If I’m hiring for a candidate that has expressed a need to work remotely, I interview them very differently. First, I give extra importance to the communication

If I’m hiring for a candidate that has expressed a need to work remotely, I interview them very differently. First, I give extra importance to the communication with the candidate over email/LinkedIn to set up the phone screen, and also the phone screen itself. I know that I will be interacting with the person primarily this way. It’s extremely helpful to obtain referrals from people who have worked with the person remotely before, so they can provide feedback about how frequently and engaged that person has been with the on-site team in the past. I also look for and ask questions probing the persons communication skills more than my usually technically-focused interviews. The reason for this is that I’ve experienced different results working with the same people from remote than when they are on-site. For that reason I don’t think it’s enough to assume that because a developer is a good remote worker they will work well in an office setting or that if they are a productive office worker they will function highly from remote. Basically, people are hired into specific roles. If you’ve hired someone for an open space agile environment and the role/work dramatically changes (going remote, acquired by “waterfall method inc”, etc) the hiring decision very well may no longer be informative.