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Businesses are scooping up developers at an unprecedented pace, with the rise of the digital age making remote developers a common part of the modern marketplace. Despite the rise of remote developers in recent years, however, many business owners still have no idea how to go about assembling a remote workforce of developers because they’re uncertain of how to go about interviewing and certifying the credentials of potential candidates.
Don’t waste time and money with traditional business models any longer. Here are 5 questions you should ask remote developers before hiring them, and what else you’ll need to consider when assembling a stellar remote workforce.
1. How does your work experience make you a fit for this job?
The first question is the simplest yet most important of them all — you should always be asking your remote developers how their work experience to date makes them an effective candidate for a job. Don’t make the mistake of only asking them if they’ve worked remotely before — having remote work experience is important, but not the only thing worthy of taking into consideration. Even a traditional job in an ordinary workspace can be a major qualifier when trying to deduce who’s the best candidate, so don’t be afraid to dig deeply into their professional history early on in the interview process.
The gig economy is only going to keep growing, yet not everyone has a history of being a rock star remote worker who can manage themselves. Despite the prevalence of remote working arrangements, many people are still unfamiliar with them, so knowing the entirety of someone’s history before making a final decision is a must.
2. How would you rate your communication skills?
When it comes to remote work, communication is incredibly important, as a failure to clearly coordinate your actions with other team members and your boss is the easiest way to ensure your project is never completed. Asking remote developers to honestly rate their own communications skills serves two purposes. First, it enables them to be upfront and honest when assessing their own abilities in front of you, something you should be taking into careful consideration in order to determine their ethics. Second, it offers you the opportunity to see first-hand how clearly they communicate when having a business-oriented conversation.
Remote workers who don’t communicate will be practically useless to your company. Don’t make the mistake of hiring someone before you check how often and clearly they can communicate with the rest of the team and their immediate superiors.
3. Can you tell us about your work environment?
Remote developers won’t be typing away in an office environment you furnish for them, so it’s imperative that you establish they have a good work environment where they can productively set about producing good results if you want your investment to pay off. Don’t be afraid to ask them to tell you a little bit about their work environment, including how they manage a work/life balance if they work from home. Maintaining good chemistry between your work/life relationship is essential, yet many remote workers hide how poorly they’re maintaining a home work environment from employers until after they’re receiving a paycheck.
4. What challenges do you expect to confront in this position?
One revealing question to ask a remote customer software developer in the interview process is what challenges they expect to confront after you hire them. If they’re overly-confident and act as if nothing will ever go wrong, for instance, it’s a clear sign you’re making a bad hire. Furthermore, this gives your potential future employee an opportunity to elucidate potential errors in your business model, as they may spot a problem in your remote work arrangement that you yourself never noticed.
Of all the common mistakes people make when hiring remote developers, one of the most frustrating is failing to ask the right questions. Asking them to be honest about how they may fall short in their new position isn’t a way of undermining them, but rather enables you to see how honest and flexible they are in the face of adversity.
5. How do you maintain relationships?
One of the most important questions you can ask remote developers when quizzing them is how they maintain relationships over time, as staying in constant contact is an important part of making a remote workforce work at all. Building a strong relationship with a remote team isn’t easy, as it makes extensive demands on both the employers and the remote workers in question. Nevertheless, being sure that the remote developers you’re hiring are capable of talking out their issues when something goes wrong is an essential part of knowing if they’re going to be a good member of your team.
Focus on the chemistry between your potential remote developer and the rest of your team, as well as how effectively they communicate over long distances, and soon you’ll be hiring remote developers with newfound success.
Related Reads:
- 5 Things You Should Avoid If You Plan to be a Remote Software Developer
- Things I learned managing a remote software engineering team
- How to land a remote freelance web development job in 21 days without a fleshed out portfolio
5 Questions You Should Ask Remote Developers was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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