with other nuances. Since internet issues are not new, also prepare yourself with an alternate mode of communication that you may need to use when there is a connectivity problem in the network. Try to test your equipment in advance to minimize such issues.
5. Plan your Time Frame and Be Appropriately Dressed
When conducting remote interviews, make sure you give other people an ample amount of time to set up their tech as well. Remember that it’s not just you who will be sitting through the interview, but the candidate as well.
Inform your candidate as early as possible and ask them to keep their phone, laptop, and internet connection ready and tested before the interview. The more clear directions you provide to the candidate, the smoother will be the interview process.
No matter if it’s a remote interview or an onsite interview, the underlying ethics remain the same. Make sure you are formally dressed for the interview so that the culture and seriousness of your workplace are evident to the candidate. It is advisable to add request your candidate to do the same.
Don’t forget that dressing up formally is little about the clothes and more about the culture that you bring to the table.
6. Choose an Undisturbed Space
Working from home can be quite an experience, especially when you have little children in your house. Make sure that you pick a quiet and undisturbed place of your residence to conduct the interview.
This will help you listen and understand the candidate in a much better manner. Also, ask the candidate to choose a quiet and well-lit environment for the interview.
7. Take Feedback After the Interview
Always take feedback after the interview. This way, you will learn from your experience and understand the areas where the remote recruitment process needs improvement. Prepare a survey and keep it simple.
For example, you can ask questions like how could the interviewing process be improved, or was the remote interview software or platform chosen for the remote interview convenient, etc.
8. Don’t Reinvent Your Questions
A lot of things have to be improvised during the process of remote interviews. This process has already changed the dynamic between the recruiter and the candidate. To minimize any gaps, the best you can do is ask your candidates a consistent set of questions that you have been asking during regular on-site interviews.
It makes sure that you can still judge a candidate based on their merit, even if there are a lot of disturbances in the tech or connectivity.
9. Have a Back-Up Plan in Place
No matter how good your tech is or how many times you’ve tried and tested it, you cannot wholly rely on it during an interview.
To value your and your candidate’s time, it is best that you have a backup plan in place. Whether you would like to switch to a voice call or a video call on WhatsApp, be prepared with the next possible set of actions, and also inform your candidate about them well in time.
10. Don’t Waste Time Interviewing Unsuitable Candidates
74% of employers say they’ve hired the wrong candidate for a position. It takes time, money, and effort to hire a suitable candidate. A wise recruiter identifies suitable candidates and doesn’t spend their time interviewing all the candidates.
How can you do it?
Conduct a pre-employment screening to get a clear picture of what the candidate is like, how are their communication skills, experience, and tech skills, and whether you find them a perfect fit for your organization or not.
11. Discuss the challenges of Remote Work
Despite its main benefits, remote work comes up with unique challenges. Remote workers have to manage their time and schedule, which can lead to a lack of working structure.
When conducting a remote interview, you must discuss an interviewee’s experience and hesitations about remote work.
HR leaders should encourage candidates to identify solutions that may help them succeed within your remote team.
Here are some sample questions you can ask:
- Have you ever worked remotely? What were some of the challenges you faced, and how did you tackle them?
- Have you worked with a distributed team? How did it go?
- How do you communicate with a remote team?
- How do you stay focused on your schedule and tasks?
- How do you switch off from work?
12. Behavioral Assessments
Use behavioral questions to assess how candidates have handled situations in the past. Ask them to provide specific examples of their problem-solving skills, teamwork, and adaptability. Encourage candidates to use the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method when responding to behavioral questions. This helps ensure their responses are structured and comprehensive.
Top 5 Tools For Remote Interviews
Here, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 video interview software and tools:
Zoom
Zoom is video software that many companies use to connect with candidates remotely. It has amazing features, such as screen sharing, text chat, video recording, and muting.
2. Google Hangouts Meet
No one is an alien when it comes to Google hangout. It’s a simple tool that renders messages, video chat, and VOIP features. You can consider using it for remote hiring.
3. Skype
It is easy to conduct a free online interview via Skype. Start a video or audio call, screen share, and collaboratively code in real-time.
4. GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting has easy-to-use features and simple instructions for those who aren’t part of the company to join the meeting. You can consider it for your next remote interview.
5. Join.me
Join.me offers video and audio conferencing, screen sharing, and integration with Outlook or Google Calendar. You can customize your meeting link and meeting background.
FAQs
Remote Interviews are ones where interviewers and candidates are located in a different locations. These types of interviews are done over video conferences.
In this article, you’ll find the 12 best remote interview tips to conduct a successful remote interview.
Here are some tools that you can consider using: Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype, SpringRecruit, etc.
Create a guide with useful tips on how candidates can prepare for a video interview. You can also record a video where a hiring manager talks about the company or welcomes the candidate to the hiring process.
Conclusion
Remote interviews can be tough, even with the comfort of our homes. However, with adequate planning and a set of prepared actions, you can minimize the hassle and disturbances in between. Remember to be compassionate with the candidate and considerate about their flexibility in appearing for a remote interview.
Reflect the culture of your company and respect your candidate by keeping the background sounds at a minimum. Remember that patience is the key to a successful interview.
Do you have any other remote interview tips? Please drop in the comment section.
Originally published March 25, 2020 5:22 PM, updated Jan 19 2024
