Remote Work: 30 Questions to Pre-qualify Candidates
By: Florent Merian
Tags: Best Practices, Remote Work, Hiring Tips, Hiring

The #1 challenge in (remote) companies

As an early-stage company, hiring the best people is challenging. According to a study from First Round, 75% of founders list it as their main concern. As for remote companies, it’s no exception.

So when I designed the application process to hire our new team members in the marketing team, I started to look at how other remote companies handle this challenge for inspiration and best practices. I analyzed processes from 50 B2B SaaS companies like Clearbit, Help Scout, Zapier.

Here’s what I found.

Who should read this?

If you’re a manager in a remote company

If you look for best practices in your hiring process, this story highlights my analysis results. I hope you can find some insights to help you hire the best talents.

If you’re looking for a job in a remote company

If you look for your dream job in a remote company, you might find this story interesting too, to know what to expect and prep your material. It should significantly help you in your process.

30 frequently asked questions to pre-qualify remote candidates

6 out of 10 remote companies ask candidates to answer a few questions when applying. On average, they ask 5 questions, from general topics to more specific role-related ones.

Working remotely may involve working in different time zones with your co-workers — so it requires good writing skills. Remote companies value the written culture, and the hiring process is no exception. It helps pre-qualify candidates to filter out the noise and hire only the best writers.

If you have to choose between several candidates for a position, always choose the best writer. — Jason Fried, Basecamp

Below I broke down those questions to list the 30 most frequent ones.

General Interview Questions From Remote Companies (10 questions)

Tell us about yourself. Tell us more about your current job. Are you happy there? How did you learn about this role? Why do you want to work with us? Why are you interested in this role? Why do you think you’ll stand out for this job? What makes you unique for this role? Have you ever worked remotely before? What excites you about it? Have you considered starting your own business? What would be your strategy for the next 90 days? What value would you add to the team on Day 1? When can you start working with us?

If you’re looking for a job in a remote company, make sure to view this presentation to help you practice your next job interview:

Marketing Role-Related Interview Questions From Remote Companies (20 questions)

How many years of experience do you have in a marketing role, and in what capacity? Tell us about a time you faced a work challenge that you didn’t have an answer for right away. How did you persevere to solve that challenge? Tell us about a personal or professional goal you achieved and how you reached it. Tell us about a marketing campaign that resulted in significant or unexpected learnings Tell us about the campaign optimization win you’re most proud of–how you identified subpar performance, your plan of improvement/optimization, and results. We’re running campaigns on multiple channels–explain your approach/model to optimize their performances. Explain a situation where you’ve had to learn on the fly in a previous role. What experience have you had closing deals in a client-facing role? What made you successful? Tell us about a time when you managed a detail-oriented project through completion. What did you enjoy about it? Tell us how you led the go-to-market strategy and execution of your previous B2B SaaS company. What were the outcomes of your efforts? The ideal candidate for this role is both creative and data-driven. Can you share one experience where data-driven insights impacted your marketing approach (ex. a campaign, product launch, or similar)? How do you define the role? What companies do you admire for their marketing? Why? What’s a good product poorly marketed, and why? What would you do differently? What elements contribute to a successful product launch? According to you, what’s our value proposition? Can you share more about what you imagine doing to help us grow? What do you enjoy doing in your current role? What would be your dream role? What do you love to do and how can you help us? Any ideas on how we could improve?

Over to you

Thanks for your read! Over to you, what are your best practices to hire the best talents remotely?