6 Steps To Recruit Competent Virtual Employees

Right recruitment sows the seeds for growing a virtual workforce that is competent and delivers results better than an in-office workforce does. However, recruiting, training, and managing virtual employees are tasks that involve planning and a clear sight of the goal. Here are a few tips that would get you started in the right direction:

1.Identify your requirements

Assess your business needs extensively. Find out which of your business activities could be done by virtual employees and how many employees do you need for each task? What results do you expect out of your virtual employees? What would be your business’s future requirements and how would you expand the virtual employee network if required? Create job descriptions with exact technical skills, soft-skills, and other expertise that you need. Once you are clear about what you want out of your virtual employees, half the job is done.

2.Use technology to find the best-fit employees

Technology has made finding the right employees easier, faster, and inexpensive. The best part is that you can post your requirement on the niche sites frequented by people looking for virtual work in that area. Visit niche forums and post your requirements there. For instance, you can post at ASP.NET experts forum, if you are looking for an employee with such skills. You can use business networks like LinkedIn to find and connect to prospective employees. Just search on Google about the expertise you are looking for and you will surely find people who are interested. You can post on Craiglist or online job sites and even conduct a virtual job fair if you are looking for greater number of employees.

3.Conduct personal interview and do a background check

Once you match the candidates’ skill sets with your job requirements and shortlist them, you need to move on to the next stage of conducting personal interviews. If the candidate is not available locally then this could be done through video conferencing. Using live meeting tools, the candidates can easily give presentations of their work, show samples, and answer your queries. You can know more about the candidate and conduct a background check yourself by doing a general Google search and studying social media profiles of the candidates. Ask for references of past employment and verify them. You can also hire an external agency to do the job. This ensures that you do not hire the wrong candidates. Sign a Non-disclosure Agreement and explain your privacy protocols to the virtual employees once you recruit.

4.Take a trial

Start with your virtual employee with a trial period where you can judge the style of working, capabilities, technology expertise, and training requirements. This can help you gather important feedback, make sure they have the right technology in place, and help you recognize any speed bumps that might arise as the amount of work grows. Analyze the candidate for team spirit, self-confidence, decision-making capacity, resourcefulness, motivation, and fit with your work culture during the trial.

5.Set ground rules

Ensure clear understanding of goals and work culture, amount of work required to be done by the virtual employee, communication/collaboration protocols, issue resolution, responsibilities, accountability, key performance indicators, performance incentives, and other business specific needs. This will help in setting the right expectations at both the ends. Define processes and protocols for all business activities that virtual employees would handle so that you can easily train new employees and grow your team quickly in future.

6.Offer extensive training

Training is the key to better performance. Use e-learning tools or web meeting applications and let your subject matter experts or team leaders give demos and explain the functions to your virtual employees in an interactive manner. External trainers can also be employed for specific skills trainings.

Hiring a wrong candidate will waste your precious time and money, so judge well before you finally hire.