How To Hire Remote Employees: An Expert’s Guide
The pandemic accelerated an already burgeoning remote working trend that can benefit both employers and workers.
Orgz can tap into new talent pools and maybe save on office space spending and. Workers can enjoy the flexibility and other benefits of remote working.
Here, I’ll cover the benefits of hiring remote workers, share my knowledge and best practices to help you hire them, and give some tips to ensure remote workers are successful in your org.
Benefits of Hiring Remote Employees
Before we go into the operational guidance for hiring remote employees, a few words on why you may consider going through this exercise altogether.
- Access to a wider talent pool: A remote hiring process allows you to tap into a global talent pool, not limited by geographical boundaries. This means a greater chance of finding the perfect fit for specific roles, with a variety of skills and experiences.
- Cost savings: You can save on costs associated with maintaining a physical office space, including rent, utilities, and office supplies. Additionally, remote employees may accept lower salaries in exchange for the flexibility and savings on commuting.
- Diverse workforce: Remote hiring facilitates a more diverse workforce, as employers are not limited to hiring candidates from a specific region. This diversity can bring different perspectives and ideas, fostering innovation and creativity.
- Improved employee well-being: Remote work can lead to better mental health and overall well-being for employees, as they have more control over their work environment and can maintain a better work-life balance.
- Business continuity: Remote team can be available around the clock and make your business more resilient in times of crisis.
I remember once having to search for an iOS engineer in Grimsby, UK because that is where our office was and, I can tell you, no one was having a great time. Not us, not the team, and not the candidates.
After months of fruitless searching, we decided to hire remotely and we closed the hire within a month.
How To Hire Remote Employees
So let’s get into it. Hiring remote workers means adapting your current hiring process to take into account things such as language differences and where you’ll search for candidates.
Here’s what to focus on:
Tweaking job descriptions
One of the first steps is to review your job descriptions to ensure that they’re easy to understand for different audiences. This means that they’re written in accessible language without any colloquialisms.
For example, try to avoid using cliches like “go-getter” or making something like “good sense of humor” a requirement.
People may speak great English without necessarily understanding colloquialisms and no one should be reading your job description with a dictionary.
Make sure that if you have any sort of limitations, like salary, timezone, or shifts, they're prominently displayed in the job description.
Additionally, I always like mentioning the kind of mentality we’re looking for i.e. someone who is entrepreneurial and proactive.
Being remote comes with less micromanagement (usually), but that means there’s a lot of work to be done independently.
Potential candidates should be ready for that, and be able to demonstrate it in an interview, by showing examples of where they were proactive in seeing issues and solving problems, or where they communicated effectively with multiple stakeholders to deliver a complex project remotely.
For more on writing job descriptions, check out my article on how to write a job description.
Diversifying job posting
While some of the standard job boards have been trying to accommodate for more remote positions, you may want to take a look at remote-specific job boards.
Most are paid but there are some free ones. My suggestions are:
A good applicant tracking system will help you build your candidate pool and manage them through the process.
It's also important to develop a strong hiring page to promote open opportunities to potential applicants who may follow your company directly.
Career page software can make managing this process a lot easier while keeping your job postings consistent with your employer brand.
A little more interview prep
Remote interviews can require a bit more prep from you and from anyone on your team who will be conducting them.
You need to make sure that you are prepared both in equipment and in mindset:
Make sure that you have a good setup for remote interviewing. You don’t need a 4K camera and a streamer/Youtuber-level equipment, but make sure you’re well visible on camera and there are few distractions when you’re conducting interviews.
Ideally, you’re at a desk—avoid taking interviews in a car or on your way somewhere, you’ll be distracted and it’s disrespectful of the person’s time.
Always strive to be on video so you can connect with the person more and, wherever possible, ask the person to be on video at least once during the process.
You’ll have to glean a lot from a video call—which can be more difficult—and that means that you’ll probably need to spend more time with each candidate.
And, just as you may need more time to get an understanding, they may need the same to understand more about you and your company.
Focus on spending time with each candidate to help them understand your culture and aims of the team/company.
Perhaps they’re from a different culture so you need to make sure that they understand expectations and norms and are OK with those.
