How to Create an Effective Remote Hiring Process

Despite the media headlines around return-to-office mandates, only 37% of employees work in the office full-time, with hybrid and remote work becoming standard practice. 

With this shift, companies have had to adapt how they find and hire talent. 

Remote hiring has emerged as the solution—a way to recruit and onboard employees entirely online, without the need for in-person meetings. But managing a remote hiring process efficiently requires the right tools and strategy. 

In this Willo guide, we’re sharing a blueprint you can follow to implement a remote hiring process that works for candidates and recruiters alike.

What Is Remote Hiring?

Remote hiring is the process of recruiting and onboarding employees without requiring them to be physically present in an office. 

Unlike traditional hiring with time and logistical constraints, remote hiring streamlines the hiring steps using digital tools like video interviews and online assessments to evaluate candidates. For example, remote hiring is why a U.S. company can contact, assess, interview, hire, and onboard an applicant from Canada without the need for them to travel to the headquarters. 

Remote hiring is particularly valuable for:

• Fully distributed teams where employees work from different locations by design
• Traditional companies expanding their talent pool beyond their local area
• Flexible workplaces that combine in-office and remote work options
• Situations where quick hiring is needed and in-person interviews would slow down the process
• International companies looking to build diverse, global teams

But what benefits does this bring for your company? Let’s find out. 

How Can You Benefit from a Remote Hiring Process?

Access to a larger, more diverse talent pool

Remote hiring transforms your recruitment reach from local to global instantly. 

As we mentioned in our guide to international hiring, the impact can be staggering: take software development, where expanding from U.S.-only recruitment to international hiring grows your potential talent pool from 1.2 million to over 28 million developers—a 2,000+% increase.

It also deepens your local talent pool, making it easier for people who apply who might already have a job, be in school, or have other scheduling and transit constraints that make in-real-life meetings difficult. 

This dramatic expansion of your candidate pool means:

• Finding the best fit for any role, regardless of location
• Accessing specialized skill sets that might be rare in your local market
• Building diverse teams that bring fresh perspectives to solving problems

More efficient hiring process 

Remote hiring eliminates traditional recruitment bottlenecks: Video interviews replace travel coordination. Digital assessments deliver instant results. And automated tools handle scheduling and paperwork. Without physical constraints, your recruitment team evaluates more candidates in less time.

The process cuts costs, speeds up hiring, and frees your team to focus on what matters—finding the right talent.

First-mover advantage in talent acquisition

According to Willo's talent leader survey, only 24.8% of companies operate fully in-office or on-site, with the vast majority embracing some form of flexible work arrangement. 

In fact, our research shows that 29.4% of companies are fully remote, while others adopt various hybrid models ranging from remote-first (13.8%) to mixed arrangements with some remote work options (16.5%).

Meeting this shift in workplace expectations isn't just about attracting talent—it's about performance. Studies show that employees who enjoy their work are 13% more productive, think more creatively, and typically stay with organizations longer.

How to Design a Remote Hiring Process

We’ve shown how adopting a remote hiring process can benefit an organization. Next, let’s see how to set it up. 

1. Define clear job roles and requirements

The first step in creating an effective remote hiring process is to define the roles you’re hiring for. Why? A McKinsey & Company study shows that employees who know what’s expected of them are 3.4 times more likely to feel motivated at work. 

Start by outlining key responsibilities, required skills, and deliverables for each role. For instance, if you’re hiring a remote software developer, you should:

• List core responsibilities, such as building and maintaining software and fixing technical issues.
• Specify the skills, like knowledge of programming languages like C++, JavaScript, and Ruby, and experience with tools like Git.
• Highlight expectations for remote communication and collaboration.

You can check out our guide to skills-based hiring for more information. Then, follow this with a well-crafted job description to ensure that both the hiring team and candidates understand the job requirements.

It might also be beneficial to involve leadership at this stage. When leaders help set job roles, they create a clear standard for what the company looks for in candidates. 

2. Attract candidates

After defining the job role, the next step is to create job postings using these detailed descriptions. Attracting the right candidates is crucial as it ensures your company can build a team with the necessary skills and cultural fit to thrive in a remote setting. 

