18 Remote Job Interview Questions You Need To Answer

The first chat also shines a light on whether the candidate reflects our values and would be excited to join a team of empathetic, customer-focused people. Engineering projects are all take-home coding exercises that are similar in language and project setup to what they might be working on on a daily basis. We always have other engineers review these projects and remove candidate information in order to reduce bias. It’s great to include what kind of impact this person will be able to make, a description of the role, and some details on the ideal candidate profile.

• A clean background like a wall behind you and good natural light usually works best.
• Alongside their resumes and portfolios, we ask applicants to send us a video of themselves or a brief story about their favorite travel experience.
• I’m excited to share some video interview tips here in regard to how to look your best and be low-stress during an online interview.
• Placing your device on your lap could lead to shifting if you move and affect the flow of the interview.
• Much of the items usually done during the remote onboarding process have already been completed.

Ten to fifteen minutes before the interview, open the link or app you will use. Check to be sure the application opens correctly and the software is up to date. Try a test run to ensure everything looks and sounds correct. Arriving early is also a good way to show your interviewer you’re prepared and ready to go.

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She explains that for their Volvo Engineering Student Concept program, they received around 350 applications. They initially began manually screening candidates to check whether their educational backgrounds were relevant for the role in question. After this first step, they sent video interviews to around 100 top candidates. We watched 513 video recordings of remote interviews from around the world — 55% from North and South America and 45% from Europe and Australia — conducted during March and November of 2020.

Just like you would for an onsite interview, spend time preparing yourself to answer common questions and problems. The fewer distractions the more you can focus on giving thoughtful responses. You want them to know you will be prepared as a potential employee and showing them you can maintain focus while working remotely is key. Plan to dress appropriately and set aside your interview outfit ahead of time so that you’ll have one less thing to worry about on the morning of your interview. This is “how to ace your interview 101” but so many candidates don’t do a great job of this. Wanting a remote role isn’t enough to get hired for the position.

To ensure this, the hiring team collaborates on the questions they plan to ask well in advance of scheduling any interviews. We have a bank of questions to ask at this point, but we always update and add new ones along the way.

Communicate Within Your Video Interviewing Platform

This mega guide on remote work has guidance on getting started working remotely, from finding a job to setting up your workspace. Omnipresent makes it easy to hire, pay, and support your international team. Book a call with us to start building your global team today. We created this blog to share some of the knowledge and experience that we have around travel, remote work, photography and beyond! See more about Zoom and meeting apps in our guide to staying connected as a remote worker or while working from home. Continue the practice run of your virtual interview by testing for background noise and how to get rid of it.

• It leads to an enjoyable conversation with the hiring team as we discuss a candidate’s technical competence and strategic thinking, and it makes the decision to extend an offer an easy one.
• No matter what, stay calm and composed — remember, you’ll need to manage these types of instances on a semi-regular basis in a fully remote role anyway.
• You’re not going to impress a potential employer when interviewing if you can’t explain why their exact position attracted your attention and why you thought to apply for this role.
• This led to a significant increase in businesses hiring full-time remote employees.

“It’s easy for items to slip through the crack when you’re working remotely,” Taparia says. Interviewers will want to know you can stay organized and regularly loop your team in on your work to help avoid unnecessary holdups. When it’s time to add a new scout to the team, we form a hiring team to get the job done. Hiring teams at Help Scout always consist of the recruiter, a hiring manager for the new role, 2-3 other people from that team, and someone from another team who will work closely with the new hire.

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What we do is include a handful of what I call “filter questions”. The more you detail you can give, especially around compensation and benefits, the better. Drive home that it’s a great opportunity and that your team genuinely needs someone in this role. And with this new remote environment, anything that can hinder that first interaction can play into your consideration for the role. Skip the virtual backgrounds unless your company has created a branded background. Be extra careful if your interviewer is located in a different part of the country, and if in doubt, just ask. You’ll win more jobs if you ask the employer great questions.

Sign in to the video meeting early to get a clear test run. Many people touch their face and hair when they get nervous. The bright side of an interview is that you’ll realize when you touch your face and hair or adjust your glasses, because you’ll be looking at yourself. Use our work from home tips to brush up on how dressing up can make you ‘feel’ professional even if you’re in your house. As you would aim to arrive 10 minutes early for an in-person interview, aim to join the Zoom call or Google Hangout with a 3-5 minute lead time. Remember that, even if you’re getting ready to quit your job, avoid negative talk about your current employment. A smile is something that can shine through the computer screen like a bright light if you choose to act confident, grateful and happy to be speaking with your interviewer.

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If applicable to your business, specify which areas of the world your remote hire can work from (e.g. continents, countries, states, cities). Remote workers are more likely than on-site workers to report that they plan to stay at their current company for the next five years. Hiring remote employees can help your company expand to new parts of the world and allow for you to better support your customers.

