Remote Recruitment: How to Ensure You’re Hiring the Best Digital Marketing Talent

Over the past year, businesses have had to restructure their activities around work from home to cope with the COVID-19 crisis. While digital marketing and ecommerce jobs can be done remotely, adding new talents to a team without meeting them in person is a challenging task. What about waiting for everything to go back to normal before hiring? You may want to reconsider that plan, have a look at Digital Recruitment Trends: Remote Working is the Future? to learn more.

So how to recruit the best talent remotely? How to ensure you attract and identify the right person for your digital marketing strategy or ecommerce business? How to know you’re getting the right impression about them and that they’ll fit into your company’s culture?

Here are our top tips to engage with potential candidates, create the connection you would get from an in-person interview, and help you decide who will join your team. From nailing your job advert and attracting the most qualified digital talents to getting these gut feelings about who the right person is through a computer screen–here is Live Digital’s guide to remote recruitment.

The Job Advert

Make it informative

Polishing your job advert is the necessary step to attract digital candidates that are qualified and who will integrate well in your company’s culture. Aim to be very explicit about the job description, the skills required, and the values of your company. To do this, make sure to include a summary of all the responsibilities and expectations of the role. Being specific and providing details about the missions expected will not only make the job advert engaging but will also spark the interest of motivated professionals.

Digital tools

Your job advert is the right place to include any required access to electronic devices or software. While digital marketing and ecommerce specialists know how to use various digital business tools, they may not own or have subscriptions to expensive software. Precising what your future employee needs to have at their disposal versus what you will supply them with will both make you look organised as an employer and reassure candidates about what they don’t have to buy.

Company image and Personal touch

Moreover, the way you present your company is equally important. You may actually want to check that your company’s website and social media reflect an accurate image of what your identity and values are. Having a look at your company’s reviews on Glassdoor and replying to any negative comment politely will also allow your business to keep a good image. Regarding the job advert, you should make sure the spirit of your team comes across so that potential applicants can decide if they would feel comfortable working with you. Indeed, even if your digital marketing or ecommerce specialist will not share an office with other employees, feeling that they belong to your team will enhance their motivation and overall wellbeing at work. For more advice on how to make your employees feel better and create social cohesion within your business, visit 3 Ways To Invest in Employees’ Wellbeing To Boost Your Company’s Growth.

Consider an employee treat

Highly qualified digital candidates may be torn between applying for your role and another business’s. Planning to provide them with additional value is another good way of enhancing their wellbeing while making your job offer more desirable. Remote employees cannot have access to in-office benefits, such as a gym or café. However, you could provide them with learning and development opportunities, such as training courses or an access to an online library. You could also offer material benefits, such as a technology allowance or a compensation for home office fees–i.e., access to the Internet and electricity costs.

Polishing your job advert, online presence, and offering employee benefits are key to attract qualified digital talents.

The Remote Recruitment Process

Shortlisting

Once a company has successfully attracted qualified digital marketing or ecommerce candidates and received their applications, the next crucial step is to determine who is the best-fit talent–remotely of course. Perhaps in the past, meeting candidates in person just once has allowed you to make up your mind and offer a job to the best talent. However, this is unlikely with remote recruitment. Video interviews do allow recruiters to see candidates; but seeing someone behind a screen does not enable us to perceive all the subtleties of their body language, and therefore limits our ability to connect with and understand them. This is why you should consider a recruitment process that includes several steps of shortlisting. For instance, you could: hold a first interview, assign a short task to successful candidates, have a chat about each candidate’s profile with your colleagues, hold a final interview. The essential rule is to take the time to understand each applicant’s profile, how well they may perform at the digital marketing or ecommerce role you offer, and how well they would integrate with the rest of your team.

Video interviews

Interviews constitute the main step allowing recruiters to assess whether a candidate is a good fit for a role. They are opportunities to ask about a candidate’s skills and experience. When recruiting remotely, the video interview should include additional questions about the candidate’s ability to work from home. For example, organisational skills and being independent are necessary qualities for one to complete their work successfully despite not being in an office setting, and therefore without getting support from colleagues. Finally, the interview is also a chance to check with the candidate that they have or can get all the technology that is needed to complete the digital role’s tasks.

If you're not sure about your choice, ask your team for help! They also have valuable insight on who would be fit for your business.

Embracing Remote Recruitment

Recruiting remotely and working from a distance can be challenging, but it is also an amazing opportunity to bring diversity to your team. Your new physically distant digital marketing or ecommerce talent may have a different cultural background and therefore bring another outlook on how to grow your business.

If remote recruitment still sounds daunting–fair enough! Despite a structured recruitment process, it can be challenging to identify the best talent among several qualified digital marketing or ecommerce applicants. At Live Digital, we are happy to take on this process for you and dedicated to finding the best digital candidate. You may want to have a look at 7 reasons for Companies to use Recruitment Agencies to get an idea of everything we can do to help.

Contact jacob@live-digital.co.uk.