Hiring the right remote employees is no easy feat. In fact, one might say that if and when you finally hire the right one, it merits a celebration. Why? Because hiring the right employee can potentially transform your business.
In today’s employment landscape, it’s essential to invest your time and resources in analyzing the core strengths and weaknesses of your candidates before hiring them. You need to know what qualities they will bring to the workplace besides their expertise.
In fact, pre-employment assessments are essential with the introduction of hybrid work models. Today, hybrid working is a big buzzword in many organizations post-pandemic.
In a hybrid work setting, companies allow their employees to alternate performing tasks in an office environment while also working remotely a few days of the week. This form of working is becoming quite popular.
According to McKinsey’s research, 52% of American employees wish their organization would adopt more flexible hybrid working models and policies. While such a model can increase productivity and results, the fact is, everyone simply isn’t cut out for it, especially when it comes to trusting employees in taking responsibility in a remote working environment.
The good thing is, while it may seem impossible to determine exactly how an employee will cope in a situational setting, WrightOne Consulting’s Pre-Employment Assessment gives you a strong idea about the kind of personality you’re onboarding.
Decoding The Mystery Candidate
Questions you must ponder before hiring remote employees:
“How do they work? How much guidance do they require? What is their initiative taking ability? Are they self-accounting individuals? Will they be a good fit in your current team, or will they disrupt the harmony you’ve carefully honed? How often do they slack off? Can they stay on task and follow through?”
These are all burning questions that require answers. However, more often than not, they are overlooked by employers. In addition, with a wealth of talent available in the market and the number of applicants for a job position rising day by day, it’s imperative to be thorough in your hiring process.
It’s good if a candidate passes the basic criteria for expertise, but as they progress through your company’s screening process, decisions of which person to go with must hinge on other personality factors to select the best candidate.
With that in mind, we have compiled a list of 4 crucial qualities you must assess before you consider before hiring remote employees.
4 Crucial Qualities You Must Assess Before Finalizing A Candidate
1. Task Orientation
The number one quality you should look for in your candidate is their dedication to and focus on staying on a particular task. When a candidate is task-oriented, their top priority is to get work done. This quality showcases the candidate’s innate sense of accomplishing tasks in the most productive manner possible.
A task orientated employee strives to find ways of being more efficient and are likely to be more organized. They frequently make use of planners, to-do lists, and project management software to fulfill all of their outstanding objectives.
They inherently believe in setting goals and ensure that it remains an integral part of their work structure. This ability is crucial in helping organizations accomplish goals within due time.
“Completed tasks achieve objectives, fulfilled objectives meet goals and realized goals drive sustainable growth.”
2. Resourcefulness
The second quality you must assess before hiring remote employees is their resourcefulness. Let’s face it. People working remotely need to be adjustable to new challenges and work demands. They have to be comfortable troubleshooting roadblocks on their own.
They have to constantly look at things and be confident in tackling every situation. They must not be second guessing themselves and making ineffective decisions. You see, adjustment is not a piece of cake for everyone.
Even though an employee may be talented, they might not be a good fit if your company is planning to operate remotely. Some employees just naturally thrive more in an office environment as opposed to working with much less oversight. It’s just how they function.
With our pre-employment assessment,, you can find out a candidate’s resourcefulness more effectively than ever before.
We can quantifiably help you measure their independence to achieve results. We can tell you whether your candidate has the confidence to take action without assistance and support, whether they’re actually going to seize the initiative, and how emotionally receptive they will be to change and new situations.
3. Self-Accountability And Motivation
Who doesn’t like working with a self-motivated and self-accounting individual? Yes, focusing is much easier in a workplace because everyone’s working together. Therefore, chances of getting distracted are less because of the collective alignment of goals and energies to make the business successful.
However, you can run into serious problems when forced to switch to remote work. Remember Covid? *cough cough*
While working from home might offer many benefits, the presence of greater distractions in a home environment should not be underestimated.
Even if you have voluntarily shifted to a hybrid model of working, it’s legitimate to be worried about your employees’ ability to manage their work. This is where our Pre-employment Assessment can be instrumental in helping you hire the right remote employees.
We can help you measure vital factors like achievement orientation and their persistence. We can accurately tell you whether or not your candidate has a strong sense of urgency, how hard they are willing to work, whether they are willing to shift gears when they need to, and whether they’re going to stay at the task.
4. Curiosity
Finally, the fourth crucial quality to assess before hiring remote employees is their internal sense of curiosity. Employees with the curiosity trait are likely to be natural learners, eager to learn and grow from experiences, and develop stronger personalities in their role. Such people explore new perspectives and find innovative ways to accomplish tasks. They aren’t dictated by “the way things simply are”.
Having such employees is essential because modern workplaces require an openness to learning and an ability to take risks. Curious people lead to higher creativity and innovation at the workplace but it’s hard to weed out such traits without actively measuring them.
Curious people lead to higher creativity and innovation at the workplace.
Through our Pre-Employment Assessment, you can identify candidates who learn fast and inspire others to efficiently work like themselves. You definitely don’t need candidates who rely on your organization to provide them the next training course, rather, you require people who are hungry to absorb and share what they are discovering so that everyone in the company collectively benefits and succeeds together.
Your Next Step
Employers today spend billions annually screening potential new candidates, but rarely receive the value they seek for their investment. Even though they are finicky about hiring the perfect candidate, 95% of them admit to hiring the wrong people each year!
As a matter of fact, a study conducted by leading researchers in 2016 analyzed a hundred years of data to determine which popular hiring screens predicted candidates’ on-the-job performance. Their analysis found that key resume “boosts”, such as relevant experience, education, and grades, had little to no correlation with actual on the job performance.
In other words, there’s over a century worth of data proving that a candidate with the highest number of degrees, the highest GPA, and the most work experience – even in the “right” industry – may not always be the right candidate.
Keeping such hiring ordeals at the forefront, we at WrightOne Consulting are on a mission to enable companies to match with the right resource through an unbiased, in-depth assessment and evaluation.
With our assessments, we are not only able to help you choose the right candidate but also notify you on the areas your managers would most likely have to work on with the new employee.
Our progressive pre-employment assessment program is an independent, unbiased evaluation of an individual’s strengths and capabilities. We describe how people will perform on the job and how they are most likely to act in key situations; things that simply cannot be learned from a mere resume or interview.
If you’re interested in learning more, reach out to us here. We’ll send you our brochure, ‘The power of Pre-employment Assessments’ along with a sample report you can view to make your decision.
Do you want to work together in hiring the best remote employees to take your business forward? Because we’re excited to work with your company and take you to the next level.