To do this effectively, use both inbound and outbound recruitment channels, such as:

• Job boards: We Work Remotely, Remote.co, and FlexJobs specialize in remote positions, while traditional platforms like LinkedIn Jobs and Indeed also offer remote job filtering options.
• General job platforms: LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter—using their remote work filters and location-independent settings.
• Industry-specific communities: Stack Overflow Jobs for developers, Behance Jobs for designers, and Wellfound for startup roles.
• Company branding channels: Your careers page, LinkedIn company profile, and "Life at [Company]" social media content to showcase your remote culture.
• Professional networks: Employee referral programs, LinkedIn network outreach, and industry-specific Slack communities (just be mindful about each community’s rules).

Source: Indeed

You can also encourage current employees to refer qualified candidates. Not only does it speed up the hiring process, but referrals often bring in candidates who are already aligned with your company’s values.

3. Invite and screen candidates

Once you've posted your job openings and attracted applicants, you need an efficient way to identify the best talent. This candidate screening stage is often the most critical—and most time-consuming—part of remote hiring.

Let's break down how to make this process both thorough and efficient:

Inviting candidates

Make it easy for qualified candidates to enter your hiring pipeline. Whether through individual invites, bulk uploads, or job board integrations, your invitation process should be scalable and organized.

With Willo's Invite at Scale feature, you can:

• Send interview invites to thousands of candidates simultaneously
• Import candidates via CSV files or direct job board links
• Track all invitations from a central dashboard
• Maintain security with enterprise-grade encryption, 2FA, and ISO 27001 certification

Screen candidates

A structured remote screening process helps you identify top talent efficiently:

1. Pre-screening interviews assess baseline qualifications and fit. Using video interviews, candidates can showcase their abilities on their own time, while your team reviews responses when convenient.
2. Screening interviews dive deeper with qualified candidates. Your hiring team can explore candidates' experience, assess technical skills, and answer questions about the role.
3. Final decision-making brings together interview feedback, assessments, and team input to select the best candidate.

Willo makes this entire process seamless. 

Source: 5 Easy steps to your interview

Candidates record async video interviews at their convenience, while your team reviews responses on their own time. AI-generated summaries and transcriptions help you quickly grasp key points, while our Showcase™ feature makes it easy to share interviews and gather stakeholder feedback.

You can filter candidates by timezone requirements, verify identities digitally, and use custom scorecards to ensure consistent evaluation across your hiring team—or simply ask Willo’s AI to do this for you.

How we transformed Bott and Co. Solicitors hiring process

Bott and Co. Solicitors is a leading law firm based in Cheshire, UK that evolved their recruitment process using Willo's platform. Their hiring team had been spending over 45 minutes on screening calls and meeting with candidates, plus an additional two hours to reach final decisions.

Source: Willo’s Bott and Co. Solicitors Case Study

Switching to our platform helped the firm reduce the time spent on the initial screening step and improve the candidate qualification process by:

• Saving time on initial screenings: Willo replaced long phone screens with remote video interviews. Candidates now complete interviews in about 30 minutes at their convenience, and hiring managers review them in just 10–15 minutes each.
• Better candidate comparisons: With Willo, hiring managers could rewatch recorded interviews, making it easier to compare candidates fairly and make better decisions. This reduced reliance on memory and improved how they shortlisted candidates.

Step 4: Onboard successful candidates

The onboarding process is important for integrating new hires into your team and setting them up for success, especially in a remote environment. A typical remote onboarding process involves: 

• Welcoming and introductions, using video calls and communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams
• Ensuring access to tools, login credentials, software, and training materials. 
• Using platforms like Trello or Asana to structure and guide new hires through onboarding tasks. 
• Assigning new employees with a mentor or “buddy” for support and guidance. 

We recommend scheduling weekly meetings during recruiting periods to go over updates and feedback. 

Step 5: Continuously review and optimize the process

Creating an effective remote hiring process isn’t a one-time effort—it requires continuous review and improvement to stay effective.  

Here’s how to keep optimizing your remote hiring strategy:

• Gather data on time-to-hire and hire quality. Candidate NPS (or cNPS) is a great way to gain quick insights into the candidate-side of the process.
• Look at candidate quality and retention rates to spot areas that need changes.
• Use what you learn to adjust interview questions and job descriptions.  

 Hiring teams must also stay updated about the new trends and best practices in remote hiring. 

Design a Remote Hiring Process that Works Seamlessly

Remote hiring breaks down barriers, giving you access to top talent from around the world. Following the steps in this guide will help you attract and build a team that excels no matter where they are. 

Willo streamlines the entire process for you. Our feature-rich candidate screening platform is perfect for remote hiring, with features that enable recruiters to attract, screen, and decide on the best remote candidates faster and more efficiently. 

Get a demo today and see how it works.