Getting hired as a remote worker

Over the last few months, I got to do about a hundred interviews to hire new members of our remote team. Here are the most frequent issues I experienced. Most of them seem obvious, but you would be surprised how frequently they happened.

Communication is extremely important within a remote team. Being far geographically from each other is a challenge. Because of this, the rest as to be “easy”. You have to show the communication between us is going to be smooth and uninterrupted.

Don’t do the interview from a busy coworking place or a coffee shop. Bonus points if you’re able to do it from your home office. This will show you take your work seriously and understand how important your environnement is.

In your future position, all the communication will be done over the internet. You don’t want the video to be low quality or Skype to skip words.

You might be working from home but, your future employers expects you to take it seriously. For the interview, dress properly. It will increase your confidence for the interview and show you care about your work.

It’s hard to show emotions in video-calls the same way you would in person. I saw lots of candidates appearing almost bored. I suspect this is reinforced by the fact a screen was between us. Candidates clearly looking happy to be there and enthusiast about the opportunity got a head start.

With the interview on a computer and the phone on the table, distractions aren’t far away. A message from a friend or a random notification can take your mind of the interview. Worse, it can make you look elsewhere. This is something that is instantly recognizable by the interviewer. I can assure you there’s nothing worse than speaking while a candidate is looking at what notification she just received.

Working remotely is awesome, that’s why we do it. But don’t let the interviewer think you have a different vision of remote work. Saying you prefer remote because you get to precisely define your environment and be more productive is great. Saying you want to work remotely because you will get the opportunity to spend your time travelling isn’t as good. Your future company can be fine with this but you want to start by reassuring the interviewer.