Both of these have brands scrambling to reorient themselves and better serve their audiences. This is why it’s good to know where your potential candidate stands on these topics — they’ll likely shape the way we think and relate to one another for the foreseeable future. Hiring managers want to know that you’re time zone conscious and understand how to work asynchronously. Remember to demonstrate that you understand how caustic conflict can be in a remote environment. Icons/design/feather/breakout chart Marketing Advertising, digital marketing and brand management jobs. Jaclyn Westlake worked as an agency recruiter and an HR manager in the startup, tech, and finance space for nearly 10 years before branching out into resume writing, freelance recruiting, and career advising.

In his spare time, he runs a YouTube channel, podcast, and blog focused on strategy and management. Learn about the key differences between remote-first and remotely-friendly companies. As good as no commute and no open office is, remote work can also be distracting. Roommates watching Netflix, laundry to be done, kids wanting to play. It’s easy to get sucked into doing menial tasks rather than work.

• These days, you can find her sharing job search insights on The Muse and blogging about boat life on The Wife Aquatic.
• While it’s a myth that remote workers aren’t productive, hiring managers still want assurance that you’ll be working.
• One way in which many remote teams overcome this is by creating a dedicated place for communication, whether among employees in the same department or freelancers working on the same project.
• When you’re not in the same physical space, you need to be proactive and find the information you need.
• While it can seem like a hassle to schedule one-on-one meetings with every remote team member, they make workers feel valued and are an opportunity to give feedback on work performance.
• “If you weren’t able to resolve things, share what you should have done instead, as it demonstrates an ability and desire to learn from your mistakes,” she says.

Creating a healthy company culture with a remote team that reflects your business’s values requires a plan, much like any other project or initiative. It starts from the top with how the manager or business owner interacts with workers. Do you know how much work your remote team accomplishes and at what rate? For many managers, the answer to these questions is unclear. It’s hard to know if someone is being underutilized or is not pulling their own weight when working remotely without an understanding of their productivity. Communication is the key to success when working with remote teams.

Tell Me About A Time When You Had A Conflict With A Coworker

For global teams, one of the biggest challenges of working remotely is scheduling a phone call or a video meeting due to the different time zones. This can be amplified with independent contractors who have inconsistent work schedules. Finding a time that works well for everyone requires knowing where your participants live and their general schedules. For instance, if you want to foster a culture of open communication, remote team members need to be able to communicate with everyone, including the CEO, with a virtual “open door” policy. If you want a company culture that’s fun, try scheduling fun get-togethers, gift cards for employees to go bowling together, or hosting a virtual movie night.

If you haven’t technically worked remotely before, that probably won’t be a dealbreaker these days, but you should have a comparable experience ready to share—like writing papers in your dorm room or organizing a fundraiser via Facebook. This might feel like a conversational ice breaker question, but it’s one you need to answer thoughtfully. The hiring manager is trying to gauge your level of interest in and comfort with taking on a fully remote role. Physical interactions are important for building a great relationship. If possible, have your remote interviewee come to your company office for an onsite meet with you and your team.

It’s critical to gather input from all members and to know what each person is working on. When teams work remotely, it isn’t always easy to foster open communication. Traditional email marketing often seems like a formal tool that doesn’t enable quick conversations.

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If you’ve worked remotely in the past, it should be simple to answer. If you haven’t, you’ll need to come at it based on what you would do. It’s a good idea to follow up your answer with a question about how the hiring manager and their team handles distributed communication to show that you’re interested in understanding how the team works. Transitioning from an in-office role to a distributed team can be difficult, so hiring managers want to know whether you’ve done it before. It’s not a deal breaker if you haven’t, but you’ll need to demonstrate that you have the ability to work remotely in other ways, such as freelancing experience or working on side projects. This is another excellent example of a situational interview question and the perfect opportunity to use the STAR method.

