Providing the right evidence when interviewing for a remote position today demands revisiting how one presents oneself and what one chooses to reveal
The changing work landscape has brought new challenges to applying for work. In a recent article, here on jobprime.in, we talked about ways to channel yourself to present yourself in the best possible light. Self-image colors one’s answers. By visualizing yourself in the most positive of lights, dressing your best, reading your audience, being authentic but not boastful, and being prepared, you sell yourself.
All of this applies both for in-person interviews, but also for remote assessments and more so, for jobs where you could work remotely. While employers have through necessity begun to embrace the concept of their workforce operating from home and sites overseas, these companies are less evolved when it comes to their interviewing process.
For many, the traditional infrastructure with its daily face-to-face interaction provided a means to motivate staff, monitor progress, and performance, and engender a positive working environment. Cut to the world post-Covid, employers first attempted to re-start themselves with their existing workforce operating remotely. But a good percentage of both the employers and employees found it hard to adjust.
The challenges facing both sides are easy to imagine. Being in an office, seeing colleagues daily, creates expectations to perform and deliver. Replacing the daily encounters which deliver disappointment first-hand to a quick email reporting unexpected delays and lacking the personal touch and delivering on time and within budget becomes more difficult.
And, if that was not enough, when faced with engaging a remote workforce, some employers have started to ask, why to engage people from the local geographic pool where costs could be higher. If there are other locations where the cost of living is much lower and the staff equally skilled and willing to work odd hours, why not employ them instead?
These factors are forcing employers and employees to rethink their strategies for interviewing.
For an employer, new questions that probe the applicants’ self-discipline and motivation come to the fore. They now want to ask how candidates assess themselves in this new working environment. Applicants need to be ready to offer evidence that they can:
- Already work remotely and have experience doing such. Perhaps this is demonstrated by a previous, remote job, or it might be from experience accumulated of a personal nature such as organizing something in the community
- Keep the flame of self-motivation alive – it’s easy to turn out the first 20 pages of a novel; it’s another thing to finish and then repeatedly edit such until it’s ready for publication
- Has taken an inner inventory of one’s self and concluded that remote work is a good fit. This might be due to other personal commitments, or challenges.
- Prioritize work and therefore need less management to keep focused on the targets and deliverables that management need
- Stay focused – a benefit to being in an office is that few of one’s priorities are battling for attention; working from home, however, is the opposite as one is sitting in the middle of dozens of competing chores and responsibilities.
If you would like to know more, see an article that summarizes what applicants need to prepare. From the employer’s perspective (and also worth noting as a candidate), much can be learned from how prospective employees have evolved themselves during the pandemic.
Asking for experience in managing oneself professionally reveals a great deal about the motivation, priorities, ability to focus, and so on when one is not under the supervision of others. For some, the crisis has been a boon to take some well-needed time to train up in new IT or other professional skills. Exploring such, by asking questions about influencers followed, books read, courses attended, and so forth, provides strong evidence. Consider your reaction to hearing I took the time to binge Netflix as compared to, I completed my certification as a fraud examiner. Which one shows more discipline, motivation, and paints the candidate in a more attractive light?
Working remotely or A Remote Position has forced some with marginal skills to improve. Aside from the technical challenges of managing multiple platforms such as Zoom, Teams, Discord, and Hangouts, the new remote situation has required new means to stay focused on the discussion, have patience (perhaps dealing with laggy connections or others who are more challenged by their IT infrastructure).
The working environment one demonstrates when coming on to the remote interview also tells a story for A Remote Position. Having barking dogs, crying children or the incessant blare of street noise will not impress an interviewer. Nor would having a background filled with clutter, or the appearance of working in a closet. With fewer clues, employers will read into every detail for A Remote Position.
And choosing to replace one’s background using the green screen feature can raise more questions like, what is it that the candidate wants to hide? Or, if projecting a beautiful sunset, is the candidate insecure and hoping I will look at the background instead?
Another insightful article points out that candidates need to demonstrate that they are resourceful when working remotely for A Remote Position. One way to impress is to show the ability to be prepared for the interview. Researching the company, the challenges that the company and its industry are facing, and even the background and experience of the interviewer(s) communicates the ability to do open-source research. Doing such might also turn up other topics to mention or explore in an interview, demonstrating a larger gamut of knowledge and interests.
Employers also want to hear from candidates that are expressly interested in the company. And there are so many softball questions that can be posed like:
- Tell me about the rest of the team, where they are, what projects they have already achieved:
- How do you organize yourselves to work efficiently while being remote?
- What are the plans for going forward with remote work?
The best though would be to leverage some knowledge gleaned about the industry or working area. For example, if you were applying for work on a customer support function for a car navigation software provider, asking about how recent moves by major car vendors to create in-house navigation systems might affect the company.
The pandemic has leap-frogged the acceptance of remote work. But, just because the demand has grown massively, the methodology and evidence used to qualify candidates has lagged. Being more aware of what underlies the demands that will fill those new remote positions can give those who are quick to adapt the advantage over the laggards.
