Remote Hiring Guide: The Hiring Process and Timeline

This is Part 1 of the Remote Hiring Guide Series.

Here’s our complete Remote Hiring Guide Series:

Here at Dynamite Jobs, we help clients hire remote team members all the time. We’ve seen so many clients hire, but we’ve also seen them either keep or let go of the new hires (sometimes after just a few weeks!). We understand how hard it is to hire remotely, especially for entrepreneurs hiring their first remote talent, so we’ve come up with a handy guide to hiring. Watch out for the Remote Hiring Guide Series that we’ll be talking about over the course of the month, starting with the hiring process and timeline. It’s easy to get caught up in wanting results and being excited to get that new hire right away that we forget about managing expectations. So let’s start with learning how the process works and what you should be looking out for.

What does the remote hiring process look like?

Here’s a simple break down of the hiring process:

Create a detailed and engaging job description with application process prepared
Post a job listing, promote the position, and candidates apply
Company reviews the applications and chooses top ones to interview
Interviews commence
With all the stakeholders involved, the decision on the top candidate is agreed
Offer made to the candidate and they (hopefully) accept
Onboarding and training begins

How long will it take me to hire?

The average time to hire on our site is 29 days, but this is just average, not the norm. Hiring should take as long as it takes, meaning, it’s different from everyone and should be done right above all else. In our experience, the candidate you’ll end up hiring has applied between weeks 1 and 2 of the job being live. Therefore, we recommend starting interviews after 2 weeks. Reviewing candidates and the interviews can take up to 2 weeks as well. If all the stakeholders are involved from the outset and you’re very engaged with the hiring process, it can be done within 4 weeks.

Remote Hiring Resources

There’s a lot more that has to be taken into consideration in hiring remote and the process and timeline may vary depending on your needs. However, you will essentially retain the basics. If you want to learn more, here’s some reading to help you think about the remote hiring process.

Hiring Employee #1
How long does it take to hire?
Hire The Best Remote Workers
The Dos and Don’ts of Hiring Apprentices
Employing Remotely: What you need to remember
The Charisma Trap: One Way Entrepreneurs Screw Up Hiring Remote Employees

Ready to Hire Checklist:

Have all stakeholders agreed to this?
Is this a short-term project or a position for a long-term team member?
Who will the new hire be working with and reporting to? Who will be reporting to them?
Has the salary range been decided upon and has the budget been allocated?
What kind of budget will they have to work with?
Where can this person be located? Citizenship requirements?
What is the planned start date?
Are the onboarding training processes, with dates, mapped out?
Has the job description been prepared and shown to all stakeholders?
Has the application process been prepared?
Has time been allocated in your calendar for interviews?

We hope this list doesn’t discourage you, think about using it as a checklist. We just want to make sure this gets you thinking about the time investment involved in the hiring process. Some roles are simple to hire for and can take a week to fill. Others are far more complicated and take a few months.

This is Part 1 of our Remote Hiring Guide Series.

Here’s our complete Remote Hiring Guide Series: