4 Best Practices for Technical Hiring at Startups in a Distributed Workforce

With the way COVID-19 is shaping the workforce, it will force many organizations to accept a distributed workforce for their organization. Wes Winham, CEO at Woven, highlights how organizations can implement best practices for technical hiring amid the pandemic.

Before the disruption brought about by COVID-19, all the cool founders of startups were already into remote work. AutomatticOpens a new window and InVisionOpens a new window have been doing this before it was recognized as a valid working experience. They were the pioneers of remote work. Nowadays, when almost every article preface has some reference to the pandemic, the question of remote work is practically a foregone conclusion.

But first, let’s be clear. Why are we talking about remote when the title clearly says “distributed workforce”? Are they exchangeable? What exactly is a distributed workforce, and how is it different from remote?

DropboxOpens a new window makes the distinction. “Remote work is a discipline for the individual worker, but distributed work is a discipline for the entire organization.” Where the difference lies in the “deliberateness” of your company in handling the remote work landscape.

Is there intent in the remote practices, or is it just duplicating the office online? Where the burden of proof lies mainly on the employee and not on the company.

In other words, remote work is incidental to the company while a distributed workforce has intent – with company policies, culture, and processes designed with the distributed workforce in mind. Just earlier this month, Dropbox announcedOpens a new window that it is going virtual first. The company has chosen five goals for its policy and a strategy that delivers on all five goals.

Becoming Intentional With a New Strategy

Where would you rather be in this equation? It’s not a trick question. As a startup, it is probably time to treat the pandemic as the great disruptor that changed everything. We need to stop thinking that the remote setup is only temporary and start making intentional choices for our work setup. Avoiding or delaying an official and long-term program for your employees could impact the speed of your production and success.

For startups, with the big push in terms of development, scalability, technology, and disruption, it’s easy to forget and lose focus, leaving employees to figure out a way to bring in their deliverables. That’s why, early on in the hiring process for developers and engineers, the organization needs to be conscious and intent on creating a successful distributed workforce.

Because of their history in the remote front, it’s easy to assume that everyone is on the same page with the same expectations – show up on Slack, be there on Zoom, collaborate on Trello. And so long as you’re hitting the KPIs and keeping up with the product timeline, you’re pretty much hitting the goal, right?

So maybe that’s not the entire picture. More than hiring for technical skills and equipping employees with the tools, what are the tips and best practices for startups with a distributed workforce? How can they be intentional and not just go through the motions of duplicating a physical space online?

Getting Values Right

1. Hire for grit

GritOpens a new window is not a newly discovered magical word in the startup space (though people are calling it the new buzzword after culture, unicorns, and rockstars). Now that we’re locked in Zoom Boxes, the culture of constant monitoring and reports just won’t cut it anymore.

Grit allows your employees to work and persevere even with a low level of interaction and supervision. These employees can maintain the same level of dedication and interest to your organization in the face of obstacles and asynchronous working style.

Be conscious of this when hiring – or better yet, integrate this soft skill requirement in your hiring process.

2. Value problem-solving and critical thinking

Given the setup where employees can’t easily get answers as in a physical office, every hire should be able and ready to figure out solutions and diagnose problems effectively.

From the get-go, check your employees for the ability to escape meltdown without constant handholding and head patting. This is especially crucial for remote workers who are working asynchronously.

At WovenOpens a new window , problem-solving is integrated into the assessment. It’s an essential skill for today’s evolving workplace.

3. Set people up for success

Your tool stack should be well-defined and centralized so that people can integrate with them at any time when they need a resource. Clear guidelines should be available for review. By providing context in a centralized manner, people stay on the same page and remain on track.

Whether on Trello or Slack, or even just a Google Doc, they are a resource that empowers your employees to succeed. Beyond that, these tools should be just that, a resource. Ownership and autonomy then become the main driver in setting people up for success.

4. Put communication in the front and center of your organization

Let’s admit it, one of the biggest drawbacks of remote work is the inability to get instant feedback, be it on nonverbal cues or direct answers. Back in 2013, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo may have been a bit right about communication and collaboration being better when people are sitting side by side. This makes success easier on so many levels.

The good news is that setting up communication with intent and not looking at it in a purely utilitarian and functional manner can help fix this problem. Something that Marissa Mayer and Yahoo never understood. Loneliness and isolation notwithstanding, it’s the asynchronous culture that sets people on edge. Transitioning from office to remote, this is probably one of the hardest for people to transition to.

Everyone has to understand that a) people work at different times, b) urgency needs to be planned, and c) how you communicate is key. That means everything has to be deliberate.

You might raise a side eye at urgency needing to be planned, but it is what it is. There should be a setup to handle these occurrences. People should be encouraged to share thoughts and opinions with all the context needed for faster processing and resolution.

In these organizations, writing also becomes deliberate. People are trained to write in the clearest way possible and providing all the information needed without needing to go to the back and forth question and answer.

The Way Forward

These practices are by no means extensive but are an overarching theme in the success of remote work for startups. More tips and resources can be found on the Going fully distributed is a big decision for any organization, perhaps more so for startups who need to move fast. But with focus, intent, and awareness, we believe that having a distributed workforce is just another way to scale.

Which best practices are you following for technical hiring at startups in a distributed workforce in your organization? Tell us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window .