Six RED FLAGS to watch out for when hiring remote employees…

Summary

• I'm passionate about teaching others how to spot bad hires in a remote workplace due to my experience managing three virtual companies.
• It's crucial to understand the difference between good churn, where unsuitable employees leave early, and bad churn, where long-term employees leave, as this affects company health.
• Spotting red flags in a virtual environment is harder than in person; you can't rely on physical cues and must instead notice subtler signs.
• If a new hire is slow to respond on primary communication tools, it's a warning signal. They might be managing personal responsibilities or other jobs during work hours.
• Pay attention to the lack of good news from the team about a new hire. Team feedback is essential, and no positive comments usually mean the new person is not a good fit.
• Enforce a camera-on policy during virtual meetings. A new hire's reluctance to turn on the camera could indicate disengagement or a lack of commitment.
• Be wary of new hires who call in sick very early on, as it may indicate dishonesty or, in extreme cases, fraudulent activity.
• A new hire's attire should match the virtual workplace dress code. Dressing inappropriately can reveal a lack of engagement or seriousness about the role.
• Good hires prepare their tech setup before starting. Red flags include not being familiar with necessary tools like Zoom or Slack, as this shows a lack of initiative.
• Whenever you detect these red flags, it's important to immediately address the issue with the new hire to understand the underlying cause. Often, a lack of a good explanation is a larger issue in itself.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest keeping an eye out for new hires who are slow to respond on apps like Slack or Asana. If someone takes too long to answer, they might have too much going on, like another job or family stuff, and can't focus on work.

Also, listen to what the team says about new hires. If no one has anything nice to say about them, it's a bad sign. That means the new person might not be a good match.

Make sure everyone turns their cameras on during virtual meetings. If someone doesn't want to, they might not be all in on their job.

Be careful if a person takes sick days really soon after starting. It could mean they're not being honest with you.

Check how new hires dress too. They should follow the work dress code, even if we're all remote. If they don't, it tells us they're not serious about their job.

Good team members get their technology ready before their first day. So, if someone doesn't know how to use Zoom or other tools, and they're late because of it, that's not okay.

When you spot these warnings, you need to talk to them straight away. Ask them what's up. If they can't explain it well, that's probably an even bigger problem.

Remember, these tips can help you keep your team strong and avoid having the wrong people stick around too long.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"Good churn is defined as people who, if a company has high turnover but it's in the first six months and it's that you let those people go, that's considered good churn"

– Leila Hormozi

"No good news is typically not good news when it comes to new hires"

– Leila Hormozi

"Your team honestly are the best advocates because they have to work with this person day in and day out"

– Leila Hormozi

"People are more productive when they dress in a manner that is in accordance with their future self"

– Leila Hormozi

"Once you notice the stuff investigate, talk to them, ask them, clarify why it's happening"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

