Written interviews and thoughtful rejection letters: musings on remote hiring
How to hire remotely for a remote-first position in a hybrid company was not part of my previous training. So when I suddenly owned the entire process to bring a new Product Manager on board, I went from super excited to downright panicked in less than an hour. I count myself lucky that one of my peer sensed the desperation and organized a skill sharing workshop to help me get through the initial bumps. So here's the first lesson: ask for help when you feel like you are out of your depth.
From job description to the final offer
Hindsight is a great documentation aid. This means that the process I am presenting here was created on the go, with some dead ends along the way. I’ll share the individual steps, some statistics, and highlight some learnings for myself.
Creating and sharing the job description. The creation of the job description was a joint effort between myself and the CTO. Once created, we published the information on our website and shared it via LinkedIn. Shortly after announcing our latest funding round, we also started using LinkedIn and Facebook ads - for about a week, due to a quite significant influx of applications.
To ensure a wider applicant pool, I actively shared all our job descriptions with different Slack communities that promote diversity in the tech industry: LGBT in Technology, Out in Tech, Remote Women, Support Driven, Ladies Get paid. LinkedIn has the unfortunate tendency to recommend and surface people who live in the same region/country and/or who have a similar background to you (shared contacts, same university, your groups). While these things can indicate affinity, they also make it difficult to to reach people outside your direct bubble. LinkedIn search in particular is not helpful if you want to find the best candidates independent of location.
The first screening was mostly checking for whether the candidates met the minimum requirements around time zones and qualifications/experience. If those were met, they got an invite to a first chat interview, followed by a short zoom call with myself. Those who did not meet the minimum requirements received a rejection email indicating the reason, so they didn't have to wonder what happened to their application.
The second interview round was a zoom call or in-person interview with our CTO (depending on the candidate’s location). Followed by a third interview with one of our co-founders.
At this point we were down to three candidates, any of which I would have been comfortable to work with. Instead of relying on a coin flip, we decided to go for a panel interview via zoom. The panel consisted of a designer, a front-end engineer and a back-end engineer, with some previously planned questions. After the three panels, participants stack-ranked the applicants and we discussed the underlying reasons to come to a joint decision.
At every step, the candidates who did not make it to the next round received a personalized rejection email. Whenever possible, I included feedback as to why we did not move them forward to the next round.
In total, we took roughly two months from publishing the job description to making the final offer.
Some statistics
The following table shows the breakdown of men vs women and local vs remote candidates through the different stages. I strongly believe that the relative balance in this table is mostly due to the fact that we actively shared the job description in a variety of channels, instead of sticking to our own networks.
TotalMenWomenTallinnRemote
UTC to UTC+5Wrong
time zoneApplications72442831228PM experience22101311111Initial interview21(+1)1012(+1)1111-CTO interview9(+1)54(+1)72(+1)-Founder interview(s)62442-Panel interview30321-
Note on (+1): One candidate did not show up to the first interview and did not respond to any communication afterwards. The same happened with another candidate who successfully made it into the second round. After rescheduling the interview, they did not connect and did not respond to follow-up emails.
Things I learned during the hiring process
Hiring is hard. It takes a lot of time and patience. I am grateful that I was able to get the end-to-end experience, and I am also very released that next time I’ll be able to count on the support from our new Head of HR. Screening CVs and sending out friendly rejection emails to those who did not read the requirements had me sigh in frustration more than once.
Candidates are people too, and that means they deserve a timely answer that clearly sets expectations. Rejection letters are part of this communication, even the ones that are sent out after screening the CV and presentation letter. If someone does not fit your profile, let them know. Ghosting is not just bad manners, it also makes for horrible employer branding.
Communication is crucial. What are the next steps? Whom will I be talking to? Which format do I have to plan for? These are basic tidbits of information that can help settle the anxiety of a stressful hiring process. This also includes sharing the interviewers LinkedIn profile. After all, we’ve seen their profile, too.
You are human, too. Hiring takes time and energy, so don’t over schedule yourself. Unless you are a hiring specialist, you should probably not plan for more than two interviews per day. Remember, you still have your own day-to-day work to do. My first week doing interviews had me tethering on the border of an anxiety attack. I felt I was falling behind both in my work as well as letting candidates down by not scheduling enough interviews. A more experienced colleague stepped in to remind me to breathe. One week wouldn’t make much of a difference.
Write down your impressions right after the interview. Reserve those 5-10 minutes to make sure you do it as soon as possible. The brain is really good at forgetting details, and three days later you won’t remember who said what. And you wouldn’t want to mix up candidates’ impressions. (Of course, chat transcripts can shorten that process).
Start hiring earlier than you think you’ll need it. It takes time. If you start the process the moment you are underwater, you are looking at a minimum of 2-3 months of being both stressed out while searching for a suitable candidate.
Use templates for good. There are some pieces of information that you are going to send out over and over again: the interview invites, and the rejection letters during the first half of the process. I create templates whenever I catch myself writing something twice, a habit acquired when doing frontline customer support. (My tool recommendation: TextExpander.) Templates don’t necessarily mean standardized answers. Instead, they offer a framework that allows you to find the right words where it’s needed, instead of agonizing on how to lead into the topic or finish the message.