The 6 Traits That Separate Great Remote Candidates from the Rest

If you’re like many of the companies we work with here at 4 Corner Resources, you’ve faced challenges transitioning to remote work. Our clients have had to adapt to new technology, help employees balance work and personal life, and try to find a happy medium between offering flexibility and ensuring business needs are met. It’s not surprising that the shift has been challenging for many.

But one of the most unexpected hurdles might be how remote work has changed the recruitment process. Companies learned firsthand during the mass exodus from the workplace in 2020 that the qualities that make someone thrive in an office don’t always translate to success in a home environment. 

So, how do you find candidates who excel at remote work? Here are the six essential traits we prioritize when evaluating remote candidates (and you should too).

Remote Work Requires Different Skills—Here’s Why

We’re recruiting for a different world than we were two years ago; no one can argue with that. It only makes sense that the skills needed to succeed in that world have changed as well, even if the role itself has not. 

Working from home presents new challenges employees may never have had to deal with in the past. An executive with 30 years of experience may be the perfect candidate on paper, but if they’ve never managed a remote team or confronted the technical obstacles of a dispersed workforce, they might be much less qualified than someone with a different skill set. The best candidates in today’s market not only have what it takes to succeed at their job, but know how to be successful working remotely, as well. 

As you reconsider the skills and traits necessary to thrive in whatever the ‘new normal’ looks like for your business, here are six qualities of a good remote worker that will help candidates thrive, whether they’re working from home temporarily or indefinitely. If you are a candidate for a remote job, look for ways to play up these work from home skills on your resume and choose anecdotes that will help you emphasize them during your interview.

Traits That Make a Remote Employee Successful

1. Motivation

When you cannot be in the same physical location as your employees, hiring self-starters with the skills to hit the ground running each morning and stay focused throughout the day without constant supervision becomes essential. Since they will not be able to rely on the structure of a traditional office environment to keep them on track, the right candidate will feel comfortable setting his or her own goals for the day and will be disciplined enough to work toward them despite the unavoidable work-from-home distractions.

Some of the questions we like to ask when screening potential remote hires are, “How do you decide what tasks to work on?” and “How do you stay focused when you’re not in a typical office?”  It’s easy to get distracted at home. You need to know how your employees are going to refocus and get their tasks done.

Look for candidates with experience leading projects, formulating creative ideas, and seeing through challenging goals until their completion. These take initiative, and that’s what you’re looking for.

2. Flexibility

When working remotely, schedules and deadlines tend to change more frequently than they would if the entire team were in the same place. Staff questions lead to impromptu conference calls, toddler meltdowns necessitate rescheduled meetings, and IT challenges cause frustrating delays. The right candidate should be able to take these things in stride and adjust accordingly.

Workers must also be adaptable with regard to workflows and processes. Switching from onsite to remote work will come with some inevitable changes to how you do things; if you have a staffer stuck on the old way of doing things, they can slow the rest of the team down or get left behind.

Look for candidates with a successful track record of juggling shifting projects or stepping up to take on new responsibilities. Candidates who have prior experience working from home can also be a plus.

3. Organization

This is one of those traits that, while desirable, often takes a backseat when it comes to determining success (think of the creative genius who is notoriously scatterbrained or the dynamic leader who is always running 10 minutes late, for example). In a work-from-home environment, though, organization steps into the spotlight as a must-have skill, and those lacking it may be floundering. Without it, we’ve seen remote employees miss a deadline and then go silent or had people who have to be constantly asked for status updates, forcing offsite leaders to micromanage them. Not ideal. 

From managing their time to responding to emails to keeping track of shared documents, a remote candidate must be on top of things in a way that is not as pressing when they have office mates to help shoulder the burden. They must be adept at managing not just the busy periods but also the slow times, prioritizing tasks so that all necessary work gets done on the appropriate timeline.

To identify candidates with strong organizational skills for remote jobs, ask them to share how they schedule their days, how they manage multiple deadlines, and what tools they use to stay organized.

4. Strong communication skills

When people cannot see one another in person, written and verbal communication becomes even more important. To succeed in remote work, candidates must be able to clearly give and receive instructions, both over email and via phone. 

When we speak to client we tell them to add communication expectations for remote workers into their job descriptions so prospective applicants can decide whether they’re onboard. For example, are there sit times when employees are always expected to be online, or are hours more flexible? What’s an acceptable time frame for responding to an email or returning a call? All of these are things a manager needs to decide upfront.

In addition to the communication itself, it is equally important that the candidate can identify the proper channels to use for it. For example, it is quick and easy to pop your head into a coworker’s office to ask for clarification on an item, but it is much more burdensome if every one of those check-ins suddenly becomes a phone call.

Look for a candidate who is comfortable interfacing on all platforms—be it Slack, text message, email, phone, or video chat—and who is judicious in their use of each of them. Skill-specific screening tests can help you identify this quality.

5. Independent thinking

Now more than ever, effective employees need to be able to come up with creative solutions and solve day-to-day problems on their own, without bringing every little issue to a supervisor’s attention. This may also require some shifts on your end to give your team members the autonomy required to do this.

