With an unprecedented and an unforeseen global pandemic on our hands, working with remote employees is the way businesses have been sustaining, and will continue to sustain for the foreseeable future. It is easier to hire the right talent for a job when you are interacting with them face-to-face. However, it does become tad difficult when the Center of Excellence is set up in remote locations and local talent is to be hired. Of course, one can always flit between countries, but the present situation has made that a little difficult.

DUE DILIGENCE FOR HIRING A REMOTE IT SPECIALIST:

A 5-POINT CHECKLIST

The only recourse companies have, while recruiting talent for their Centers of Excellence, is to conduct due diligence before onboarding the new talent. In this blog we provide a 5-point checklist to tackle the most critical issues hiring your remote IT specialist(s), and to make your outstaffing project a success.

1. BE CLEAR ON YOUR NEEDS

Your outsourcing due diligence process starts even before you have finalized the resource; while you are creating the job description for the product, service, or project. The job description that you create must be duly checked to weed out any candidates that might not fit your business, legal, and other requirements. For due diligence, be very clear on the following points:

  • What skills are you looking for?
  • What kind of experience are you looking for?
    • Beginner
    • Intermediate
    • Experienced
  • What personality are you looking for?
    • Leader or executive
    • Outgoing/ spontaneous/ initiating/ creating – or – Introvert/ passive/ executing
    • Team player or independent worker

2. SHORTLIST, INVESTIGATE, SELECT

Now that you have already rooted out the irrelevant profiles from your list, you must have come down to a few shortlisted names. At this stage, it is important to learn as much as you can about the candidates’ career up to now – how they started, years of service, types of engagements, etc.. To save yourself from attracting any incompetent or even worse, fraudulent candidates, it is important to check the candidates’ prior working experience, skills, career path, and to verify credentials. Here are several issues to address investigating candidates’ suitability:

  • Expertise and prior working-experience in your industry and the niche you operate in
  • Similar projects they have completed in this field
  • The candidates’ reputation;
    • Do they have the right personality and the right work ethic?
    • The tenure of the candidate in each organisation: What is their attrition rate?

3. TEST YOUR CANDIDATES!

As you start eliminating candidates in order to produce a final shortlist, make sure you also apply relevant and challenging assignments to verify the skills of the candidates. Here are some points of attention to keep in mind selecting the candidates that have a stronghold on the latest technologies:

  • Verify whether they have the right skills
  • Verify whether they have the desired experience-level
  • Make sure you speak candidates yourself to check whether you are able to communicate effectively with this person

4. CLEAR COMMUNICATION

When you succeed in finding and attracting the ideal candidate that fits your organization like a glove, the real work begins. When everyone works out of the same office, communication becomes easier and expectations are not lost in translation. But, when working with a remote IT specialist, one cannot be careful enough.

It is always a good idea to have multiple one-on-one meetings via multiple collaboration tools to ensure everyone is on the same page. Here are several points to address at this stage:

  • Discuss the specific tasks and various activities that you (do and do not) expect from your remote IT specialist, and agree upon the required output and possible deadlines
  • Organize and manage your workflow, and create a schedule for possible communication
  • Use SCRUM methodology to ensure that each member of the team is responsible for their work and their deliverables.

5. MONITOR, EVALUATE, AND IMPROVE

Monitoring your remote IT experts to ensure their productivity is a challenge. While you can judge their productivity on completed tasks, it still does not give you the whole picture, as you cannot see the overall progress and their level of productivity throughout the day.

Monitoring helps to evaluate an employee’s performance and progress. You can use software to help. Software can track:

  • The tasks your team is working on.
  • Task management – task allocation based on how productive each employee is.
  • The sites they’re visiting.
  • The time they’re spending on each task.
  • The times they log in and log out.
  • Client billable hours.

You can use the data collected to evaluate their performance, analyse where they are slacking, and improve. You can also use the data to figure out if your new hire is exceeding expectations and then reward him accordingly.

Always ask your remote IT specialists what you can do to help them work better and to make their work environment easier. A symbiotic relationship lasts longer and helps everyone involved grow.

NEED MORE INFORMATION OR STILL UNSURE WHICH IS BEST FOR YOUR NEEDS?
As an experienced and trusted IT Outstaffing partner, we are happy to answer any questions remaining, or to help you get the best out of your remote IT specialist(s). Call us at +31 853 012 993, or visit our website https://www.wesquare.nl/. We are looking forward to ensure your next outstaffing project will be a success!

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