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How do you pre-screen people to get if they will be a good fit for remote?

ben_jones 7y ago
IMO you’d look for time management and communication skills as well as a strong sense of self-assessment and independent decision making.
- dudul 7y ago
  Note that the comment you're replying to asked How, not what do you screen for. How do you screen for the skills you've outlined?
  - ben_jones 7y ago
    Thanks for pointing it out, and ya its really hard to do. I think you identify certain signals and do the best you can in your interview process to flesh them out, for example: 1) History of working remotely successfully in the past 2) Strong verbal or written communication skills, i.e. ability to explain complex ideas concisely or to break down large ideas into consumable smaller ones. 3) Higher education background, indicating the ability to push through benign task and consistently reach performance goals (c's get degrees) 4) Aligned long term-goals for example, engineer foo wants to hit a certain salary level by gaining an expertise in $tech_x, and at the same time your company has domain experience in $tech_x that could facilitate for your employer 5) Ability to break down past projects in the context of "how would you do it differently with a do-over" or "what are some examples where you mismanaged technical debt" None of these ideas are perfect, and execution in the interview is perhaps the hardest part. I myself am a college drop out which makes it ironic that I would suggest people with degrees make for better remote workers, but when it becomes a search for signals a degree from certain tiers of universities is too hard to pass up as a hiring manager who just wants to do a good job.
    - BorisBorisov91 7y ago
      OP here - ^ that's one very good a answer! Yes, pretty much like that. I wrote one long reply in this thread on what we're looking for and it is about the same as this post above. I would qdd to it that experience with working remotely successfully is a great predictor, but it leaves out the candidates that have not worked out remotely so far. In that case, the focus becomes on the other indicators.
phreack 7y ago
Well, that would be their value add. I've been working remotely for over 5 years and anecdotally I'd say there are quite a few characteristics you could evaluate to get a feel of how good someone would be for remote. Some of them I'd say would be asking for how they've worked before, what their daily schedules are like, how they've handled communication, how often they respond to the screening process and such before getting into actual work knowledge.

IMO you’d look for time management and communication skills as well as a strong sense of self-assessment and independent decision making.

dudul 7y ago
Note that the comment you're replying to asked How, not what do you screen for. How do you screen for the skills you've outlined?
- ben_jones 7y ago
  Thanks for pointing it out, and ya its really hard to do. I think you identify certain signals and do the best you can in your interview process to flesh them out, for example: 1) History of working remotely successfully in the past 2) Strong verbal or written communication skills, i.e. ability to explain complex ideas concisely or to break down large ideas into consumable smaller ones. 3) Higher education background, indicating the ability to push through benign task and consistently reach performance goals (c's get degrees) 4) Aligned long term-goals for example, engineer foo wants to hit a certain salary level by gaining an expertise in $tech_x, and at the same time your company has domain experience in $tech_x that could facilitate for your employer 5) Ability to break down past projects in the context of "how would you do it differently with a do-over" or "what are some examples where you mismanaged technical debt" None of these ideas are perfect, and execution in the interview is perhaps the hardest part. I myself am a college drop out which makes it ironic that I would suggest people with degrees make for better remote workers, but when it becomes a search for signals a degree from certain tiers of universities is too hard to pass up as a hiring manager who just wants to do a good job.
  - BorisBorisov91 7y ago
    OP here - ^ that's one very good a answer! Yes, pretty much like that. I wrote one long reply in this thread on what we're looking for and it is about the same as this post above. I would qdd to it that experience with working remotely successfully is a great predictor, but it leaves out the candidates that have not worked out remotely so far. In that case, the focus becomes on the other indicators.

phreack 7y ago

Well, that would be their value add. I've been working remotely for over 5 years and anecdotally I'd say there are quite a few characteristics you could evaluate to get a feel of how good someone would be for remote. Some of them I'd say would be asking for how they've worked before, what their daily schedules are like, how they've handled communication, how often they respond to the screening process and such before getting into actual work knowledge.