Independent thinkers are an asset to your team because they can work confidently without supervision, which ties back to the motivation quality we discussed earlier. When they do run into a problem they cannot solve on their own, they can identify who to ask for help. They make sound decisions when dealing with clients and important work-related projects, so you can feel confident delegating responsibilities to them.

To identify independent thinkers, my team likes to use questions that help us gauge a candidate’s judgment; situational interview questions (e.g., “If you were faced with X scenario, how would you respond?”) are useful for this.

6. Technologically savvy

If computers and smartphones were critical tools for business operations before the pandemic, they would be indispensable. Modern candidates must be comfortable navigating new and changing technology, whether that is a mobile app for teamwide instant messaging, software for project management, or a video platform for collaborative work.

Not every candidate needs to be a tech nerd, but they should have, at a minimum, an interest in technology that will help them do their job more efficiently and a willingness to learn the platforms you have decided to adopt.

Beware the stereotype that older workers cannot be tech-savvy—this is not only a myth that has been widely debunked, but that results in agism creeping into your hiring. In interviews with thousands of candidates we’ve found that workers over 55 seem less stressed about using new technology in the workplace than their younger peers.

How to Identify Skills Needed for Remote Work When Hiring

Write them directly into your job description

The most straightforward way to attract the candidates you are looking for is to specifically mention them in the job posting.

Be direct about the qualities you want to see from applicants and why they matter; for example, ‘this role will be responsible for managing project timelines for multiple clients, so the right candidate will be an organized individual who is proficient with time-tracking tools and project management software.’

Tying the skills you are looking for directly to the relevant job function will help candidates imagine themselves in the role (or opt-out when it is not a match), yielding a stronger, more qualified talent pool.

Related: How to Write a Job Description to Attract Top Candidates

Ask the right interview questions

Once you have gathered a strong pool of applicants, the screening and interview phase is the next step in paring them down. The following questions will help you identify the traits we mentioned above.

Motivation 

• How do you define success?
• When you are given a goal, how do you achieve it?
• Describe a time when you were asked to step up and do something you were unfamiliar with. How did it go?
• Describe a time when you had an idea you thought would be great for your team. How did you go about introducing it?

Flexibility

• Describe a time when you had to change direction in the middle of a project. How did you deal with it?
• How would you respond if a coworker approached you pitching a new process that was drastically different from the old one?
• How comfortable are you with trying new things when it comes to your work?

Organization

• What tools do you use to stay organized?
• Explain your approach to time management.
• When you’re faced with multiple important tasks, how do you prioritize them?

Strong Communication Skills

• How do you collaborate with coworkers when you cannot meet in person?
• How would you describe [insert complex topic pertaining to the role] to someone who is unfamiliar with it?
• Describe a time when a misunderstanding caused a problem on the job. How did you go about correcting it?

Independent Thinking

• Tell me about a time you were faced with an assignment that did not seem possible. How did you approach it?
• If you disagree with your boss, how would you handle it?
• How quickly do you make decisions?

Technologically Savvy

• What are your favorite apps for work?
• How do you keep your technology skills current?
• What are some ways you anticipate the technology in our industry will change in the next ten years?

Use asynchronous interviews

Asynchronous interviews are gaining popularity as a means to help employers interview more candidates while increasing efficiency. In this interview format, also known as a one-way or pre-recorded interview, a candidate is provided with questions and given a set amount of time to record their answer on video. They then submit their answers for review. 

One-way interviews can help you assess a candidate’s ability to articulate ideas, handle communications in an asynchronous format, and respond to questions without direct interaction, all of which are typical in a remote work setting. 

Conduct skill-based assessments

Skills assessments objectively evaluate a candidate’s hard and soft skills to work from home successfully. They can also give you an accurate picture of how the skills on an applicant’s resume would translate in a real-world setting. For example, a coding test could show how well a software developer would fare when tasked with building an app or troubleshooting a piece of faulty code. 

Employers can also use such tests to ensure fairness by giving all candidates for a role the same assessments. The standardized comparison can mitigate bias that may occur during the interview process. 

Related: How to Use Skill-Based Hiring to Build a Stronger Workforce

Leverage sample assignments

Test a candidate’s abilities by giving them a task or small assignment that mirrors what they’d be doing in the role. For instance, a content writer could be asked to develop a blog outline, while a graphic designer could be tasked with making edits to a logo. These assignments allow you to see an applicant’s skills in action before you make an offer for full-time employment.  

Build a Stronger Candidate Pool With 4 Corner Resources

Finding the skills needed for remote work is part science, part art. We combine both to identify individuals who bring the right mix of experience, skills, and personality to succeed in your role. 

We’ve assisted countless companies with navigating the transition to remote work and can help your organization take advantage of the flexibility of working from home without sacrificing on quality or performance. Our extensive experience interviewing remote candidates positions us to pinpoint self-motivated, diligent individuals who can add value to your team from afar. 

Contact us today to discuss your remote staffing needs and learn how we can help you build a stronger, more qualified pool of applicants for your open position.