Telecommuting Advisor

Recruiting: Hiring Teleworkers from the Outside

September 5, 2008 on 5:25 pm | In Recruiting |

There are two approaches you can take as an employer to recruit employees for your telecommuting program. You can either select current employees and move their jobs offsite or hire entirely new employees who will function in a telework role. In this section, we’ll look at the hiring new employees approach.

While the vast majority of companies recruit telecommuters from the ranks of their employees, there is a growing trend of hiring teleworkers externally. The reasons for this are twofold:

• The individual can be located anywhere, which expands the company’s reach
• This opens up a wider selection of talent from which to choose, especially important in a tight labor market

Let’s look at some of the specifics of hiring telecommuters directly from outside of your company.

Using the Internet

While the major employment web sites like Monster, CareerBuilder, and Yahoo! HotJobs also list telecommuting jobs, there are a number of job boards targeted directly to the teleworker that you will be able to use as a source of talent. Some are small with a narrow focus, often targeting specific professions. Others may be attractive for the specialized services they offer. The best way to determine which site(s) will be the most advantageous to you and your needs is to visit the various job boards yourself. Use keywords from your own job specification to see how many results the sites return. Are your competitors using the site to advertise their job openings? Find out from the site owners who they are targeting and what kind of traffic the site has. You will find that prices vary considerably, often depending upon length of engagement and services required. Also be sure to give Craigslist a try if it’s active in your area.

In posting your position, be sure to provide a high level of detail and specifics of the skills you require. Use common keywords to describe job functions and the tools, applications, software, systems, products, etc. you expect candidates to be familiar with. The more specific you can be, the better results you will receive from candidates who are uniquely qualified to fill your position.

Also, don’t overlook the potential of your own company web site to attract applicants. Create a section entitled “Careers” where you provide candidates with a sense of how wonderful it would be to work for your company and detail the benefits and opportunity you offer. If appropriate in your company communications, advertise the fact that you are looking for people and point them to the web site for details.

Other Sources for Applicants

Never overlook the traditional methods of attracting job candidates. Many are still viable and many be very cost-effective to use.

• Classified ads in newspapers, magazines and business journals - These are still widely read by people seeking work and many newspapers now have online versions of their publication as well.
• Job fairs - These are often sponsored by media companies and can be an inexpensive way to increase exposure to your company’s products and services as well.
• Recruitment open houses - Setting aside a few hours in the evening or on a Saturday for a recruitment event can be a good way to attract qualified candidates.
• Employee referral bonuses - Providing employee incentives to bring in qualified job candidates has worked well for many companies.
• Networking - Always mention that you are looking for employees at events that you may attend promoting your business. It shows that you’re growing.

Don’t rely too heavily on any one method. Mixing up your recruitment methodology will increase your chances of a successful search.

Considerations in the Hiring Process

Depending upon the distance the candidate is from your facility, you may or may not have the opportunity to interview the candidate in person. Therefore, you may have to base your hiring decision on subjective criteria such as phone manner, the questions the candidate asks and “gut feel”.

When it comes down to it, hiring telecommuters is really no different from hiring other types of employees, except that you may want to utilize some of the technology that the teleworker will be using on the job, such as the Internet, teleconferencing, and email to see how well the candidate utilizes the technology. You can provide specific instructions for applicants to follow and see how closely they follow them. One of the attributes of a good teleworker is someone who can follow instructions succinctly, so the hiring process can be used as one of the measures of how well this is done.

In addition to the selection criteria outlined in the Enlisting Existing Staff for Telecommuting section, you should have other criteria that you use for teleworkers being hired from the outside. Since you do not have an internal track record to review, other methods must be used to determine whether the candidate can perform a job remotely. Some of these are:

• References - Checking references is particularly important with regard to screening telecommute candidates because you want to learn whether the individual has done this before and how well they functioned in the role. Develop questions designed to learn what the candidate’s specific role was and what tools were used.
• Role-play exercises - A scenario that the worker is likely to face can be simulated and you can assess how well the candidate performs the task.
• Writing or portfolio samples - If the position is expected to produce output of any kind (designs, documentation, graphics, code, etc.), you can request a sample of the candidate’s work.

Perils and Pitfalls

The hiring process for any job applicant is a subjective one, and open to bias and error. Just recognizing this fact is a step in the right direction. It often helps to have two or more managers participate in the selection process so the possibility of this is minimized.

Hiring telecommuters possibly takes more forethought than hiring an on-site employee. Because you are relying on the teleworker to be self-sufficient and reliable, you need to make sure that you have carefully identified the attributes you need, have interviewed carefully, have checked references, and are basing the hiring decision on as many objective criteria as possible.