You're a software engineering manager. How do you hire the best remote talent?

Decide what you need in a remote software engineer before you start looking for candidates. Think about the skills, experience, and personality traits you need to match the projects, tasks, and challenges your team faces. Determine how the new hire will fit into your work environment, culture, and communication style. Create a detailed, realistic job description that reflects your needs and expectations, guiding your hiring process.

Teamwork. Work with Product Owner and Scrum Master to understand the pipeline of requirements. Having a close relationship with my tech lead to understand the level of support and number of resources needed to share sprint workload and manage delivery timelines. If you have a Talent team then they are also resourceful in finding the right people. Then it's up to you to profile candidate applications, using your experience, review and determine who you want to talk to first and work your way through the list. Don't discount applications based on what you read on their CV, but use your skills and the information as a basis of your interview and consider how applicable the candidate will be in the team. Humanise the process.

Look for candidates on sites like LinkedIn and GitHub, and participate in online communities. Conduct thorough screening using tests and interviews. Offer a great contract and an onboarding process that makes the new member feel part of the team from the start. Pay close attention to soft skills like effective communication, adaptability, and autonomy. And of course, be flexible with schedules and keep communication always clear and frequent.

Nowadays, finding remote software engineers can be challenging. Use multiple channels and strategies to reach candidates and demonstrate your company's value proposition and culture. Reward current employees, networks, and communities for successful hires. To find qualified candidates with relevant skills and experiences, you can use several online platforms, including LinkedIn, Stack Overflow, GitHub, and AngelList. Use keywords and filters to find ideal candidates on remote job boards like We Work Remotely, Remote OK, and FlexJobs. Furthermore, you can connect with potential candidates by participating in or sponsoring webinars, podcasts, hackathons, and meetups to promote your company's vision, projects, and culture.

If you are unlucky not to have a Talent team, then LinkedIn and other platforms allow you to advertise roles. Filter applications based on your specific requirements, but make sure you take the time and make the effort because you cannot blame AI for finding an unsuitable candidate and low quality of applicants, it's your skill and experience that determines the candidates you interview. Take the responsibility of doing the work to find the right person. I have never let automated processes filter or review CV's.

Screen resumes for evidence of skills, experience, and remote capability after you have gathered a pool of candidates. Conduct video interviews to evaluate communication, personality, and motivation. Use online coding platforms for coding tests to assess technical skills and problem-solving skills. Finally, request work samples demonstrating skills in a specific domain or technology. When you combine these methods, you will be able to find the best candidate for the job.

Depending on the role, of which mine have always been software developers, tech leads and team leaders always requires knowledge and understanding of the tech stack, therefore having a face to face conversation about programming languages and related topics allows me to determine candidate knowledge and experience far better than what is written down in their CV. There are also necessary and required soft skills, a personality and the ability to communicate and collaborate, which can only be drawn out by having an interview. The most technically strong and proficient on paper may not necessarily be the right person for the current team.

I always hire candidates with the aim to give them a long career with the organisation. Building relationships is the biggest reason teams stay together, but the other is competitive enumeration. Don't cheat people by underpaying them to save money. Your team will always be watching their salary against market rates. The last thing you want to learn is one of your team is leaving after 12-18 months, making your hard work and effort wasted. Also compensate and reward those who are learning, growing and performing throughout the year. It is actually cost effective to retain someone by paying them at a competitive rate, than it is to go through this whole process every few months.