Adapting to remote hiring is a tall task if you haven’t done it before, but having a structure you can rely upon and fall back on makes things a lot easier to adapt to complete remote hiring.

Let’s begin with what you need to know before you get out there and start hiring. First things first — before you start the remote hiring process, take a self-assessment how equipped is your current hiring process to switch to remote hiring? List all the operational challenges before you make a shift.

Create a remote hiring policy— Start with evaluating the operational challenges you need to address relative to your current hiring process, what are the new challenges your team is facing? Start with assessing the current process and highlight weak links to adopt remote hiring. Communicate to all the relevant stakeholders about the changes.

Identify the right tools needed for virtual interviewing — From coding challenges to whiteboarding, evaluate what you need and identify the tools that fit in your company’s interview process. You can check out some of the free whiteboarding tools like AWWapp and there are a lot of premium tools as well.

Redesign your candidate experience: As we don’t have one to one human interaction in the remote hiring process, friendliness is the important ingredient to deliver a good candidate experience. Share the warm-up guidelines to the interviewers and recruiters throughout the process. Since you won’t be meeting your candidate face-to-face, have a video communication while presenting the offer or choose one more appropriate stage apart from video interviewing. This is because your interview process is more of a standard assessment and your candidate might want to know more about the company before accepting the offer. You can also share a recorded video adding the pictures of the office and team members and it will certainly create a welcoming candidate experience. Lastly and most importantly, be transparent and follow clear timelines. It’s a moment to be more personal & humane.

Virtual Onboarding: This is so far the most intimidating step for new hires as well as hiring teams. Although this can be temporary, it’s important to have a structure in place for remote onboarding. A well-designed virtual onboarding process will ensure that new employees are immediately engaged in their work and feel comfortable and well settled in the new company’s culture. In the traditional onboarding process, new hires are usually welcomed in person, making it easier to answer their questions, introduce them to team members and setting up training programs. However, virtual employees are often left out of that process. They attend orientation through phone calls or video chat, rarely meeting their team members face-to-face, and often experience work and company culture very differently. Here is a simple checklist to ensure you facilitate seamless virtual onboarding and deliver a good new hire experience:

•  Use online documentation tools for sharing employment contracts & other documents.
• Welcome new employees personally — Using video conferencing is a great way to welcome remote employees to the company. It allows new employees to feel comfortable to ask questions and strengthens personal bonds.
• Team introductions: Schedule a planned meeting and invite all the team members to make virtual introductions.
• Learning program: Chalk out a learning program for the new hires and share all needed resources. Get organized and create a to-do checklist as It’s easy to get mess up the learning process and given the limited access to reach out to people through remote mode. Have a well-designed learning plan in place before you start onboarding. If needed assigned a “remote buddy” who can help the new hire fasten the learning curve.
• Check-in meetings: Have planned weekly check-in meetings with the new hire to follow-up on the whole process. By regularly collecting feedback from remote new hires, you can improve the existing process to ensure that they have a good start at your company.

If you are a startup hiring and finding it difficult to switch to remote