Momentum Episode 3:
Remote Hiring

Maintaining momentum it's common knowledge that hiring the right people is one of the most important things a company can do.

You can have the best technology and infrastructure in the world but at the end of the day the people and the passion and the talent they bring to the table are the heart of any business.

Now hiring was always an involved process and since the pandemic you could argue it's become even harder.

So how do you ensure you're still hiring the same caliber of employee when you can't even meet them or shake their hand?

How does a company who predominantly relied on in-person hiring suddenly transition to a virtual hiring process?

Let's talk about it.

Hey everyone welcome to Momentum a podcast by Jotform where we talk about technology productivity tips best practices and strategic insights that help us move forward in business and in life.

I'm Elliot your host and I'm back once again with Chad Reed Jotform's VP of Marketing Communications to talk about how he hires these days.

Chad welcome back.

Thanks Elliot happy to be back.

What a fun topic.

Oh yes I know this is one of your favorites.

I know that what we're talking about today remote hiring is definitely something you've had to make a big adjustment with in the last year.

Jotform is growing rapidly even since the pandemic so you've had the good burden of having to spearhead a pretty quick expansion of our marketing team here in San Francisco.

That's a great position to be in of course but still brings its own sets of challenges to be sure.

Before the pandemic I think you mostly just hired in person.

So to kick us off can you talk a little bit about your transition to remote hiring and some of the challenges you faced with it in the last year?

Yeah you're right I mean it's actually a really great position to be in to have to adapt to remote hiring.

You know we're in a fortunate position to be in a period of growth and then you know a lot of the challenges of remote hiring or just challenges of hiring.

Hiring is a really difficult thing and just the way our company is structured or has been structured.

Our San Francisco office is kind of autonomous with hiring where our HR department is in Turkey.

A lot of the hiring falls on my shoulders if we want to add people to the marketing team which has got to be pretty cool in a way.

You have a direct hand and a lot of the people that are on our team you've hired them actually personally 100 percent.

I would actually go as far as saying it's probably the most important thing I do and probably the biggest mark I've actually made on the company and on our team is just the hiring.

I think it's really important and a great skill for anyone to learn so it's been awesome but yeah it's challenging.

It's challenging to kind of build that rapport build that connection with someone throughout the interview process when you're relying on video or phone calls or something like that.

We've kind of made do you know I think Zoom or Google Meet is sufficient for what it is.

You're not going to like it always feels like you're doing a little bit of a show or presentation or something like that.

It's not as personal so that part's tricky and it's also tricky for the candidate but you know otherwise it's what we all have to do and it's been fine.

I think it's just a shift in expectations in general because that's the way pretty much every place is now.

But can you walk us through sort of the difference in the process like what an interview process looked like pre-pandemic in person and what it looks like now post-pandemic virtually?

I think it was pretty similar.

Maybe the one thing that stuck out as a difference is I do like an initial I should probably do one extra step.

Now that everything is remote I do like a 30 minute really brief one-on-one or maybe small group with a candidate.

That was so short that I never would have had them come into the office for such a short interview but it also allows me flexibility to schedule a lot of them.

You can actually get more information than you realize in 30 minutes from right you know you've been on those interviews too so you really get a sense of someone.

We can do four or five six in a day and that's actually been a real benefit.

Even when we transition back into the office it makes a lot of sense to continue doing some sort of initial video call.

That's beyond the screenings I do like my own screening process using Jotform even which we'll probably talk about later.

I think the interviews were probably longer when people were in office coming in.

There are actually groups of people and being in the office it lends itself to a lot more casual fluid discussion.

We feel like we all have to keep it to a certain meeting time or something when it's on video.

So it actually sounds like a good thing like the interviews even the longer interviews tend to be a little bit shorter when they're over videos.

I think it's been something we've done pretty well and we'll probably take some of the best practices from that and transfer to when we're back in the office.

I could see maybe even some kind of hybrid version where you have a touch-based call on Zoom or Google Meets and then maybe the larger group meeting is actually in person when they get to meet people in the office.

Currently we really just have two interviews for the whole process right now.

Was that similar to what it was pre-pandemic? I wasn't here pre-pandemic did you have been coming twice was it really just one long interview or how was that part changed?

It was pretty much just one long interview I think it was a two-hour interview for just about every role that we had.

Which is quite different from a lot of companies that have put people through the ringers with like eight individual interviews with different contributors.

I don't want to waste anyone's time especially I'm aware of the time of my colleagues.

I don't want to make them do individual interviews or a whole day loss of productivity where everyone on the marketing team is finding a new colleague.

I understand that's critical and they need to weigh in but if we can condense it to a shorter period of time and do small batch group interviews and get the whole process done in two hours that's also respectful to the candidate.

A lot of them have other jobs or other obligations and asking them to spend a full day in the office with us is a big ask and unnecessary too because I think we get a lot of the information we need in a pretty short period of time.

We try to keep our interview process relatively short which is a really cool thing about Jotform.

