Recruiting, assessing, and training remote staff -- who does it well?

following for sure :) 

@max We are a 100% virtual firm (and have been for many years.) I’m not usually directly involved in our hiring process, but we do have some assessment tools used during the interview process. Let me reach out to our team and get back to you with any info I can share. 

I would love that, thanks @jens!

Hiring is the most difficult part of running my business.  I wish I had something to offer but I am very interested in this conversation.  What resources have you found most helpful in coming up with your interview guide.  I have not had any luck find good assessment tools that I feel really vet candidates.  Definitely following.

I added a copy of our base interview guide to my original post.

Determining culture fit is definitely more of an art than an exact science. That being said, we do use some assessment tools during our interview process for potential new hires. 

One tool we use is the PXT assessment. You do have to be careful with assessments because some you are not allowed to use for hiring and firing decisions. What we like is that it has a verbal and mathematical component as well as the behavioral. You build a profile for the role you want and can even test your existing team to get the profile dialed in to what you need or want. If you have questions about the PXT assessment, you can reach out to Diane Zile with Jera Partnerships (Diane@jerapartnerships.com.)

Another good one we are exploring is the Kolbe Assessment. It lets you create an index for a particular seat in the company. We’ve not used that one as much for hiring but it is another good option. Anastasia Toomey (atoomey@eosworldwide.com) can answer questions about that one.

We also use CliftonStrengths internally after someone onboards but not before they are hired. 

I’ll look into those tools, and if anyone else has other assessment tools that you like (@BrooksW, didn’t you mention that you used some assessments?), I would love to hear about how you use them.

@max We have a list of questions that we have developed over the years, but are still trying to dial in on identifying the soft skills.  We use a candidate tracking tool called Trakstar Hire, and through that potential candidates can record videos of them answering questions.  We have found that we can get a better understanding of a person by seeing how they answer questions verbally.  We ask them about what they did or didn’t like about past roles, how they make or avoid mistakes, and how they like to communicate. Most of the time we can start to get a sense of whether they are a team player, detail oriented, etc.