“Sometimes people get tripped up when they are asked a question about a situation they’ve never been in—and remote work is new to a lot of folks,” Jones says. “If this happens, communicate what you would do if you encountered XYZ situation in a remote role; sometimes the thought process is more valuable than the actual answer.” “Remote work—whether temporary or permanent—requires a different skill set and type of experience than in-office jobs,” says Neal Taparia, founder of Unscrambled Words, a startup with a primarily distributed team.

Working from home offers a number of benefits but also poses unique challenges. Particularly if you’re transitioning from the office to working from home for the first time. Do you prefer to be in constant communication with your coworkers via Slack? Is the relative solitude of remote work a natural fit for your work style because it allows you to get into deep focus?

What Can You Contribute To This Company?

“Because almost all communication is done via Zoom, Slack, and email, how well a person communicates via those mediums is even more important,” Leech says. “People need to be able to establish trust, build rapport, and express ideas clearly and succinctly to avoid misunderstandings.” Luckily, the remote interview process is the perfect opportunity to show off your virtual communication skills. These interview questions for remote workers will cover the major components of your remote worker search, including their background and personality. Working remotely means that sometimes you’re going to feel a bit…remote. So when you run into roadblocks, you’ll need to be resourceful. Can you think of a time when you needed to be proactive about researching how to do something?

They should have the technological expertise to set up and run a home office, and they should identify when they need external support or upgrades to their software programs. Ideal candidates will also have the creativity and ingenuity to solve their challenges on their own with minimal or no external assistance. There are many challenges that come with managing a remote team. Fortunately, they can be overcome fairly easily by introducing team building activities, increasing communication and adding some new processes. Remote teams should become even more common in the future.

Product Design Interview Questions Tips + 12 Example Answers

With that in mind, here are ten questions you’ll probably be asked when you interview for a remote opportunity—plus advice on how to respond and sample answers. No matter what tool you decide to use, as long as there’s a way to foster two-way communication, remote workers won’t feel isolated from one another. If you’re looking for a single independent contractor, you can use a free trial of LinkedIn Premium’s Recruiter option to narrow down potential employees by experience level, primary languages, and profile keywords. Additionally, consider putting a job listing up on sites like Toptal.com and Upwork.com. USA Today estimates that working from home saves about $4,000 for each of your employees who no longer have to worry about commuting costs, lunches away from home, and professional clothing.

“Be prepared to describe a variety of practices to make remote work effective,” Leech says. Prior to your interview, revisit the job posting or ask the recruiter which tools your prospective team uses so that you can frame your response with those technologies in mind. And know that you probably won’t have experience with every single platform any given employer uses. Just be sure to mention how quickly you’ve learned new tools in the past. Something said in chat could be interpreted in half a dozen ways that the author never intended,” Leech says.

“Employers are going to be evaluating you based on your behavior,” Leech says. Do you answer challenging questions clearly and forthrightly, and disclose your flaws? Do you help facilitate a successful interview through attention to the allotted time and by bringing prepared questions? This signals initiative.” Finding ways to demonstrate these traits throughout the interview process “will make you a significantly stronger candidate,” Leech says.

“You can’t tap on someone’s shoulder for help when working remotely,” Taparia says. “You have to be comfortable to a large extent working independently and finding answers on your own. If you’re always Slack messaging questions, you could become a distraction to your team.” Understanding when to reach out for help and when to try to figure something out for yourself will be especially important. So you’ll want to be prepared to discuss your resourceful, independent work style during your interviews.

Company culture takes time to cultivate and involves hiring the right employees, fostering healthy communication, and instilling that culture across the board. Whether you want to create a professional company culture or a team that’s known for being fun and energetic, it will take more concentrated effort to develop in a remote team than in an office. Interested candidates will always answer yes to “Do you have any questions for me?” Answering this question well is a great way to stand out and show that you’ve done your research and understand what it’ll be like to work remotely at the company.

