How to hire a remote team

There are a number of benefits to hiring a remote team for your business. By hiring remote workers, you can tap into the ever-growing pool of freelance talent and contractors available worldwide, and choose the best-skilled workers for your project, regardless of your location or theirs. Put simply, you can build your dream team from anywhere in the world.

It’s a model of recruitment that’s particularly popular in the tech industry, but it’s quickly becoming an appealing solution for other businesses too, particularly with the challenges presented by COVID-19. Lockdown no longer becomes an issue. Hiring a remote team allows you to bring in the right people for a particular project, without having to convince them to relocate or facilitate their relocation. 

You can hire remote workers as contractors, freelancers, or as direct employees. In any case, you need to carefully manage the hiring process to ensure you not only select the right people, but also that you comply with applicable rules, regulations and taxes.

Since you’re not limiting your search to your local area, consider going beyond local job listings to search for your candidates. There’s no shortage of platforms for hiring remote contractors from all over the world, but many are inundated with under-qualified workers. In order to find high quality candidates, consider what other avenues are available to you for finding new recruits, beyond local job listings.

Your own networks

Put the word out through your existing networks to let people know that you’re hiring. Add a “We’re hiring!” note to your LinkedIn profile or email signature. Reach out to people you’ve worked with before to see if they’re available or can recommend someone, and spread the word through clients, partners, friends and current staff. You’ll attract lots of expressions of interest this way, and chances are, someone you already know may have the perfect recommendation for you.

Local events

Although you can be open to hiring a remote worker from anywhere in the world, it’s still worth putting the word out among local groups and meetups. People are globally minded and connected. You may be looking for remote workers, but that doesn’t mean you should rule out local candidates who work from home.

Social media channels

Share your remote job listings on your social media channels to attract people already interested in your organisation or industry.

List in specific locations

If you’re looking to recruit remote workers from a specific area, consider listing your remote jobs in that region. Certain cities or parts of the world may be of particular relevance to your organisation, or perhaps you’re targeting a city that’s known to have a lot of remote workers or people with a particular skill.

Once you’ve spent the time narrowing down your pool of candidates and made some decisions, it’s time for the hiring process to begin. This is where hiring remote can be a lot trickier and more time consuming than hiring in-house, as you’ve got compliance risks to look into and manage, and everything is done from a distance, so it’s also crucial to maintain a personal touch throughout.

Compliance and documentation

Using a contractor management system, such as Lano, makes onboarding so much easier. Lano can take care of compliance, ensuring there’s no risk to you, regardless of where your remote workers are based. This cuts out a lot of extra leg work you otherwise need to do to ensure you’re in compliance with all relevant policies, laws and regulations. You can collect information and manage documents and contracts all in one central place. This saves you time so you can focus on other things like training and introductions, ensuring you keep it human.

Payment

Hiring a team of people in a number of different countries can present challenges with making payments too. Depending on the size of your team, you could find you need to pay a range of invoices in different currencies. With Lano you can process multiple international payments with just one click and automatically communicate the status of each individual payment. This is also a great way to keep your team happy. Freelancers and remote workers often run into issues with clients paying late and having to chase payments.

Training and introductions

As with any other new hire, whether short term or long term, make sure you take the time to ensure your new remote worker has what they need to get on with their work. This includes ensuring they can access and use any systems or guidelines you use and that they know who they need to be in contact with and how they’ll be expected to communicate. Take the time to clarify and provide any necessary training, as well as introductions with the rest of your team.

By choosing to hire a remote team you get the benefit of finding the best match for your project without the restriction of location. Finding the talent you need and onboarding people can be fast and effortless if you use a contractor management system such as Lano.