Hiring for remote roles

Companies open to hiring remote workers have the edge over the competition. Think about it: without the restraints of geography, you can search and recruit the best talent from anywhere without the additional costs of relocating or limiting your pool to high-cost commuter areas. By casting a wider net for potential recruits, you open up your company to more fish in the sea, and the chance of finding ‘the one’ increases.

On the other hand, more opportunities to land the best talent also means having to sift through more applications. When hiring remote workers, over 40% of managers have reported a significant increase in the time it takes to recruit and hire, mainly due to slow and disorganised processes. Ineffective coordination of remote interviews and stakeholder input can significantly delay how long it takes to fill a position. The good news? It’s totally solvable.

At Dropbox, we’ve made the move to an entirely virtual first workplace. Along the way, we’ve developed some insights for successful remote hiring. Here are our tips to clear the bottlenecks and recruit the best remote talent:

1. Use software to sort remote job applicants

Most open positions on job boards will attract tons of application submissions with only a handful of truly qualified candidates. Luckily, HR software has come a long way in recent years. While Dropbox has not adopted them, other companies have a lot of success using artificial intelligence hiring tools like Fortay and Ideal. Programs like these are sophisticated enough to quickly surface the highest quality candidates and remove inherent biases from the remote hiring process.

Overrun with CVs, cover letters and portfolios? Dropbox Business makes it easy to organise, sort and share HR data such as CVs and portfolios. You can even store applicants’ information to recruit for the next open role. Simply search by name or keyword to find archived info on a promising previous candidate.

2. Record and share remote hiring Zoom interviews

Coordinating interviewers and interviewees creates a bottleneck, especially when team members work remotely from different locations and time zones. Instead, with video-chat software like Zoom, you can record a candidate’s initial interview and share it with stakeholders. Other hiring decision-makers can then review the candidate’s conversation on their own schedules and determine how to proceed.

Dropbox Zoom integration streamlines the interview process. It allows you to save your recorded interviews directly to Dropbox. Then you can share with any stakeholder in a few clicks. They can even add their comments directly to the video.

3. Sign employment docs online

Every remote new hire has to review and sign a ton of paperwork, which used to be done in person with a pen and paper. A comprehensive digital solution, like HelloSign and Dropbox, saves time and frustration. First, store all your forms and contracts in Dropbox. Then, with just a click, you can send all those documents for electronic signature with HelloSign. Once everything’s signed, it’s automatically saved back to Dropbox. Share, send and manage employment docs with your favourite tools through Dropbox app extensions.

Only have paper copies of your hiring documents? Don’t throw them out or rewrite them! The Dropbox Scan app lets you transform physical documents into high-quality PDFs and securely store them to Dropbox.

4. Digitise onboarding

Onboarding one new remote team member can interrupt the schedules of an entire team. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time you bring on new talent, use video tutorials, handbooks and FAQs to replace in-person or video training sessions. Only create high-quality training materials once and share them with all your new hires. You can use Dropbox Capture to make and narrate screen capture videos for tutorials and training instead of asking new hires to sit through long, live presentations. Then anyone can access on demand.

Training materials too big to email? Dropbox Transfer makes it easy to share large files with any recipient, even if the new hire doesn’t currently use Dropbox. Plus, with advanced file insights, you’ll know if your new employee has viewed their onboarding materials or if they still have items to complete.