This article covers the first steps toward hiring a remote software developer. These are things that should be taken care of before making contact with the candidate, and that can influence one’s chances of getting the right candidates in the first place.
It is important to match the right talent to the vacant roles in your organization, and this may not be an obvious choice for every case. Also, you would have to ensure that while you know exactly who you are looking for, when you find them, they would be willing to take your offer.
A. Matching technical talent to roles
This three-part process can help you match people to roles and define your ideal candidate:
- Based on your organizational goals, determine the activities and responsibilities that your company needs to engage. These may be further divided into primary and secondary activities.
- Based on industry trends and available technologies, determine the skills that can help carry out those activities.
- Determine the right job title and a brief description that captures the essence of those skills identified.
B. Communicating the role and responsibilities
Having understood exactly who you want on your team, you want to ensure that this is accurately communicated in your job posting (advertisement copy) and job description.
- Job posting: This is an indication that you have a job opening and provide an introduction to the job description. Like all good advertisements, it should be short and attention-grabbing. This should reflect as much as possible, your brand image and values while containing the relevant keywords for your ideal candidate.
To attract the right applicants, it is important to research your ideal candidates and phrase the advertisement in a way that looks legit and exciting. It is advantageous to use the keyword “remote” in the job title.
- Job description: This is a detailed explanation of the activities and responsibilities your candidate would be taking on. It follows the job posting copy. A good job description sounds professional and demonstrates good knowledge of the field.
Errors in describing the use of technology, or skill combinations that do not sound reasonable may suggest an inadequacy in the organization’s technical talent quality. Whether for remote or in-person roles, you need to know and speak the language that your ideal candidate can relate to.
Information to help determine the personality fit of the candidate can influence one’s interest in the role. It can be helpful to use terms that the ideal candidate or their friends might use to describe them.
Remote work can seem isolating, even for introverted applicants. It is useful to communicate the team factor vividly. It might be helpful to use concrete terms such as the number of people working in the company or department, the online work environment, and the cooperation of other team members.
Specific information about day-to-day activities should be provided, including the number of work/contact hours, and the processes and tools for communication and collaboration. Also, specify whether it is a full-time or part-time role.
For more information, there are lots of tips online on how to write good job postings and job description copies. Generally, it is agreed that they should be interesting, detailed, direct, include salaries or salary ranges, should reflect and describe the company culture, highlight the opportunities and benefits, give an idea of what working with the team is like, and include a summary of your company
C. Managing remote job postings
Here is some additional information on managing your remote job postings for software engineers and other technical roles.
- Remember to follow up on your posts. If there are multiple posts across different platforms, it may be difficult to lose track of all of them. But keeping up information on outdated vacancies can overcrowd the search engine results for jobs related to your company, leading job seekers to dead-ends multiple times. This may give the impression that the company is either inactive or does not care about information relevance.
- In your company description and within the body of the job posting and JD, it is important to emphasize that your firm is a global company, based in some location, and looking for people anywhere in the world.
- Remote roles seeking applicants from across the world should list salaries in United States Dollars (USD), for easy conversion and a quick comparison with other similar roles.
D. Putting word out about your remote job vacancy
Now that you have identified your ideal candidate, and communicated your vacancy for them in your job posting and work description, you need to share this via the right channels. The available options include paid and organic posts on social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But there are other specific platforms for remote workers such as Indeed.
The better news is that you do not have to do this search yourself. ioHubs offers thought partnership in premium talent acquisition services, completing the technical recruitment process on your behalf in an average of four (4) weeks. We apply best practices, leveraging our organic network of experienced engineers to find your ideal candidate in alignment with your specific requirements. Contact us today to get started.
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