I have a couple close friends going through interview processes right now and they've had upwards of six interviews and they don't even know how many are left.

Just a company being transparent about expectations with interviews I think is so valuable.

Jotform has two longer interviews but with a lot more intentionality and structure.

I remember from my interview I had to give a presentation a take-home challenge to show my presenting skills and then answer questions for everyone.

We have it written down on a doc so there's no retreading it keeps it efficient and everyone gets a vibe at the same time of who this person is and if they're going to be welcome on the team.

It makes me mad that companies drag out interviews for six months and ask the same questions repeatedly.

We have a doc with the questions we're going to ask and make sure we don't retread because we want to be efficient for ourselves and the interviewee.

That's just hiring etiquette in general not specific to being virtual or remote.

Sometimes interviewees don't even know they're interviewing so it's hard to schedule multiple coffee breaks or sick times but scheduling a couple hours for something like this is better.

It's an important philosophical approach that I appreciate the way Jotform does it.

With the transition to remote are we hiring and do you think companies are focusing more on hiring for remote positions or still trying to fill positions centered geographically around where we are?

I think that's a question many companies are asking and it's so role dependent that it's hard to say.

For some roles they don't have to be in the office as often like content roles or writing roles.

That limits your candidate pool but the key benefit of remote hiring is that you can really open it up nationally by many multiples.

For a lot of positions you have to reasonably be in the Bay Area like video roles.

Our senior videographer producing this podcast can't do this remotely in the same capacity.

For those reasons you and I can't be remote either we're kind of tethered here.

It'll be interesting to see how companies approach that going forward.

Jotform hopes to go back to the office and some companies are going remote first or remote forward.

I'm personally excited to get back to the office at least a few days a week and start to have those touch points.

I still think it's nice to have a hub of people nearby in the same time zone which makes it more relatable.

Let's move on to how you actually mentioned using Jotform in the interview process.

Do you want to talk about how you work that in and why?

I would say one of the most important ways I use Jotform is actually for hiring.

I use it to kick things off as a form screen.

Phone screens are the worst I really don't like them especially not being an HR professional.

A quick introductory call to make sure they're really interested in the position and clarify some things on their background.

Get a sense of salary expectations because we don't want misalignment on that.

Both parties not really knowing what the other is thinking can lead to surprises.

It saves time for sure.

Early on I was doing phone screens trying to weed out or identify candidates coming in for interviews.

Another thing I didn't like about phone screens is I don't have very good handwriting or note-taking abilities so I wasn't getting great information.

I swapped that process out for a form screen where I basically asked the same questions I would have asked on a phone call.

I can fire those off without scheduling time on my calendar and get responses back.

I try to leave room at the end for questions they have for me and then I'll hop on and answer questions in an email format.

That's a bit of a filter because you need people to proactively fill out the form and you can gauge how much effort they put into crafting their answers.

I've found it really helpful and I appreciate when people ask questions so it's not a burden.

It's all transcribed right there for you so you don't need to design your notes it's in their words.

If the position benefits from a portfolio there's a link for that so it just gets all the information right where I need it.

I'm so used to it at this point I don't really know how other companies go through that first step process it feels like a lot of work.

After the form screen what comes next?

Jotform has amazing new appointment features so we're using an appointment scheduler form which is really time-saving.

Anything that gets rid of the back and forth of scheduling is helpful.

We have Google Calendar integration so I can sync it with my work calendar and fire it off like I have some times I can do a batch of interviews.

It's definitely been a big time saver all this stuff is saving me time that's the whole point of using Jotform.

We've just updated our appointment scheduler function and put a webinar out on that so you should check it out.

In the virtual age instead of emailing back and forth you set a form with available times and book it which integrates with your calendar.

Another thing we do are challenge submissions or take-home assignments which we facilitate through Jotform.

We give them a prompt for a take-home challenge depending on the role that they can work on and present.

We want them to have it submitted before they come in for their interview like a writing sample.

We have a challenge submission form where they can send a file and it keeps it easy.

We usually integrate that with Slack into a marketing channel so everyone involved in the interview has it right there.

Setting up and sending a lot of these materials you can see them all at one time on Jotform tables.

You can have the form submission, schedule appointment, challenge submission all linked to the same table so you have one place to access relevant information from any candidate.

After the interview we also do evaluations using Jotform survey functions.

You set up a survey to rate a few criteria of them which factors into your decision because you can compare apples to apples.

It's nice to have it metric based and have people evaluate based on specific criteria like how well they answered questions, how prepared they were, how was their take-home challenge.

The block of text where I ask everyone to give their thoughts is really important because it's open-ended and gives a holistic sense of how a candidate performed.

It gets rid of group discussion bias because we used to huddle up after and discuss a candidate and people would be influenced by others' opinions.

If you really like the candidate but hear others say they were boring it’s hard to be the person disagreeing.

That’s why some boards have difficulty making decisions due to pluralistic ignorance where people don’t voice concerns if no one else does.

