5 Tips for Interviewing Extroverted Remote Candidates

In addition to things like educational background, prior work experience, and skills, personality plays a big role in determining which job candidates a manager might want to hire—especially for remote positions.

For the most part, people are either introverts or extroverts (with some grey area in between). Each personality type requires its own special set of interviewing techniques in order to truly get through to the candidate and assess whether they would be a good fit for the role.

Before you head into your next interview for a remote role, check out these tips for interviewing extroverted candidates:

Get your energy level up.

By their very nature, extroverts are chatty, friendly, and outgoing—all of which are great traits for a remote worker, who will need to be proactive about communicating. But in order to effectively interview an extroverted remote candidate, you’ll need to amp up your own energy level, too. After all, if your job candidate joins the video meeting smiling and raring to go (and you can barely muster a “Good morning”), you won’t get the best out of the interview, or a good sense of who the person really is. So drink an extra cup of coffee prior to the interview so that you can match your extroverted interviewee’s excitement.

Be engaging.

It’s easy to fall into a simple Q&A style job interview, but that won’t work for extroverted remote candidates. Extroverts thrive on back-and-forth banter, so make sure that your interview isn’t a boring question and answer session. Personalize the interview by relating stories of how you joined the company, and how you personally benefit from having a remote job (and the work-life balance it affords you). Adding some extra details can not only make the interview more interesting, but give you some great insight into the extracurriculars of your extroverted job candidate, too!

Give a test.

While extroverted people can bring an unbridled enthusiasm to a team, it’s good to get a sense of who they really are before offering them the job. That’s why you should make all of your job candidates (both introverts and extroverts) take a test to see how well they will potentially perform in the position. Ask about a time when your extroverted job candidate felt challenged, and how he handled it. Getting real-life examples of workplace problems that the extrovert had—and the solutions he came up with—can help you determine if he’ll be a good fit for your company.

Look for past experience.

But since they do best when surrounded by other people, remote work might be a challenge for them. Find out if your job candidate has worked remotely in the past—and how well that worked out for him. If he enjoyed it, that can be a sign that although he’s extroverted, he can succeed in a remote work environment. However, if this will be his first foray in telecommuting, you might want to take into consideration whether he’ll be able to handle the feelings of loneliness and isolation that can affect some remote workers.

Talk about the company culture.

Extroverts tend to be upfront and honest about their thoughts and feelings, which can be helpful in deciding whether they’d be a good fit for your company’s culture. So talk about what sets your company’s culture apart from other remote organizations. You might mention its humanitarian outreach, its dedication to giving back, or how it applauds its workers for owning their work-life balance—and find out if that aligns with your candidate’s own interests. That way, your extroverted remote candidate can decide for himself if he’s right for your company, and you’ll be better able to structure your hiring process to recruit and retain extroverted job candidates.

Photo Credit: bigstockphoto.com

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By Jennifer Parris | Categories: Build a Remote Team

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