Ask about how they plan their team goals and how they like to be informed about progress. One of the benefits and challenges of remote work is having more control over your time. There’s no one sitting next to you to make sure you’re working, so it’s crucial that you’re organized and able to prioritize your tasks.
Some candidates are attracted to the idea of working from home but don’t understand the reality of it. Likewise, if someone wants to be home to care for aging parents or children, it may affect the hours they can keep or the distractions they face. That won’t necessarily disqualify them, but it is something to explore during the interview. For candidates who have worked remotely before, you can ask remote-focused questions about their specific past experiences.
What are your career goals?
In an office setting, people tacitly look out for each other (“Hey, you look really tired today – everything ok?”). Remote workers, on the other hand, have to be keenly self-aware and good at self-care or they risk burning out. This question will reveal whether the candidate imagined themselves in the other person’s shoes before speaking with them, and how they took that into account. Candidates with an especially high EQ will talk about how they focused the feedback on the other person’s actions and behaviors, rather than their innate characteristics or worth. Also, take note of whether they offered to help the other person work on a solution or make changes – another sign of emotional intelligence.
You have to show that you’re 100% trustworthy if you want to be a fully-remote employee. Not every candidate is up to this task, and employers work hard to only select the candidates who are. If an employer doesn’t trust you to work hard even when nobody is watching, they won’t let you work remotely for them. The last thing they want to do is bring on a new remote team member who will disrupt that.
Tell me about your work experience sample answers
Whatever answer they provide, they should give a list of tools that they use for communication and how frequently they like to communicate. You’ll want them to focus on effective communication and be provide multiple steps to ensure that nothing gets lost in communication. People who are self-motivated work from home experience will have a solid answer to this question. They love a good challenge and stay focused on it, even when they face a setback or a shiny new object enters their field of vision. Contact between managers and remote employees is unavoidably sparser than with co-located workers.
- Remote workers need to be flexible, persevering, and eager to experiment, and shouldn’t assume they already know the best way of doing things.
- As a remote-friendly employer, you know it isn’t all coffee shops and beach views.
- I really like the flexibility in hours that a stay-at-home position offers.
If they can provide a couple of detailed strategies, they’re an ideal candidate to work remotely. If you are looking for remote jobs, you can search on remote job boards like DailyRemote. Searching for a remote jobs can be a challenging experience, but it is important to maintain a positive outlook and go over our guide on how to find a remote job and join like-minded people in our LinkedIn community.
How to answer
That doesn’t mean you can’t support one another, but even that takes a bit more initiative when you’re working remotely. According to Jones, the key here is to have a detailed, thoughtful answer (complete with specific examples) prepared. That should be fairly easy for people who’ve worked remotely in the past, but if you haven’t, don’t sweat it. “Sometimes people get tripped up when they are asked a question about a situation they’ve never been in—and remote work is new to a lot of folks,” Jones says. “If this happens, communicate what you would do if you encountered XYZ situation in a remote role; sometimes the thought process is more valuable than the actual answer.”
A home is a special thing — it’s where you live, rest, and spend time with people you love. Now, thanks to the chaos of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic home is also where people work. Leslie Stevens-Huffman is a business and careers writer based in Southern California.