Remote-First Recruiting

Articles and tips on the topic of working remotely are growing at a rapid rate, but there are few posts from companies like Splice Machine who moved to a 100% remote work environment before the pandemic. In this post, we discuss the steps Splice Machine takes to attract, interview, and hire talent for our remote-first work culture.

Removing Recruiting Barriers

Splice Machine removed two significant recruiting barriers, relocation and commuting, when we moved to a distributed remote-work model.

As an on-premise company, we had a high-performing recruiting process in place using an applicant tracking system, detailed job descriptions, interview panels, customized interview scorecards, panel preps, and debrief discussions for each candidate we interviewed. Once we moved to a remote-first work model, we added to our list of soft-skill requirements. There are a few critical skills that every candidate needs to demonstrate during the interview process in addition to the hard skills and experience required for the role they are pursuing at Splice Machine.

Critical Soft Skills for Remote Working

We identified three critical attributes to succeed in our distributed work culture.

Self-Starter: We don’t expect people to save their questions until their next meeting or 1:1 with their manager. A candidate must demonstrate that they are a proactive self-starter who initiates activity and asks questions when blocked.

Operations Mindset: Working in an asynchronous team environment requires an intuitive sense for what is important and what isn’t, and a drive to get things completed on time. Our technology development and sales cycles are complex with a lot of moving parts, requiring many interdependencies with a variety of people. If one person is behind, it will often set a number of other people back. A candidate must demonstrate that they have a “get it done well” operational mindset.

Writing Skills: Most of our team members speak at least two languages and often English is not their first language. At least 50% of our employees’ day-to-day communication is written and Splice Machine’s designated language is English. A candidate must demonstrate proficient written skills and be comfortable using tools like Slack to communicate.

Opening a New Job Requisite

When opening a new job requisite, the hiring manager and People Ops team have a planning meeting to discuss the following.

1. Time zones that will work or not work.

2. Budget to hire the role.

3. Target companies to source passive talent.

4. Key requirements and responsibilities to do the job. This is important to attract qualified candidates to “self-select in”.

5. The interview panel. Select to evaluate and excite the candidates about the role.

6. Customized interview questions for each member on the interview panel to ask all candidates.

7. A technical challenge. Designed so candidates can demonstrate their abilities doing something similar to what they would do on the job at Splice Machine.

Splice Machine Interviews

At Splice Machine, each candidate goes through four interview stages which gives us an opportunity to interact with the candidate while observing their communication skills and initiative. Every interview is held on Zoom with cameras on unless the candidate has an extenuating circumstance. We are a “cameras on” company so this gives candidates a good feel for our work culture. At each stage during the interview process, the interviewer is asked to take a few minutes to share what it is like to work at Splice Machine. They also offer to answer questions about the distributed team experience, the role, product, and people. We want everyone who joins Splice Machine to be excited about our company culture and have a good understanding of what to expect.

Skills That Will Get You Hired

Since we became a remote-first, distributed team, the importance of some soft skills has increased and the way we evaluate candidates’ soft skills has evolved. Like many early-stage companies that are more impacted by change, it is important for our team to remain flexible, view change as an opportunity, and adapt quickly. Assessing a candidate’s comfort to communicate on video, capability to take written direction without a lot of prompting, sense of urgency, and ability to write clearly and cohesively, helps us hire people equipped to adapt to change and perform in our remote-first work environment.

While we wouldn’t recommend relying solely on Splice Machine’s journey to base your decision and implement remote-first at your company, we believe that by the time you have read through our 12 posts or ebook, you will better understand the options, challenges, and advantages of building a remote-first company.

Watch for our next post which will describe remote-first onboarding tips. You may also view all of our posts on Splice Machine’s career page or download theSplice Machine Journey From Office to 100% Remote ebook that our posts are based on.