At some point, every startup needs to grow beyond its first few employees. A lot of decisions you make at this critical juncture will impact the company’s long term trajectory. The choice between hiring new in-house team members or going remote is among the most important.
Whether you’re looking to make a big push or incrementally grow your team, onboarding a remote team comes with some challenges and anxieties:
- “How will I control the quality of a remote worker’s output?”
- “Will I have to micromanage everything?”
- “Culture is important to me, how do I make sure we hire the ‘right’ people?”
However, the benefits of hiring a remote team are numerous. By hiring remote workers, you can save on both hiring costs and long-term overhead costs, and increase productivity. You can also draw from a larger pool of candidates than is typically locally available, which is especially valuable for specialized technology needs.
For many startups, there’s a knowledge gap involved in scaling a remote team. Where do you find the right people and how do you get them successfully onboarded?
We asked four leaders in hyper-growth tech companies how they survived the shift:
1. Be open-minded
A lot of people approach the process of hiring remote workers with certain preconceived notions that don’t play out in reality. Cleanly’s Operations Project Manager Greg Meyers says that’s a bad way to approach upscaling:
“My biggest piece of advice is to be open-minded...” Listen more below:
2. Nail it before you scale it
Ilana Brown, VP of Customer Success for SevenRooms, recommends getting your remote team started slow, with adequate oversight over processes to ensure they’re up to speed with best practices. She explains:
“Identify easy tasks for your remote team to tackle first, and then increase the complexity as time goes on...” Listen more below:
This allows for a smoother and more productive onboarding process, not just for you, but for your remote team as well. Jackie Conlan, Director of Customer Implementation and Support at RocketTrip, adds:
“As our needs have changed, we have been able to upskill our remote team and give them more and more complex projects as the years go on...” Listen more below:
3. Don’t compromise on your corporate culture
Your company culture doesn’t stop at the four walls of your office. In fact, introducing remote workers to your company culture can improve their sense of connection. With that comes happier employees who are more productive. Dan Ruch, Founder and CEO of Rocketrip adds:
“Corporate culture is something that's incredibly important to us. We realized we didn't need to compromise our culture just because we needed to hire people outside of this physical office.”
That culture permeates through everything, inside and outside the walls of your HQ. He adds:
“With remote teams, you can very easily control the quality of people on your team...” Listen more below:
The real value of remote teams comes from their expertise. For a lot of companies, access to highly credentialed developers and operations team members is limited by factors like geography or budgetary concerns. Alternatives, like Bolton Remote's scalable, custom talent pipeline, can prove to be invaluable when it comes to growing your business in a sustainable, profitable way.