For example, if you’re a very collaborative team, but perhaps they’ve been a contractor who just gets given a project to deliver without much communication, make sure you explain the difference to them and that they’re OK with it.
Additionally, if you’re interviewing remote people from an office, be prepared to answer questions on how your company is balancing office-based vs remote employees in terms of opportunities or exposure.
A note on interviewing across cultures. If you open your candidate pipeline to the world, you better be prepared for all sorts of communication styles.
I recommend The Culture Map by Erin Meyer as a good primer in cross-cultural communications.
For more advice on better interviewing in general, check out my article the key to focused, engaging interviews, where I go over structured, standardised interviews (which are even more important to have in remote recruitment).
Additionally, if you need help finding software to help you facilitate remote interviews, check out People Managing People's article on the best video interviewing software on the market today.
More patience when making an offer
As always, make sure that you are well-informed and properly equipped to make an offer before you are anywhere near this stage.
An offer may require a bit more back-and-forth with remote candidates, and perhaps a bit more hand-holding to guide people through your process, as this may be the first time a candidate has engaged with a company from your country.
Arm yourself with patience.
For more on making an offer, check out my article on how to make a job offer.
Best Practices for Hiring Remote Employees
Hiring remote employees requires different processes and practices. Here are some best practices to follow as you expand your remote workforce.
Research local employment laws
When hiring remote workers, it’s important to first familiarize yourself with the employment laws of the states or countries where potential remote employees reside.
This includes understanding regulations regarding working hours, minimum wage, benefits, and termination procedures.
Create a global compensation strategy
Ultimately compensation is the majority most of us go to work, so it's worth thinking about how you’re going to approach this when hiring remotely.
As Liam Reese advises in his excellent article on global compensation “Most organizations will choose to localize when it comes to base pay, so this is where you need to take some time to research local market rates and then adjust depending on your strategy per role (lag-, match-, or lead-the-market).
Of course, you also need to take into account local regulations including minimum wage laws, overtime regulations, tax implications, and benefits mandates.
If you lack the resources to undertake this sort of analysis for every role in every country, then you can always adjust based on the cost of living. This might also be relevant for countries where you don’t have many roles.”
Showcase your remote culture early
When you're hiring remotely, candidates don't get the luxury of walking through your office, seeing how teams collaborate, or picking up on your culture through casual interactions.
That means it's on you to actively show them what it's like to work with your team.
This means introducing them to future teammates, not just hiring managers, and letting them hear how people communicate and collaborate.
You can also share things like your Slack etiquette, a snippet from your company handbook, or even a quick Loom video walkthrough of your team rituals.
You can also give candidates a taste of your values in action. If you say you're async-first or big on autonomy, show how that plays out—mention how you run standups or make decisions without endless meetings.
It’s also great to be real about challenges (“We’re still figuring out our ideal meeting cadence”). That honesty builds trust and helps candidates feel like they're making an informed choice, not just buying into a polished pitch.
Consider expert help
Navigating the myriad of unfamiliar employment laws and payroll processes in a new jurisdiction can be too much for some organizations.
That’s why a lot of organizations choose to use an employer of record service. This means you can quickly hire full-time employees without having to set up a foreign entity or deal with payroll.
Alternatively, you can hire contractors or maybe set up a foreign entity and work with a local PEO or HR consultancy to ensure you get things right.
Considerations for Hiring Remote Employees
Expanding the talent pool that you have access to sounds great, but it can come with some complications.
Managing payroll
Payroll can be complex, especially for small businesses. Processing payroll in different jurisdictions adds complexity and risks if not handled correctly.
Calculating compensation
Deciding fair compensation for remote workers involves considering local pay rates, cost of living, and expected benefits.
Permanent establishment risk
Having a business presence in another country may subject you to corporate taxes and additional compliance standards.
Permanent establishment refers to the minimum threshold that, once exceeded, triggers a company being taxed and subject to regulations of another country.
Misclassifying employees as contractors
Worker misclassification can lead to fines, penalties, and legal disputes. This is why it’s important to define job roles clearly and consider converting contractors to employees to stay compliant (to guide you through this complex sub-topic, I recommend reading our explanation of employee misclassification and how to avoid it next.)
IP and invention rights
International hires can complicate intellectual property (IP) protections due to varying IP laws and remote work environments.