what i want to share with you today is how to spot a bad hire in a remote workplace and the reason i am very passionate about this is with three virtual companies one in service one software one physical products um i've had to deal with this a lot and you see the commonalities and i probably have a story for each one of these red flags and so i want to share it with you because i think that um the goal is always to have good churn in a company right and so good turn is defined as people who like if a company has high turnover but it's in the first six months and it's that you let those people go that's considered good turn versus bad churn is that it's people that are you know they've been there for years and they're leaving that would be considered bad churn and so i want to show you how to avoid bad churn um and to only have good turn in your company because i've had a lot of turn in my company but it's all been good churn i want to explain this uh the reason i think it's and i say virtual or remote it could be applied to either but i do think that actually being able to spot the red flags in a virtual place is much harder than in person because i know that anyone who's worked in an in-person office you know you can pretty much tell them like the first day or two if somebody's going to be a good fit just by like how they act their behavior their attitude because those are like fundamental things that you want in a new hire you know somebody comes in they're negative they're not talking to anyone their body language is bad like it's easy to point off right off the bat that person shouldn't be there versus in a virtual place people can hide behind the camera they can hide behind the computer and so you have to be able to see the little spots and then pull the thread and pull that thread until you can figure out what's really going on and so i want to explain to you the red flags that i use the first one is going to be that they are slow to respond right so whether you use asana email slack whatever it may be on whatever your primary communication tool is if they are slow to respond here's what has happened to me the many times people have been slow to respond one they didn't tell me that they were taking care and homeschooling five children while they were also doing their job turns out they were only working like 30 minutes a day um the second one was that i had someone i hired on they wouldn't respond for a couple hours it turned out after i let them go that they actually were still doing consulting work and they had about i think eight companies that they were consulting with on the side this is an executive and so slow to respond has never been good when someone is first on the job you would think somebody who wants to do well will be fast to respond they want to make a good impression they want to be like i'm here i'm ready et cetera now of course you always want to set expectations at the beginning but i do that and so if you set the expectations of what a speedy response is and that person's still slow i would keep pulling that thread because often especially because it's work from home some people think that they can kind of bypass and they can get by with doing another job working say two or three jobs having clients on the side for a consulting gig having a ton of kids at home and homeschooling and just kind of like doing this between hours there's a lot of stuff that people can try and pull and so that's the first one i would say the second one i would say is no good news this should seem obvious but what i think happens a lot and this happened with one of our um portfolio companies the other day is i was they were trying to figure out if this person was the right fit and i said well what's the team say about them like what kind of you know what's their feedback and they're like oh i guess i haven't even asked them for feedback i'm like how long has this person been there they're like a month and i was like you don't know what the team thinks and i was like i bet you they can't wait for this person to be gone and so ironically enough they go to the team the team's like yeah they suck and i don't even think they're working boom they were gone right and so your team honestly are the best advocates because they have to work with this person day in and day out they don't want to work with some schmuck who's going to give them all the work right so if you ask your best teammates on that team what they think of this new person if they have no good news no good news is typically not good news when it comes to new hires i can tell you that much i've never hired someone and when people have had no feedback for me for the first week that person has never stuck and it's usually because that person doesn't make a good impression they're slow they don't have a good attitude they don't stand out they're not enthusiastic about the job they're not taking initiative they're just not into it and so that's why no good news is usually a red flag the third is camera off so i have a camera on policy in all of my companies which i am very strict about like your camera is on if you're on a call if you're on a meeting and so much to the point that i personally message people to let them know on a meeting if their camera's off that's not okay we don't do that here it's written handbook it's all over everyone sees it everyone else has their camera on obviously if somebody has something big that came up they'll let me know and they'll message me and tell me why their camera isn't on but what i've seen is that the people that are disengaged have their cameras off and so this has happened to me with quite a few new hires which is the first day they show up to a meeting i had it so far as to a woman showed up to our 101 when it was just two of us on zoom and her camera was off and i was like can you please turn your camera on i can't have a one-on-one with you without your camera on and she was like i just look really bad i was like this isn't gonna work and so needless to say camera off big red flag usually don't come back from that one the fourth is calling in sick pretty much immediately i've had this happen a number of times um the worst situation i'll tell you was that i had a guy who we hired him and on his second day he calls in sick um tells us he has a very serious disease um and says he must take and use all of his sick and vacation time immediately right and we have like a really great benefits package so i was like that's a lot of time this seems really weird turns out he actually was pulling medical fraud and so he wanted to get hired to have us pay him while he was on leave and then had a fake doctor write a fake doctor's note to then try and show us that he had some terminal disease which didn't exist so that was my worst case scenario best case scenario is that i had somebody who said that they were sick turns out they actually had a vacation they had pre-planned and they lied and so then they took sick time in their first week for three days we ended up not keeping that person not out of the fact that they had the vacation like if they had just told us they've been fine but the fact that they would be dishonest right and so that is another one of the red flags the fifth one i will say is that they just dress out of step and what do i mean by that right okay well we're a virtual workplace and so i still have dress code requirements because i believe that people are more productive when they dress in a manner that is in accordance with their future self who they want to show up as i think it builds confidence there's been lots of study stuff on this and so i don't want someone showing up in sweatpants right it's basically business casual or you wear swag given to you by the company or polos etc what we provide um and i've had people show up to their first day second day of work and they look like they just rolled out of bed and what that tells me is that they're not engaged they're not excited and they don't feel there's anyone to impress right they're not taking the job seriously and this is important in a virtual workplace because in lots of virtual workplaces you are just as professional as you would be in office but often people don't have the kahonas to show up in their pajamas to an office but they will do it virtually which sucks and then the last one and this is uh one that i have just time over time again uh have come in to run into uh which is that they don't have their tech set up before they start this is very interesting um i don't know why it's correlated with people who we end up not you know sticking with but for some reason people have been bad hires the good hires what they do is they go figure out how to use zoom gmail asana slack like they go watch how-to videos before they show up to work what i've noticed with bad hires that they show up and then they're late to meetings and then they say oh it's because i don't know how to use zoom or they don't use slack and it's like oh i'm not responding sound and i use slack and what i've noticed that they don't take their initiative and then they wait for everyone to try and teach them and that especially doesn't work in a virtual workplace because you need people that are more autonomous right like i'm not sitting there seeing that you can't go through things and so that has also been a red flag where a lot of people who have not had the text set up ahead of time and done their own research just don't end up working out and so the six red flags slow to respond right you do not want that uh no good news meaning the team doesn't say anything good about them if you don't hear anything in the first week i'm serious like i've just never had a workout uh their camera's off they just don't show their face on meetings um and they're not receptive to when you ask them to they call in sick that can mean many things um they dress out of steps so they're essentially not dressing in accordance with the dress code or even even they could be just sliding by but they look like they rolled out of bed and then lastly they don't set the tech ahead of time and so i hope those were useful uh anytime i notice any one of these things when i first hire somebody i immediately investigate so that's what i would encourage you to do is that once you notice the stuff investigate talk to them ask them clarify why it's happening and oftentimes the reason it's red flag is that when you ask them why it's happening they don't have a good reason and then that is a bigger problem on its own and so if you like this video go ahead and hit subscribe i will see you on the next one