When hiring, there are a lot of things to consider when preparing the job posting. One of them is whether you need someone close on hand, or if you have the option of broadening your search to find unique skill sets. To find out more about where you should focus your job search — local or remote — we asked the following question:
What is the most important thing you should consider when determining if you want to hire someone for a local or remote position? Why are the two options so different?
Here’s what they said:
1. Are You Limiting the Talent Pool?
For some roles, there is no choice to be made between in-office and remote — we couldn’t hire remote data center staff because they need to be hands-on. But, if remote is an option, it’s often the best option. Hiring a remote worker diversifies the talent pool and lets you hire for talent rather than location or willingness to relocate. – Justin Blanchard, ServerMania
2. How Will Your Business Benefit?
Having a stable of remote workers across the globe can be incredibly beneficial to the production of a company. You can have projects being worked on at all hours of the day. On the other hand, someone still has to manage those employees. Make sure the work that that entails is worth it for your business. Never grow larger than you need to. – Adrien Schmidt, Bouquet.ai
3. How Is Your Company Culture?
Remote team members are amazing when you have a culture built on self-management. This means tracking effectiveness based on goals rather than time. It really lets you uplevel your management ability and gives leadership and management more time efficacy. – James Guldan, Vision Tech Team
4. Do You Have a Communication Plan?
Hiring remote workers have many perks, but not being able to drop by their office to discuss and work on projects is a disadvantage. That’s why before hiring remote workers, you need a communication plan in place. We use Asana and Slack to manage our remote workers, and you need to implement similar tools in order to keep in contact with and work collaboratively with remote workers. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
5. Do You Have a Remote Work Policy?
When it comes to remote work, you want to make sure that you have a policy in place. For example, will the option to work remotely be open to everyone or just certain individuals? Having documentation in place will simplify things as questions arise. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
6. Do You Need Them to Be Available in Person At All?
If you don’t need the employee you’re hiring to ever be at the office or at any in-person events at all, then going remote is a great choice. But if you think you’ll need that person to be by your site at all throughout their employment even if it’s just a few times a year, you might want to consider hiring someone more local. – John Turner, SeedProd LLC
7. Can You Train Them Remotely?
Before deciding to hire a remote worker versus a local one, determine whether you can train that employee remotely. If the job position is one that needs a lot of company-specific training, is it something that can be done over Skype or the phone? If you want more control over the training process, then you might want to hire someone local who you can train face-to-face. – Blair Williams, MemberPress
8. Is Your Data in the Cloud?
Having your data stored in the cloud makes it a lot easier to work remotely. For example, if you hire a remote employee, but your data is stored in local folders, it makes it more difficult for them to access without a VPN. However, if you have the data in the cloud, your remote employee will be able to work from anywhere with their own laptop and mobile device. – Jared Atchison, WPForms
9. Are You Set Up Well for Remote Work?
Not every company is set up for remote work. Do you have a lot of in-person conversations or is most of your work documented online? In order to be successful with a remote employee you’ll need to have an infrastructure to support them. The good news is that a system will make your in-house team more productive, but it is a commitment to make that change. – Bhavin Parikh, Magoosh Inc