Taxation for remote employees
Determining where remote employees pay taxes is crucial. Understanding how to navigate this can be difficult and may require you to consult a service provider who can help you understand compliance hurdles and foreign tax practices.
Setting Remote Employees Up For Success
I’ve been managing remote teams for a few years now, so lastly I thought I’d share a couple of learnings to help you set your remote employees up for success.
Thorough onboarding
Onboarding someone remotely is more difficult than welcoming them into an office as it often boils down to meeting after meeting and downtime between meetings where they either have to just rote read or wait for the next action.
A couple of things I focus on to make the remote onboarding process as smooth as possible:
- Ensure that you’re prepared to send out all the information and equipment ahead of time.
- Start inviting them into stand-ups and calls even before day 1, that way they can already recognise names and know who to potentially reach out to once they start.
- If you have a company trip coming up close to the start date, ask if you can have your new starter join (but make sure that you’re respectful of the new starters’ time, they may not be able to join all meetings/trips as they may need to wrap up at their previous job).
For more check out 11 tips for onboarding remote employees.
Adjusting feedback
When you’re managing a remote team, oftentimes you’ll be relying on your team member’s own resourcefulness and entrepreneurial spirit.
As mentioned above, I like to add this to my job descriptions. But you have to make sure you’re still providing everyone with timely feedback and guidance
You may not have had the opportunity to build as close a relationship with your team members as they’re remote
This is why it’s vital that you try to gain as much of an understanding of the situation and the person’s thinking before you deliver feedback.
Make sure you ask questions like “Where are we with this? What blockers do we foresee/what blockers do we have? What do you need from me to support you in delivering this?”.
I also like to discuss the goals I set for the coming quarter with my team to check against what is happening with each of them individually and then all of them as a group. The main goals I check and set once a quarter, and then we keep checking in every month against progress.
I also regularly check in on individual goals in our 1:1s every two weeks and also use this time to this time to check how the person is doing.
You don’t see people in real life so you don’t know if their kid is ill, or they’ve been having issues that may impact their work temporarily, so don’t jump to conclusions.
You can start meetings with red/yellow/green, or a #/10, to get a read on how your team is feeling. Make sure to follow up with people who are giving signals (low numbers or yellow/red)
Context is vital, but it’s more easily lost in a remote setting, so make sure you dedicate time to understand your team better and not just do surface-level check-ins.
Team building
To build rapport, I like to dedicate time to informal and non-business interactions. This could be a team happy hour/tea time.
It could be a gaming session over lunch or creating a Discord server where people can pop into an audio-only room (combat video fatigue) and just interact as little or as much as they want while they are doing some work.
People can also share multiple screens at the same time to make collaboration easier too.
Right now, while writing this, I’m in a Discord server after work with my friends, who’re playing some games, and I don’t feel tired at all after a full day of video calls.
Hiring Remote Can Help You Meet Your Objectives
Hiring remotely is a great way to make sure you get the best person for your role, rather than the best person within a certain radius.
Yes, it can require a lot of effort to get right, but the rewards are great as you can get such a diversity of thought.
In my company, we really relish hearing people’s different perspectives as we are looking to create a global product.
Remote work isn’t a fad, it’s not just for the few “digital nomads” anymore, it’s a shift in the paradigm of work.
For further help finding the talent you need maybe check out these candidate sourcing tips, tips for hiring international employees specifically, or advice for building a strong employer brand to attract candidates.
How To Hire Remote Employees FAQs
What are common roles for remote workers?
Common remote roles include:
- Software developers
- Marketers
- Customer support agents
- Designers
- Content creators
- project managers.
Roles that rely on digital tools and independent work generally adapt well to remote settings.
What is the best way to pay remote employees?
If handling yourself, you could use global payroll platforms like Deel, Remote.com, or Papaya Global to manage compliance, taxes, and currency conversions.
Alternatively, hire through an Employer of Record (EOR) if you don’t have a local entity in the employee’s country.
Is it cheaper to have remote employees?
Often, yes—companies save on office space, utilities, relocation, and in some cases, salaries depending on geographic cost-of-living.
However, costs like remote tech stipends, global payroll services, and local compliance fees should also be factored in.
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