There was a time not too long ago when remote work was considered a rare and risky recruiting strategy that enabled companies to drastically widen their talent net. Then, well, you know what happened.
“Work from anywhere” is now table stakes in tech, and companies that stand out from the pack do so in large part by having recruiting and onboarding experiences designed specifically for remote workers.
It’s not enough to simply conduct interviews and new hire orientations over Zoom. Remote onboarding processes need to be intentionally designed with a distributed workforce in mind. New tools that recreate specific interview exercises virtually, like whiteboarding and pair programming, need to be adopted. People team members must figure out how to express culture via a package, which is no small task for those who grew up in the age of email.
Getting remote hiring and onboarding right is a lot harder than it looks. Here’s how four Los Angeles tech companies are taking on the challenge.
Community is a communication platform that enables brands, celebrities, athletes and more to connect with customers and fans at scale via text messaging. Remote hiring is especially important to the company as evidenced by its distributed team, which Diankha Linear, president and COO, said is spread across 26 states and 13 countries. Linear detailed the changes leadership made to Community’s hiring process that have enabled the company to hire talent from so many different places.
What did you change about the hiring process to better accommodate remote applicants?
For starters, our interviews are done remotely and leverage video technology. The process is also more collaborative from an internal perspective, with participation from necessary cross-functional team members, which allows the employee to get a feel of the overall team and our culture. We have also partnered with Remote.com to accommodate global remote hiring.
Our goal is to set employees up for success and welcome them to the company before their first day begins.”
How has the onboarding process shifted to ensure offsite employees feel welcomed and engaged?
Our goal is to set employees up for success and welcome them to the company before their first day begins. First, to support a strong connection with our organization, all new hires attend an intimate virtual conversation with our co-founders and/or other members of our extended leadership team who welcome them to Community and share what’s behind our mission, vision and values.
Second, we ensure that employee laptops and any supporting technology are shipped to their home at least one week prior to their start date and that they’re properly configured and have the correct security protocols. Employees are able to set up their email and access our internal community employee intranet with all the information they need to know about the company and how we work, allowing them to feel fully prepared before day one. Finally, we strive to provide a warm welcome and make all new remote hires feel included. One of the ways we do this is by sending a company swag box to employees that arrives by their start date.
Venture capital firm M13 currently has 21 open roles across its investing, talent and brand teams, all of which are available to remote workers. The VC firm was founded in 2016, and Matt Hoffman, head of talent, said its experience with remote hiring and hybrid working pre-dates the pandemic. Hoffman shared the tool M13 uses to understand remote candidates on a deeper level and how its commitment to inclusions shapes the remote onboarding process.
What did you change about the hiring process to better accommodate remote applicants?
Our recruitment team is based across three different time zones and Loren Boyce, our VP of talent acquisition, is remote herself. We understand how the experience can be different for remote applicants, and in our mission to promote equity for candidates, we’ve made some conscious shifts. All of our recruiting processes can be conducted completely over Zoom and the phone, and we never require candidates to meet our team in person.
We also make use of work-style assessments like AcuMax to get a better understanding of the “whole” candidate, a perspective you normally only get in an in-person meeting. We have put a greater focus on communicating time commitment expectations during the interview process and make ourselves available via email in the case candidates have any questions. Ultimately, we feel these steps have created a consistent candidate experience across the board.
Getting to know new teammates as people and not just coworkers is an integral part of M13’s virtual culture.”
How has the onboarding process shifted to ensure offsite employees feel welcomed and engaged?
We’ve created a standardized virtual onboarding process that allows new hires to quickly feel comfortable. New team members attend a virtual meeting on their first day to understand the history of the company and the functions within it. They then meet one-on-one via Zoom with every other member of their team over the next two weeks, including all of our partners and both of our co-founders. This commitment to getting to know each other, regardless of position within the company or location, allows new team members to feel better about virtually reaching out for help and building relationships with people they don’t normally work with.
