Once you've posted the opportunity and applications began to roll in, how should you assess candidates for a remote position? How should you conduct interviews and what should you ask? Hiring can be a complex, nuanced process, but if you approach it with forethought and strategy, you can discover team members who will thrive remotely and who will help support a strong team culture. For hiring managers who are accustomed to doing in-person interviews, there's often concern about how you'll be able to assess a candidate's intangible qualities. In particular, the popular concept of culture fit via remote interviews. Here's how we approach this process for our team of over 1,300 people. First, work with recruiters who have remote experience, including some who may have worked in hybrid remote environments, and who understand the challenges and negative experiences that candidates may have had in that format. Next, instead of culture fit, adjust your thinking to focus on values. Later in this course, we'll discuss developing strong company values and why. When you have clear values for your team, you can discuss them in the interview with candidates and learn how those concepts resonate. Instead of looking for team members you'd want to socialize with, which can lead to biased thinking, instead, look for people who are able and willing to work with your value system and to apply your values independently in the course of their work. Ultimately, new team members shouldn't be fitting into a rigid structure, they should be adding to your culture with values as a foundation. That can be a difficult concept to grasp, so let's get more specific. It isn't necessary for you to hire people who have previous experience working remotely. In fact, some people who may have worked in a hybrid remote environment may have had bad experiences or could be bringing faulty expectations about how a healthy remote team operates. Instead, look for people who have experience working independently and with autonomy. Focus on candidates who have a history of being self-motivated, starting, leading, and completing projects with little direction. While people who aren't self-motivated can enjoy remote work, they will usually require more check-ins and more synchronous communication which can slow things down in a remote environment. Most people who come from traditional work environments are used to micromanagement. Whether you're hiring an individual contributor or a manager of people, look for people who would do the opposite. You want someone who is confident in making decisions without the details being entirely clear and unafraid to adjust things during the process, what we call iteration. Finally, look for excellent communication skills. In a remote environment, the ability to communicate clearly through writing is going to come into play every single day, and because there will also be video and phone calls, your ideal candidate should be able to express themselves clearly and succinctly. Conduct interviews exactly in the format you'll be using to work together, written messages and video calls, in order to get a sense for how communication will work. When conducting an interview, keep in mind that panel style interviews don't work well remotely. Even if the interviewers are in a room together, it's an awkward experience. Instead, stick to one-on-one interviews over video or phone with preference given to video calls. In some cultures, this can be challenging for interviewers as well as interviewees, so ensure everyone involved is well prepared. Please see our linked resources on how to communicate expectations so that candidates can prepare for the interview. Here are some of our recruiters recommended questions. Keep in mind that there aren't always right and wrong answers to these questions, but that they're designed to help you understand a candidate more effectively. To create a universally inclusive interview process, especially when hiring globally, we recommend having your interviewers and your recruiters regularly complete implicit bias training. But it's also important to create a level playing field for candidates. Always offer candidates the option to reserve a co-working space, a laptop, or any other resources they need to conduct the interview with the costs reimbursed confidentially, and always remind your interviewers that candidates may not be calling from an ideal environment, excuse background noise, excuse connection problems, and excuse any other issues. Keep your focus on the candidate, not their environment.