Grow Your Remote Business with Virtual Resources

As a remote company founder or business owner, sometimes things take such a positive turn that you need to expand your team quickly in order to accommodate new accounts. Or perhaps you or a teammate will require time off to manage a personal health issue or  welcome a new baby.

The only problem: hiring remotely has its own share of challenges. When done well, screening resumes and interviewing take a significant amount of time—not to mention the legal set up and onboarding processes necessary for success. These would ordinarily be handled by HR professionals in larger virtual organizations, but when you’re running the show, such responsibilities will inevitably become part of your workload.

Of course, you have the flexibility of hiring candidates from a broader talent pool and the luxury of not having to add to fixed costs or overhead by doing so. But knowing just how to proceed in filling critical staffing needs can save you a significant amount of time, money, and a lot of frustration in the long run.

Below are helpful strategies to enable you to quickly and easily maintain or even grow your remote business:

Effectively promote remote vacancies and screening candidates.

• A bevy of remote-focused job boards exist, but not all are curated carefully. Remote.co and its sister site, Flexjobs.com, have stringent quality assurance measures in place to safeguard against spam postings, and as such attract serious remote applicants. The former caters to fully remote international and domestic roles, while the latter also includes flexible options such as job-share opportunities, alternative schedules, and hybrid onsite/offsite work.
• Other remote work websites include We Work Remotely and Remotive.io, although paying to post on more than one of these may be a waste of internal resources, as job seekers tend to regularly check a variety of websites rather than scouring only one. Use keywords relevant to the tasks at hand, and consider requiring a writing or coding sample or responses to strategic job-related prompts. These efforts will greatly assist in whittling down the number of applicants to those who are most interested and qualified.

Seek out temporary virtual talent with specific skill sets.

• If you anticipate requiring only a temporary boost, you have more options available. Some companies, such as Boldly, offer fully remote staffing subscriptions in certain specialties like marketing, web development, or executive assistance. You can begin by testing out a new colleague for 10 to 20 hours per month, or investing in a heavier workload for a longer period of time—without having to handle all the paperwork and the risk associated with making a new hire.
• If you’re in need of remote professionals who possess additional creative skills or specific project support, communities like CloudPeeps offer access to a variety of freelancers who could fill critical roles. Last but not least, offering paid internships for recent grads or returnships for seasoned office workers returning to the workforce are two other excellent options for temporary help that can also serve to diversify your team.

Photo Credit: bigstockphoto.com

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By Kristi DePaul | Categories: Build a Remote Team

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