Our commitment to inclusion has allowed us to feel extremely connected, even though many of us are remote. When we do meet twice a year for our in-person bonding weeks, new team members often feel like they’ve already met everyone. Getting to know new teammates as people and not just coworkers is an integral part of M13’s virtual culture.
Swyft gives e-commerce companies the ability to more easily offer same and next-day shipping through its B2B marketplace that connects merchants with courriers. Roald Harvey, head of people, said the company made the decision to go remote-first at the beginning of this year and is currently looking to bring on senior software engineers. Currently, Swyft is focused on talent in North America, but Harvey said the company will take its talent hunt international later in the year.
What did you change about the hiring process to better accommodate remote applicants?
We provide all candidates a clear walkthrough of our hiring process and communicate regularly throughout it. We have also begun providing best practices for remote interviewing to all candidates to help set them up for success. Our culture is big on work/life balance and flexibility, which also comes through in our hiring. We don’t get rattled when parents or caregivers need to pause to look after their loved ones or if someone’s internet is spotty and they need to interview on their smartphone. We work with candidates to schedule interviews around their home and work life, too.
We’ve leaned into new technology platforms to help create virtual experiences similar to in-person ones. For technical roles, we’ve adopted Miro for virtual whiteboarding and shared coding environments for paired programming. Lastly, we’re big on continuous improvement and are always looking for new virtual hiring events and remote-first job boards to meet applicants where they are.
We’ve leaned into new technology platforms to help create virtual experiences similar to in-person ones.”
How has the onboarding process shifted to ensure offsite employees feel welcomed and engaged?
Our new hire onboarding program is designed to be remote-first. In fact, we don’t let new hires visit our Toronto office until after their first week. We issue automated tasks and communications through our human resources information system to ensure every new hire hits the ground running on day one. All new hires receive a laptop and a welcome swag box with a handwritten note. During preboarding, we let new hires know how to set up their new computer, what to expect in their first week and encourage them to use our $1,500 work-from-home allowance to make their workspace more productive.
On the first day, new hires are greeted virtually by the people team and are introduced to the company. Then there’s a team lunch where we use UberEats vouchers so everyone can order from their local hotspots while dining together virtually. The remainder of the four days is dedicated time with each department. This allows new hires to build cross-functional relationships and learn how each department contributes to our mission. Lastly, we send every new hire a survey so that we can create an even better remote-first onboarding experience.
Supernatural is a VR workout company that is rapidly scaling its engineering team, with many remote roles available to devs on the West Coast. Teresa Hadly, head of talent acquisition, said that while the company is still finding its footing with remote hiring it is experimenting with a handful of new onboarding initiatives to ensure new hires feel a sense of belonging as early on as possible.
What did you change about the hiring process to better accommodate remote applicants?
We are still learning and adjusting our hiring processes to accommodate remote applicants and interviews. We tend to schedule longer interviews now so that people get the chance to connect with our team on a personal level. We also have an informal group meeting as a sort of icebreaker for candidates, kind of like a fly-by during on-site interviews. As a company, we offer home office setup equipment and tools to help facilitate efficient remote work.
Employees are randomly selected to meet throughout their tenure at Supernatural to further engagement and inclusivity.”
How has the onboarding process shifted to ensure offsite employees feel welcomed and engaged?
Our “pop in meetings” came to fruition due to the lack of exposure new remote employees had with coworkers from other teams, the exposure that would traditionally happen just by working in the same office. We created a fun and casual Zoom meeting on each employee’s first day to meet various people from across the company and learn a little bit about them and their fellow new hires.
In addition to this, we have also transitioned in-person “coffee and donuts” to a virtual setting. Everyone is given a DoorDash DashPass, and employees are randomly selected to meet throughout their tenure at Supernatural to further engagement and inclusivity. Full boxes of swag are also mailed to new employees, including a handwritten welcome card as a personal touch, as well as all equipment and home office supplies. These are mailed directly to employees prior to their start date to ensure they feel prepared and ready to go on their first day and beyond!
