This is a guest post by Carl Dierschow. Carl is a business coach who has helped business owners with strategic planning and company growth. Here he discusses how you can attract the right remote staff by going beyond traditional recruitment concepts.
Most companies follow pretty much the same process for hiring:
These are the steps we’ve been using since the industrial revolution, and you’re familiar with the two key failings:
The problem is that we’re communicating about the job tasks, but the more important dimensions are hard to measure: attitude, initiative, personal goals, and interpersonal relationships.
If you’re hiring remote employees, you have an additional twist to this. How do you develop relationships over a great physical distance?
The answer is very similar to how you build the brand for your products in another country.
When you’re connecting with potential customers, you reach them by:
The good news is that we’re not necessarily talking about people physically meeting together. Even more likely, these discussions are happening virtually. It’s easier than ever for you to join in.
When you’re selling to a customer, their problems and issues drive your product or service, and sales approach. What are the “issues” that your future employee has?
Most obvious is that they may be out of work and they need a job. Fair enough. But realize that it may be much more likely that your ideal candidate actually has a job, they just don’t like it as much as what you might offer.
This person’s deeper “issues” are that they’re in a situation where their personal goals don’t match very well with their employment. Or they’re working with people they don’t get along with. Or they’re uninspired in their career.
If you can satisfy those deeper concerns, you’re going to have a great employee.
Sometimes people complain about, and discuss, these issues on social media. But most often they suffer in silence, embarrassed to mention difficulties in public, or are worried about retribution from their current employer.
You still have other avenues to build relationships:
As with product brand building, your goal is to get people positively talking about you and with you. It’s a slow and continuous process which helps you build an enduring organization.
It will take time, so get started today, even before you have open jobs. You may be contacted by a wonderful person and end up creating an ideal job for them!