Wondering how to start hiring employees online?
I’ve been hiring online employees for half a decade now and been a remote employee myself in the decade before that.
And in that whole decade, I’ve had to hire the wrong employees, some of them even to the point of pulling down the company as I realized they were the wrong hire.
The main thing to keep in mind when hiring it this: how they usually act during the hiring process is how they’ll act when they’re hired.
Whether you’re considering hiring a Virtual Assistant or a remote employee, here are some of the red flags I’ve come to know to watch out for when hiring:
1. Responses are not customized or genuine
I’ve had applicants send me an application letter with the wrong company name – yep, a literal copy and paste of the last email and sent it to me without double-checking.
Applicants who do this usually are just trying to get any response from any employer, which means that when hired, they won’t be as engaged.
Depending on the position, you want someone who researches the company or at least does the effort of finding out more before sending their application letter.
2. Unprepared for an interview
Messy bun, wearing pajamas, and they had a distracting background – these are the signs of an interviewee who either rushed to get there on time or they’re not invested in it.
Or even worse, they don’t even remember which company it was that you’re from or what position it was they applied for.
Imagine if you were meeting them in person for the interview: would you still continue with the interview at all?
And if they showed up like that in the interview, what would really stop them from showing up like that at company meetings?
3. Being late with deadlines or the interview
Applicants who can’t even make deadlines or the actual interview on time either means this wasn’t important for them or they don’t have time management skills.
This again means that if they actually get the job, that habit of being late will spill over with actual meetings and task deadlines unless it’s managed closely.
4. Bad mouthing past bosses or jobs
During the interview, you might peruse and ask them more about their past job experiences.
And if an applicant starts talking about how bad their employer was or how they hated every day of the job and nothing about how they tackled it, high chances are they’ll bring that over to working with you.
I’ve had employees who bad-mouthed their bosses and talked about how it was all their bosses’ fault, and when I ended up hiring them anyway, blamed us when things went wrong.
5. Ending the interview with no questions
This isn’t always a major red flag, but when applicants go through a whole interview with you without asking any questions about the job or the company, they might not have full clarity on what they’re getting into.
Which means that they’ll have misunderstandings with you on certain things when they’re hired, things that should have been cleared out during the interview.
One other possibility is that when they’re hired, they’ll be a “yes” person.
Someone who just says “yes” to anything you give them, even when they have no idea how to do it, or without thinking up of more ideas on how to do things better.
6. Their online presence is suspicious
If their Facebook or LinkedIn account doesn’t match up with who they say that they are, that’s definitely a red flag.
Although some do choose to have hidden profiles for different reasons, but most of the time their LinkedIn would be set up to match their resume.
And if they’re an artist or a creative, they would usually post about their work on their social media profiles.
Learn more about what the applicant posts about and see if it matches with how they’ve presented themselves to you throughout the application process.
7. Doesn’t respond fast enough to communications
If it takes them more than 72 hours to respond to communications, they might not be as interested in the job, or they’re not as active in responding at all.
Once again, this will reflect when they actually have the job where they might not respond to messages as fast as they should.
While these red flags aren’t hard science, they’ve been a guide for me to know what to look out for when hiring.
Do you have some red flags that you follow when hiring too? Let me know in the comments!