With a marketing team of 10 to 12 people, huddling can make some uncomfortable sharing so semi-autonomous surveys help.

You can objectively tally up scores and see average responses on culture fit from all people which is a good indicator.

I do the same when passing a recommendation to our CEO showing average scores to back up the decision.

Moving on I thought it would be interesting to address the loss of perks like free lunch Fridays and the cool SF tech office experience due to remote hiring.

Have you had to adjust or revise anything when it comes to that or do you feel like it hasn’t been too much of a big deal?

We just put a notation next to benefits that aren’t available during the pandemic and that will hopefully be open to everyone when we go back.

Those perks are a recruiting tool we’re unable to tap into right now and who knows what it looks like when we all go back.

We try to cultivate a sense of culture with remote happy hours and trivia games especially for new hires.

It’s forced us to be really careful about onboarding and create additional touch points with new hires so they’re not on their own day one or two.

I remember my first week on the job getting the prompt to schedule virtual coffee dates with team members which was clever to get familiar with Jotform and the team.

Some roles have more interaction in the office than others like content writers might have less interaction than you or I do.

Who from our side generally participates in Zoom interviews and at what stage do they come in? Was it similar to the in-person setup?

We’re evaluating how we do group interviews and how many people are involved but my philosophy was everyone should have some opinion on who we’re bringing in.

Our marketing team is small enough that everyone should have some opinion because we share a small office with collaboration even between different roles.

Now we’re a little too big to drag everyone into the interview process and have to be conscious of people’s time.

Taking a dozen people into an interview for a junior level hire is expensive in terms of resources.

We’re adjusting to have leadership or team leads represent their team in making cultural decisions and anyone directly on that team involved in the interview.

That shrinks the total number of interviewers but is a better experience and a product of growing which is a good issue to have.

Now let’s talk about tips and etiquette for remote interviewees.

Any advice for anyone trying to get a job in this pandemic era and going through the interview process?

One good tip is dressing for a Zoom interview.

People who dress up for a Zoom interview show they’re taking it seriously and I appreciate that.

I never dock someone who shows up in a t-shirt because they can look at employee pictures and match the culture but effort is important.

I ranked the five biggest interview mistakes that often disqualify candidates.

The first is not doing research.

If they haven’t done basic company or role research it shows they’re not interested in the role.

In the age of LinkedIn one-click applying is a blessing and a curse because many candidates don’t read the job description.

Some look good on paper but don’t really care about the job.

Step one should be common sense but shockingly some people aren’t prepared to talk about the role they’re interviewing for.

Number two is not having a good answer for why you want to work at Jotform specifically.

Bad answers are just repeating the job description or saying they think they can do the job which shows no intentionality.

You should say you love what the company is doing, read blog posts, tried the product and really want to be involved.

The worst answer is I need a job or my skills match the position which doesn’t show intentionality.

Number three is not sending a thank you follow-up.

It’s not about being thanked but about reasserting interest and enthusiasm for the position.

Not sending one makes me think they’re not that interested.

It’s also a tool for candidates to address anything that didn’t go well or continue the conversation.

It’s still etiquette and shows you know what you’re doing and are interested.

Number four is slow communication which is a huge red flag for me.

Be responsive especially when scheduling or post-interview communications.

What about the opposite? Being too persistent or pushy with follow-ups?

I did recently have someone who followed up three times before we could schedule an interview which was too much.

It felt ironic because he didn’t do research or have good answers but was persistent.

There’s a balance and common sense is key.

As an employer what’s your stance on providing honest feedback to candidates?

I’m frank with anyone who asks but don’t give unsolicited feedback or to lazy interviewees.

If they ask I provide feedback to help them improve and sometimes tell them they were awesome but someone else knocked it out of the park.

Yesterday I gave blunt feedback to a candidate who didn’t research the role but was likable otherwise.

He appreciated the feedback which was positive and hopefully helps him in the future.

Number five is not asking questions.

If you’re interested you’re going to ask questions and I provide many opportunities to do so including in the initial form screen.

I prefer candidates to over ask than under ask.

I don’t like when someone interrupts or steers the conversation and I don’t get to ask my questions.

If questions are asked as a response to mine it’s an actual dialogue which is good.

You’re good at setting up the conversation with time at the end for questions which smart candidates catch on to.

Not asking questions shows lack of basic interest and you’ve got to show you want it.

There you have it the top five no-nos for remote interviewees: not doing research, not having a good answer for why you want to work at the company, not sending a thank you follow-up, slow communication, and not asking questions.

Is there anything else you’d like to cover about the whole process or anything we didn’t talk about or like to end on?

I think we covered some ground I would just say use Jotform.

We really do use our own product a lot for this interview process and it’s become a staple.

It introduces candidates to our product, causes us to use our product, and is helpful all around.

Thank you everyone for joining us I believe that’s all our time for today.

Next time we’ll be talking about public relations with Annabelle Mall our Director of Communications giving Chad Reed a break.

Thanks for joining us third time’s charm thanks for having me.