Studies and surveys on the impact of remote work are abundant, helping to guide organizations in post-pandemic workplace structure and bolstering job applicants’ understanding of the new office landscape. While the percentages may differ, the majority opinion remains the same: remote work is no longer just a perk, but an expectation.
For companies like Pinwheel, a payroll connectivity API company founded in 2018, policies and workplace strategy were new and flexible enough to be redesigned with remote work in mind.
“The company’s practices and cadence were forged during last year’s quarantine period, so they were designed with a remote-first mindset,” said Engineering Manager Aaron Pelz.
This practical understanding of how to manage remote teams ensures communication is at the forefront of Pinwheel’s application and interview process.
“We do our best to set interview expectations from the get-go, and candidates are provided with frequent updates throughout so they’re well-prepared for all their virtual conversations,” Pelz said.
Closing out the interview process and welcoming in a new hire is relieving for both parties, but in a virtual setting, the challenges don’t end there. When remote employees are unable to physically visit the office and new team members, onboarding can be just as difficult as recruitment. Skillshare, a platform that offers online learning for creatives, has built thorough digital resources to support their remote new hires, including 30-minute info sessions with outside departments and mentorship with an existing employee.
“We provide plenty of resources and documentation to help them adjust to our processes, acclimate to new tools and decode internal acronyms,” said Senior Recruiter Alana Silva.
Sometimes a little status-quo shakeup is, in the long run, an improvement for both organizations and their employees alike. When it comes to remote work, these four companies were already prepared and shared their insights on remote hiring and onboarding best practices.
When it comes to hiring and scaling rapidly, Pinwheel understands the importance of a successful virtual onboarding process. Providing clear and documented expectations help to keep applicants, new hires and existing Pinwheel employees aligned and supported.
Which teams are expanding the most at Pinwheel? What proportion of your open positions are available to remote workers?
Pinwheel is growing rapidly, so just about every team is hiring. The engineering team is growing particularly quickly — we’ve already doubled in size in 2021 and are looking to add talented senior engineers to set direction, help us hone our practices and build for the next level of scale. As for which of our open roles are remote: all of them! I onboarded remotely while living in Washington, D.C., and we currently have full-time Pinwheelies living and working from New York, Raleigh, Charlottesville, San Francisco, Austin, Salt Lake City and more.
What did you change about the hiring process to better accommodate remote applicants?
Not too much. Like the majority of our company practices, our hiring processes were designed with our remote-first culture in mind. We do our best to set interview expectations from the get-go, and candidates are provided with frequent updates throughout so they’re well-prepared for all their virtual conversations.
How has the onboarding process shifted to ensure offsite employees feel welcomed and engaged?
My favorite tool to help onboarding remotely is to provide new hires with clear and thorough documentation about the company and their role, so that there are clear expectations from day one. We also set up opportunities to meet the broader company, like pairing new hires with an onboarding buddy from a different department, running a “Welcome to Pinwheel Hotseat” at our all-hands to let them share their backstory and some fun facts, and setting up new hires to shadow customer calls and learn about the fintech industry.
Most of Torii’s team was hired during the pandemic, which provided a broad and firsthand understanding of the tools necessary for success. Among their best practices are interviewee cheat sheets, welcome documentation and opportunities for virtual connection with the team.
Which teams are expanding the most at Torii? What proportion of your open positions are available to remote workers?
We are currently in hypergrowth, so all of our teams are expanding! The two teams with the most roles open are marketing and customer success. All of our roles are available to remote workers and we currently have team members in six states across the U.S.
What did you change about the hiring process to better accommodate remote applicants?
Most of the team was hired during the pandemic so many things have been remote from the outset, but we’ve definitely come up with creative ways to support and accommodate remote applicants. We created an interview cheat sheet to share the interview process and our culture with the candidate from the get-go. We try to manage the scheduling based on individual candidate’s needs, and avoid back-to-back interviews as candidates find those to be draining or hard to schedule if they are currently employed. Ultimately, the pace of the process is up to the candidate.
How has the onboarding process shifted to ensure offsite employees feel welcomed and engaged?
Our onboarding process focuses on the remote environment first, and really hones in on communication and connection. We create a welcome document outlining what to expect on their first day, the team and culture, and an overview of benefits they can review before they start. We have every new hire sit down with me on their first day for a deep dive into our culture and what life at Torii is like.
