Who would have expected that remote work will become a reality of ours so soon? Before the pandemic started, the expected growth rate of full-time remote work over the next 5 years was 30%. Now, this number equals 65%.
There is no doubt that remote work has numerous benefits for both employees and employers, such as increased productivity, a decrease in commute time, improved employee retention, etc. Hiring managers got access to a wider talent pool than ever before, including employees from other countries with competitive hourly rates.
At the same time, it brings new challenges to the table. For example, you have a business in the US that needs a software developer. You could hire an offshore development team, which seems to be a cost-effective decision. But together with benefits, lots of questions arise: where do you find an outsourcing partner, can you rely on contractors that are so far away from you, would the culture differences negatively impact the dev team performance? This kind of question and fear can keep you from hiring talents outside your country and make you give up so many benefits.
Hiring platforms can be an answer to all of your questions. In this article, we are going to define what makes them safe so you can use them without any second thoughts.
What Makes Hiring Platforms Safe?
#1 Regulations
Every hiring platform has defined stages of the hiring process which are usually shown for users on an internal dashboard. Both — candidates and employers — know what is expected from them while moving with the flow of the hiring platform. The process is clear and transparent.
It definitely gives you a feeling of security when you know what to expect in each step of employment.
#2 Reputation
All businesses have an image to keep and a reputation to maintain, especially when it is about big companies. One mistake or fraud action on well-known hiring platforms can destroy what they have been building for years — the story will blow up on the Internet, they will lose trust, and fewer people will use their services.
Consequently, they are doing everything that they can to prevent fraud on their platforms. Using an effective applicant tracking system, or meticulously moderating talent profiles, or conducting the skills tests for new applicants are some of the measures that the hiring platforms undertake to make sure that they can offer skillful and reliable candidates to hire.
#3 Talent Vetting
Top hiring platforms let only skillful employees in. However, how can they do this when there are so many new candidates every day and they come from all around the world? Different platforms offer different recruiting solutions.
For example, Upwork has an open review system. It means that you can look through what other employers have to say about this candidate. It is a good decision since one can write whatever they want in CVs and descriptions and all their true skills (or lack of them) are coming to the surface during actual work.
Another hiring platform that is focused on building remote development teams, YouTeam, has a double-stage vetting process. In the first stage, the platform verifies outsourcing agencies that can later submit their engineers to the YouTeam’s talent pool. The next stage is additional independent testing of these developers via HackerRank for Work which is an example of the next aspect that makes hiring platforms safe — skill verification.
#4 Test for Skills Verification
As soon as a user registers on the site as a job seeker, they have to go through a skill test. It differs according to the positions and is absolutely independent. No one can falsify the results. The test score is usually mentioned in the profile and the owner of this profile cannot hide it — there is no such option. Thus, it’s easy to check whether a candidate created a truthful CV.
It is an example of extra work that hiring platforms do in order to provide the best match within their systems and minimize the risks for their users.
#5 Simplified Tracking Process
When you’re connected via the platform, it’s easier to be in the loop even without overcommunication. You needn’t worry about your contractor keeping silent for days when you see them regularly present on the platform. Or you shouldn’t constantly ask for work progress updates as long as you are notified about changing task statuses by the platform. The working process becomes transparent. Consequently, no one can hide something and manipulate information; you have fewer reasons to be worried.
#6 Conflict Resolution Scenario
Hiring platforms provide support from professionals, whose main task is to resolve any conflict situations between you and the person you want to hire. Usually, it is not easy to do when you and your employees are a thousand miles apart — offline gives you more possibilities on that matter. Yet, hiring platforms have specifically trained people who know everything about conflict moderations online.
Moreover, those professionals are a way to show that the platforms still care and support you, even after you found your candidate.
#7 Secure Payment System
As we have already seen, hiring and platforms do their best jobs to protect you from fraud. However, it is also true that there are just too many people joining every day and once in a while, fraud professionals can get on the platform. It is not a reason to be afraid of losing your money. A contractor will not receive the payment until you are satisfied with their work. This secure payment system is inbuilt in the majority of hiring platforms that work as a marketplace.
What Can Make Hiring Platforms Even Safer?
One of the most common fears associated with remote hiring via platforms is that employers don’t know their remote contractors as well as they know their in-house employees. It’s hard to trust your company data to someone you’ve never seen in person. One day, freelancers can stop answering your questions and disappear from the platform. The risks can be even higher if you hire a remote developer, as companies trust them direct access to the product or a data analyst who will know the most sensitive and secret information.
Those are common fears that employers face. There is a solution through — identity verification. If you know that the person behind the name and contact details is real, you know how to reach them when they are not online and who to sue in the worst case.
Secure hiring platforms can get a document with a confirmation of identity (name, age, nationality). The process looks like this:
- a person is asked to show their ID document via webcam or smartphone. It is a live process;
- a person is asked to take a selfie with a document via the same device.
That’s it! Such a simple verification process helps to establish a more trusting relationship between the employer and the employee, so they could openly share their vision and goals for a certain project. And that helps to lay the basis for fruitful cooperation.
Conclusion
Remote work offers employers a wide range of professionals from all over the world but it raises fears of fraud, or money, and data loss as well. Hiring platforms eliminate those fears by clear regulations of the process, ensuring the best service for the sake of their reputation, conflict moderators and easy to track process that help to avoid miscommunications between employers and employees, talent vetting and skill test that ensure the best candidates only, and payment system that allows you to pay only if you are satisfied with the work done.
Hiring platforms can provide more security by adding a verification process — ID document check done via AI. Doubtless, this is the future of top hiring platforms that strive to give the best experience to their users.
Image by Katie White from Pixabay
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