How To Answer “why Do You Want To Work Here?” Sample Answers Included

Ask for specific scenarios when they have worked independently, strategies they have used to manage their time, or an example of when they were responsible for proactively communicating the status on a project. Inquire about the technology and tools they have used to work remotely in the past, such as for communication or file sharing. Ask about the hours they keep when working remotely and how they plan to handle distractions and interruptions when working from home. There’s a good chance you’ll be asked something along the lines of “What can you contribute to this company?” in your next remote job interview.

Why Are You Interested In This Position?

There are ways you can help candidates mitigate this type of stress and put their best foot forward. In practice, this looks like entering the Zoom interview room five minutes early, choosing meeting times that are more convenient for the candidate, and having a meeting outline ready to go. Also, try not to ask questions about the candidate that you can easily view on their resume, application, or LinkedIn profile.

An internal team communication tool like Slack can allow for communication to come across on many channels. Future employees can also see the answers to commonly asked questions. Some of the most common issues job seekers run into with remote interviews include interviewers running late to their meeting, excessively inconvenient meeting times, and expecting the applicant to lead the conversation.

It’s one of the most common job interview questions because it helps the hiring managers assess whether or not you’d be a good fit for the company’s specific needs. Create a well-rounded list of questions that cover their personality, background, and skillset. When hiring remote workers, it’s also good to consider if they’re in the same or similar time zone as your target https://globalcloudteam.com/ audience. This is especially important if you plan to have many social media events where active community management and hosting is required. A lot goes into making a project successful, regardless of whether you’re working remotely, but hiring managers need to know how you approach project management when in-person, and often real-time, collaboration isn’t possible.

Ask about their experience with certain types of work experience or similar past positions on their resume. It will give you a better idea of how they’ll most likely deal with successes and failures at your company too. Anyone with access to the internet becomes a potential candidate. This is especially helpful if you’d like to find a location-specific professional who lives in a different city or country and can speak to the needs of that audience from a knowledgeable point of view. Abi Tyas Tunggal Nov 4, 2021Abi is one of the co-founders of Himalayas where he focuses on product and growth.

You probably noticed that these are all soft skills, which means they aren’t as easy to quantify as, say, whether you know JavaScript or can manage a Twitter account. And while questions about your technical skills are sure to come up throughout your interview process, you’ll probably notice an increased focus on your less tangible traits when you’re interviewing for a remote job. If your favorite part of your job is interacting with people and hosting in-person events, and your least favorite parts are working heads down, the interviewer may decide that you’re not a good fit for a remote role. Prepare for these common remote job interview questions to increase your chances of landing the job.

Distributed team members need to be more intentional about their interactions with each other. “Managers can’t peek over your desk to see if you’re lost or idle, so it becomes significantly more important that you raise concerns if you’re stuck or otherwise need assistance,” Leech says. Asking questions throughout your interview process, following up with a thank you note after every call, and preparing for every interview in advance are all great ways to demonstrate your proactive nature. To start, remote workers should be independent self-starters. Instead, they will need to have the motivation and drive to hold themselves accountable. Ideally, they will be trustworthy, dependable, and well-organized.

While it may require patience and effort, you may ultimately benefit from hiring the right candidate for the job when you incorporate these tips into your hiring strategy. They should be able to respond to all forms of communication in a timely manner. They should be able to clearly and concisely communicate in writing, and the best remote workers are also great verbal communicators. The best remote workers are also creative and tech-savvy.

Employers need to know that you can manage and remediate conflict with remote coworkers. Disagreements and misunderstandings are inevitable when working remotely, so knowing how to defuse a situation is an incredibly important skill for any remote worker. If you see people in person, there tends to be natural moments to resolve conflict, while those who work from home need to be more Managing a Remote Team proactive. If you have experience working remotely, outline when, what company, and how you were successful in the role. If you haven’t worked remotely before, share comparable experiences like when you worked from home a few days per week or any freelancing experience you have. “You have a lot of independence in how you manage your time when working remotely,” Taparia says.