• The test project is a way for us to get to know each other by working together.
• If you want to conduct one-way video interviews with candidates, you can ask them to record their answers through software such as Vidyard or SparkHire.
• I have found that lately, recruiters have not directly provided me with the interviewer’s LinkedIn profile, so I google “Name” + “Company” to find that beforehand.
• They would ultimately be very disappointed working for Packlane if we were to hire them.

And with remote workers adopting titles like “digital nomad,” it’s clear that remote work doesn’t just mean clocking in from your home office. Remote workers travel the world, set their own hours, and rarely feel tied to a cubicle. In the last decade, remote work has exploded in popularity. Thankfully, there is an easier way to hire international talent. And that’s by using an Employer of Record , like Omnipresent. An EOR employs your chosen talent for you so that you don’t have to set up a local entity.

Project

There are some nuances, though, when you hire candidates remotely, which means that you might need to tweak your interview process to make sure you hire the right people. You cut back on time spent sending directions, welcoming candidates to your offices, making travel arrangements if you’re in different locations, etc. Video interviews allow you to meet candidates without leaving your desk, which can make a huge difference when you’re scaling and have multiple interviews per day or week. After an applicant has applied for a remote position, we will send them an email with a link to perform tests on their personal computer as well as their Internet Service Provider. We need to verify that they have the necessary technology to enable them to work for us. We will then conduct a series of recorded interviews, assessments, and usually a live interview as well to help us evaluate candidates and make hiring decisions.

Remote teams can be made up of people working different shifts and all around the world so you won’t necessarily be stuck in the 9-to-5 if that’s not your thing. And remote jobs are often flexible as far as day-to-day routines are concerned. So you can also arrange your work in the way that’s best for you – as long as you get it all done. Hiring remote employees doesn’t mean you have to give up the office for good, though.

Assuming all the previous answers checked out fine, it’s time for a video chat! The video chat step is a mix of figuring out if they’re decent at making themselves available for a quick chat , along with just making sure they are who they say they are. If I do think there may be a good fit, I send a follow up set of questions. These are a mix of questions around working remotely as well as questions specific https://remotemode.net/ to the position itself. Again, these questions will vary slightly depending on the job. The key here is to give you a set of answers that you can use to quickly use to filter out people that don’t fit with what you’re looking for so you can focus on those who could be a fit. With a remote-only company like Baremetrics, when it comes to hiring, the bulk of the work comes in the interview stage.

Before you start looking for the right candidate for the remote job, consult the decision with other people. It may be a manager, a CEO, a team member, or the entire team. Talk to those who will be working directly with the person and aks for remote job interview process their feedback. Find the right video conferencing software to host remote interviews. If you’re the last interviewer, walk the candidate out of the meeting room and make sure they know what the next steps of the hiring process will be.

And have a plan B ready in case something does go wrong on either side. It’s easier to pick up important cues from facial expressions, gestures, body language, or tone when you meet someone face-to-face. However, these are often lost or more difficult to pick up remotely. Go beyond the usual small talk and ask questions about the team, the culture, or undertake pre-work to find common interests with your recruiter. Just about every job type lends itself towards some type of test project. Doing the test project isn’t necessarily about getting some sort of useable deliverable. It’s about figuring out if they can hit the deadlines they set, if they’re actually able to do the calibre of work they’ve shown before and if they respond well to criticism.

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If your company’s hiring pause is indefinite, consider telling candidates upfront instead of leaving them guessing. Have you worked from home/coffee shop/co-working space before? — Hiring people that have not worked remotely in some capacity is an uphill battle that can present a lot of issues.

Hiring remote employees is as much about establishing mutual trust, as it is assessing for skill or cultural fitness. Imagine giving your credit card, mobile phone, and laptop to somebody you’ve never met, and asking them to fill your shoes for a day—working your job, doing the shopping, and even picking up your kids from daycare. When things go awry on a remote team, that can often mean that you’re stuck making important decisions on your own. When an employer asks you this question, she wants to know if you have the resourcefulness and judgement to make independent decisions when you have to. Just like your systems for scheduling, the way you keep track of files and other information is really important.

Usually, we will set successful candidates some fun tasks or give them a trial period. The rise of remote work has opened up job opportunities to more people than ever before. Now you no longer have to live near a company’s offices—or relocate—to work for them. It’s hard to get noticed when your resume is one of the thousands submitted online, and it takes a whole new set of skills to make a great impression in a video interview. Nearly 40% of hiring managers say that interview chemistry has been impacted by the shift to remote hiring. There are plenty of ways to stand out, even in a sea of applicants. The key to effectively rehearsing for a remote job interview is to mimic the conditions of the real interview as much as possible.

According to Malin, it’s crucial to be as clear as possible about each step in the hiring process and communicate the importance of each step to candidates. Simply put, they failed to make an impression because of poor interviewing skills. In fact, of the 28% of participants who did receive job offers, the majority (around 90%) stood out because they mastered the tips highlighted below.