I set up a virtual new-hire lunch on day one to meet with various team members, and have one-on-one coffee meetings to replicate those in office moments of walking into the kitchen and meeting someone you don’t know. We have documented an onboarding plan that all managers build upon to ensure new team members feel engaged and productive from day one.
Getting the most out of a new remote role can be difficult when HR and other team members aren’t just a few seats away. Stash helps to ensure new hires are aware of all perks, benefits and company culture from the outset, providing detailed onboarding documentation and regular virtual opportunities to connect with other team members.
Which teams are expanding the most at Stash? What proportion of your open positions are available to remote workers?
We’re investing in growth across the entire organization, but our largest populations at Stash are within engineering and product. We’re in a Goldilocks stage of maturity — our pace remains that of a startup, but with the discipline and resources to support more customers more deeply and efficiently.
Nearly all of our roles are open to remote workers. Stash employs a true people-first hybrid model. We live and work where we are the most productive, whether that is in our home, in an office or a combination of both. It’s another way we help employees invest in themselves.
What did you change about the hiring process to better accommodate remote applicants?
We’re a mission-driven company, which is one of the reasons I think we’ve attracted so many amazing people to work here. Diversity and inclusion are essential to living our values, promoting innovation, and building the best products. In order to help everyday Americans invest and build wealth, we need a company that represents the diversity of our customers. Remaining agnostic to hiring location also supports regional perspectives. We haven’t changed our standards, but have tighter alignment on our roles and criteria for success. By understanding and articulating the story, goals and challenges of a role, we help ourselves and our candidates make decisions more confidently and quickly.
How has the onboarding process shifted to ensure offsite employees feel welcomed and engaged?
We’ve stepped up our investment to make sure each new person is successful. The focus of our orientation is to offer a practical understanding of getting the most out of our offerings (perks, benefits and culture), stories around our vision and values with our founders, followed by a series of department deep dives that accelerate a new hire’s understanding of our organization’s structure and teams they will be working with.
We host new-hire socials, and teams have improved their functional repositories so new hires have easier access to information and documentation. In addition to our employee resource groups, we’ve also created channels where employees who want to meet up in different cities may do so. From #catpeopleinadogworld to #runtheworld, we all find community within our community of Stashers.
The energy within an office space can speak volumes about its company culture, and translating those values into a virtual understanding is a challenge. For Senior Recruiter Alana Silva, transparency and immersion are important steps in both the recruitment and onboarding process.
Which teams are expanding the most at Skillshare? What proportion of your open positions are available to remote workers?
The Skillshare team is 100 percent distributed, and therefore every role open is available to remote workers. We are in a growth phase as a company and hiring across all functions, with an emphasis on marketing and engineering.
Skillshare’s remote-first benefits include a $750 dollar work-from-home stipend for employees to set their home offices up for success. Additionally, employees are given Industrious memberships, which provide access to co-working spaces across the U.S.
What did you change about the hiring process to better accommodate remote applicants?
Rethinking our recruitment strategy to accommodate a completely remote model was a challenging and informative process for our team. It helped push us to examine how we can truly showcase our values when someone isn’t able to have an in-person experience. Transparency is one of those values, and something that we are dedicated to from the first touch point in the recruitment process. In order to ensure all candidates are treated and prepared equally, we provide them with our Candidate 101 guide in the first conversation. This guide provides an overview of what can be expected throughout the entire interview process, and more context into the company.
Flexibility has come up a lot in the transition to remote work, whether that’s a little one, or pup making a cameo on screen, or simply providing flexible accommodations for candidates to avoid Zoom fatigue. During interviews, we make sure to add dedicated breaks and always provide an option to break up interview loops into multiple days.
How has the onboarding process shifted to ensure offsite employees feel welcomed and engaged?
For our new hires, to ensure that the first impression is a welcoming one, we center their first few weeks around slowly immersing them into the Skillshare universe. We provide plenty of resources and documentation to help them adjust to our processes, acclimate to new tools and decode internal acronyms. We pair each new team member with a new-hire buddy, providing a consistent and friendly face throughout the onboarding process. In tandem, we set up welcome chats with other teammates from different departments to share their experience and help connect them with people they might not ordinarily get to work with.
To further provide an opportunity for cross-functional exposure and create an immersive sense of the organization from the start, we developed our Skillshare 101 series. These 30-minute sessions introduce new hires to our various teams, giving a closer look at things like how we connect with and build our community. Additionally, our weekly Town Hall meetings continue this kind of direct communication with teammates as well as the leadership team.
