Hybrid work is here to stay, and as a result, businesses are looking for new ways to recruit and onboard employees who can succeed in their unique hybrid work model. In this blog post, we’ll explore the recruitment process of remote companies and how it differs from traditional in-person recruitment. We’ll also discuss the attributes and skills to look for in candidates to succeed in a hybrid work environment. Finally, we’ll explore strategies for effective onboarding in a hybrid work setting.

Remote Recruitment: Prioritizing Remote Work Skills

Remote companies have a different recruitment process compared to in-person recruitment due to the nature of remote work. Remote companies prioritize skills such as strong communication skills, self-discipline, time management, and familiarity with remote collaboration tools. They rely on online communication channels such as video conferencing, messaging apps, and collaboration tools to conduct interviews and communicate with candidates.

Task-based evaluation

Remote companies use a lot of asynchronous communication during the initial stages of the interview process. Once the shortlist stage is reached, candidates are given a task to work on. Remote companies prepare the candidate for this longer interview process by informing them early on in the process that there will be a task element to the interview.

The candidate is given a week or more to complete the task. The task may take a day or even two, of the candidate’s time, to complete. Candidates are paid a fair day rate for the work they deliver. The successful completion of the task will require them to work with and gather information from different people in different departments inside the company while communicating through written, verbal, and video methods with the people in those departments. As part of the interview process, they will typically, at the end of the task, present the results of their work to the people they collaborated with during the task.

In this way, the interviewing team can actually assess their communication skills, work style, and ability to collaborate with others, the work they’ve done and the outcomes of the task. The team can see how well they document their work, communicate, present themselves on video calls, handle multiple tasks, give and receive feedback, and more.

Attributes and Skills for Hybrid Work

When hiring for a hybrid work environment, it’s essential to look for candidates who are comfortable working in a remote capacity, are self-motivated and able to work independently. Candidates may be a good fit for hybrid working training if they demonstrate remote work attributes such as trustworthiness, clear and frequent communication, empathy, strong critical thinking, autonomy, self-motivation, initiative, comfort with solitude, time management, perseverance, dependability, and kindness. Prioritizing these attributes and skills in relation to their importance for your team and organization and building them into your evaluation process can help you hire the right candidates.

Onboarding Strategies

Onboarding plays a crucial role in the success of a new hire. Most onboarding processes relied massively on people learning through proximity and osmosis. The default setting in an office-based environment was for new joiners to ask those around them for clarification on how things are done, or watch what others do to learn more about the culture.

In a flexible hybrid organization, need-to-know, ad hoc onboarding won’t work. Osmosis isn’t going to be as effective. You risk organizational knowledge gaps being filled with guesses and risk reaching that critical three-month mark with the new joiner feeling like they don’t belong and aren’t integrated into the organization.

Rethinking the onboarding process

A successful onboarding program isn’t primarily about productivity. Productivity will come from the new joiner if your onboarding program:

Helps them to understand the invisible currents of ‘the way we work around here.’
Creates an environment where they can feel safe enough to ‘be themselves’.
Allows them to demonstrate their strengths quickly.
Eliminates anxiety from the process.
Develops trust and builds relationships within the company.

Think about how the new joiners are going to find and assimilate the information and knowledge they need to join your team and work successfully. Synchronous meetings, during onboarding, should be relatively short and used to connect, get to know the new joiner, explain the culture and the work. They should never be used for information gathering. All the information a new joiner needs to understand how the team and company works, everything ranging from what the important processes are to who their colleagues are, should be delivered asynchronously. They should be documented or recorded on video for the new joiner to read or watch at their own convenience, ideally before they join the team.

New employees in a hybrid environment will fail if they don’t have the context and clarity they need to succeed in their role. The new employee isn’t going to magically learn about how your team works or the culture through in-person interaction. A buddy system can help.

Conclusion

Building a successful hybrid work team requires a unique recruitment and onboarding strategy. When recruiting, it’s essential to assess a candidate’s remote work skills, and ability to do the job, and prioritize attributes such as trustworthiness, clear communication, empathy, strong critical thinking, autonomy, self-motivation, initiative, comfort with solitude, time management, perseverance, dependability, and kindness. Onboarding strategies should be structured, comprehensive, and not focused on productivity. By following these strategies, you can build a top-notch hybrid work team that can succeed in any environment.

Recruiting and Onboarding in a Hybrid Work Environment