Certainly, hiring people to fill voids left on your virtual or remote team comes with both challenges and benefits. On one hand, you are able to recruit top talent from all over the world and find the perfect person to join your team.

On the other hand, the traditional interviewing process, where candidates meet you face-to-face, is pretty much thrown out the window. You have to judge fit, character and soft skills on phone conversations or video chats.

Beyond that, you have a much wider pool to choose from. Where a posting for on-site employees could yield 10 resumes, an add for remote employees could yield hundreds. How do you even begin to start the decision process?

Instead of posting an ad online and seeing what happens, Scott Wintrip, author of High Velocity Hiring: How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant,  recommends leveraging your own network. He offers this advice:

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

If there’s a “magic bullet” for effective networking and getting quality referrals, it’s this: Just ask for help. Reach out to your network and admit you need help finding an exceptional employee.

Don’t forget to ask your “obvious” networks for referrals. How often do you ask current employees for their help with candidate referrals? What about their family members or the previous employees who left your business on good terms? Have you asked your own family and friends to put you in touch with referrals they know?

“It’s easy to overlook the obvious resources for strong referrals,” says Wintrip. “But when we do this, we’re likely missing out on the insight of the very people who are most likely to want to help us.”

Just be sure to be specific about the qualities you’re looking for. Don’t ask your contacts for referrals to people who are looking for a job, says Wintrip. Ask for referrals to the specific type of person you want to hire.

Make recruiting an everyday habit 

A little goes a long way. Investing a few minutes each day in referral recon pays off in dividends, and it’s so easy it doesn’t even feel like work.

Wintrip also recommends recruiting before you need to hire. “Some roles are more vital than others, and when these roles are left unfilled, they can harm your business,” asserts Wintrip. “Instead of waiting until an employee in an essential job quits or gives notice to start recruiting, do yourself a favor and recruit ahead of time. Dedicating 30 minutes to recruiting each week pays off by creating a pipeline of potential talent ready to be hired the moment that vital job becomes open.”

Share the talent you discover with other team leaders

Keep in mind that you’re not going to be able to hire every great candidate you meet. Sometimes talented candidates just aren’t the right fit. When this happens, be sure to share candidates with other leaders to help them solve their own hiring challenges; they will also be happy to reciprocate. According to Wintrip, leaders who share talent in this manner with at least eight or more businesses report greater success in hiring faster and making better hires.

“Reaching out to the people you meet—as well as those you already know—can connect you with impressive talent,” concludes Wintrip. “Make referral generation a regular part of your managerial tasks, and before you know it, you’ll realize that good help is easy to find.”

Scott Wintrip, author of High Velocity Hiring: How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant, has changed how thousands of companies across the globe find and select employees, helping design and implement a process to hire top talent in less than an hour. Over the past 18 years, he built the Wintrip Consulting Group, a thriving global consultancy. Scott, the acknowledged leader of the on-demand hiring movement, is pioneering improved methods for recruiting and interviewing job candidates. For five consecutive years, Staffing Industry Analysts, a Crain Communications company, has awarded Scott a place on the “Staffing 100,” a list of the world’s 100 most influential staffing leaders. He’s also a member of the Million Dollar Consultant Hall of Fame and was recently inducted into the Staffing 100 Hall of Fame. Scott and his wife, Holly, live in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Photo Credit: http://www.freeimages.com/photo/around-the-earth-1237803

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