"Remote Hiring: How to Evaluate Candidates You’ve Never Met in Person"

Hiring someone you’ve never met in person feels risky. Without the cues of in-person interaction, how can you evaluate effectively?

The good news: remote hiring can be just as effective as in-person—sometimes more so—if you adapt your approach.

Video Interview Best Practices

Technology shouldn’t be a barrier:

Test everything beforehand. Ensure your camera, microphone, and internet work reliably. Nothing undermines your professionalism like technical struggles.

Ensure good lighting and background. You’re being evaluated too. A dark room with visual clutter doesn’t inspire confidence.

Minimise distractions. Close notifications, clear your desk, prevent interruptions.

Compensating for Missing Cues

In-person, you get information from handshake firmness, physical presence, and subtle body language. Remotely, you need other signals:

Ask about their remote work setup. How have they structured their workspace? This reveals preparation and professionalism.

Discuss communication preferences. How do they stay connected with remote colleagues? What’s their response time expectation?

Probe self-management. Remote work requires self-discipline. How do they structure their days? How do they stay motivated without oversight?

Observe their video presence. Do they make “eye contact” with the camera? Do they engage actively or seem distracted?

Skills Assessment

Remote hiring makes practical assessments easier, not harder:

Live coding or work samples. Share screens and watch them work in real-time.

Asynchronous tests. Send assignments to complete independently, simulating actual remote work.

Presentation or demonstration. Have them walk through previous work or present on a relevant topic.

Trial projects. Paid short-term work is the ultimate evaluation method.

Reference Checks Are More Important

Without in-person intuition, reference checks carry more weight:

Ask specifically about remote work. Did they work remotely with this referee? How did they handle it?

Probe communication. Were they responsive? Did distance create problems?

Verify self-management. Did they need close oversight or could they operate independently?

Cultural Assessment

Culture fit is harder to assess remotely but not impossible:

Involve multiple team members. Video calls with potential colleagues reveal dynamics.

Ask about past culture experiences. What environments have they thrived in? What environments didn’t work?

Discuss your culture explicitly. Describe how your team operates and ask directly whether it sounds like a fit.

The Onboarding Challenge

Remote hires require more deliberate onboarding than in-person:

Over-communicate early. More check-ins, more clarity, more explicit information.

Ensure social connection. Introduce them to colleagues individually. Create informal video interaction opportunities.

Assign a buddy. Someone specifically tasked with helping them navigate the remote environment.

Trust the Process

If your remote interview process is structured and thorough, trust what it reveals.

Many managers meet candidates in person “to be sure,” but this often just adds bias—in-person impressions aren’t necessarily more accurate, just more vivid.

Good remote hiring requires process discipline. That same discipline often produces better outcomes than casual in-person evaluation.