Now that you have made the decision to work remotely and started your job search, the next step is to prepare for the interview. Ask anyone who’s transitioned from working in an office to working from home and they’ll tell you: It’s not the same. While working from home comes with some undeniable luxuries (like no commute and the ability to work in your own environment), it poses some unique challenges, too (like less facetime with your manager and more distractions). Hiring managers are well aware of these differences and drawbacks, so when they interview candidates for remote roles, they’re going to be looking for people who not only have the skills to do the job itself, but also understand what it takes to successfully work from home.
“Remote work—whether temporary or permanent—requires a different skill set and type of experience than in-office jobs,” says Neal Taparia, founder of Unscrambled Words, a startup with a primarily distributed team. So while the remote jobs you’re pursuing may be very similar to in-office roles you’ve had in the past, working from home requires a different work style.
That means when it comes time to interview, you’ll need to be ready to answer questions that are focused around a specific set of remote work skills—in addition to the usual interview questions you might get for a traditional in-office job and questions specific to the role or industry.
What Are Interviewers Looking for When Hiring for Remote Jobs?
The skills and experience that make you successful in a remote role can be more focused around work styles and habits. Certain traits that would only have been moderately important in an office environment become essential when working from home.
While every company is different, these are the most common traits recruiters and hiring managers will be looking for when interviewing a candidate for a remote job:
Reliability. First and foremost, your potential future team needs to know they can count on you to show up to meetings, adhere to deadlines, and keep them updated on your work. Building trust with your prospective coworkers by showing them that they can count on you will be crucial—and that starts during the interview process. Showing up on time and well prepared is a great way to start building that credibility. Bonus points if you’re armed with a real-world example of how exceptionally reliable you are!
Communication. Because almost all communication is done via Zoom, Slack, and email, how well a person communicates via those mediums is even more important. People need to be able to establish trust, build rapport, and express ideas clearly and succinctly to avoid misunderstandings.
Independence. You can’t tap on someone’s shoulder for help when working remotely. You have to be comfortable to a large extent working independently and finding answers on your own. If you’re always Slack messaging questions, you could become a distraction to your team. Understanding when to reach out for help and when to try to figure something out for yourself will be especially important. So you’ll want to be prepared to discuss your resourceful, independent work style (using examples from your past experience whenever possible) during your interviews.
Initiative. Managers can’t peek over your desk to see if you’re lost or idle, so it becomes significantly more important that you raise concerns [proactively] if you’re stuck or otherwise need assistance. Asking questions throughout your interview process, following up with a thank you note after every call, and preparing for every interview in advance are all great ways to demonstrate your proactive nature.
Collaboration. It can be harder to get aligned with your team when everyone is working from home, so being a good collaborator (and communicator!) is crucial. There are myriad ways this may come up during your interview process—you may be asked what successful collaboration looks like to you, for example, or your prospective manager might want you to share a story about how you’ve collaborated on projects in the past.
Organization. It’s easy for items to slip through the crack when you’re working remotely. Interviewers will want to know you can stay organized and regularly loop your team in on your work to help avoid unnecessary holdups. You can demonstrate your stellar organization skills by staying on top of your interview schedules, taking notes during calls, having a list of questions prepared in advance, and, of course, being ready to discuss how you stay organized.
Conflict Resolution. In a remote environment, conflicts can be amplified. Something said in chat could be interpreted in half a dozen ways that the author never intended. The ability to quickly sense and unravel conflict significantly reduces the impact of inevitable miscommunications. You probably won’t run into any conflicts during your interview process (at least we hope not!) but you can come prepared to discuss how you’ve managed conflicts, straightened out miscommunications, and built rapport with your team.
You probably noticed that these are all soft skills, which means they aren’t as easy to quantify as, say, whether you know JavaScript or can manage a Twitter account. And while questions about your technical skills are sure to come up throughout your interview process, you’ll probably notice an increased focus on your less tangible traits when you’re interviewing for a remote job.
Hiring managers are going to put more weight on your ability to present soft skills like listening, tone, and body language via a virtual medium because you’ll likely be doing these things on a daily basis in a remote role. And they’ll likely be asking you questions aimed at teasing these traits out.
With that in mind, here are ten questions you’ll probably be asked when you interview for a remote opportunity—plus advice on how to respond and sample answers.
1. Have You Worked Remotely in the Past?
This might feel like a conversational ice breaker question, but it’s one you need to answer thoughtfully. The hiring manager is trying to gauge your level of interest in and comfort with taking on a fully remote role.
2. What Types of Remote/Distributed Team Tools and Software Have You Used and How Did You Use Them?
Distributed teams live on video and chat platforms and typically rely heavily on collaborative tools and project management software, so hiring managers will naturally want to gauge your level of comfort working with remote tools like Zoom or Slack, collaborative platforms like Google Docs, or project management software like Trello, Airtable, or Asana.
3. What Is Your Approach to Maintaining Effective Communication and Collaboration with a Distributed Team?
Working remotely presents some unique challenges to collaboration, since you can’t just schedule an impromptu meeting in an open conference room or pop by your coworker’s desk to ask a question. Distributed team members need to be more intentional about their interactions with each other.
4. How Do You Manage Your Time and Stay Organized?
“You have a lot of independence in how you manage your time when working remotely. There’s no one sitting next to you to make sure you’re working on this or almost done with that. With so much flexibility, it’s crucial that you can be organized and juggle your different tasks and responsibilities in order to get things done and meet deadlines—and interviewers will want to make sure you’re up to it.
5. How Do You Keep Yourself Motivated and Engaged When Working From Home?
As lovely as rolling out of bed and into your desk chair might sound, remote work does have some downsides. Working in your home can be distracting (think your roommate’s loud sales calls or your cat constantly walking across the keyboard). It’s also easy to get sucked into doing just one load of laundry when you know your boss isn’t going to walk by and ask you why you haven’t turned that report in yet. Plus, you don’t have colleagues sitting all around you to serve as positive peer pressure to keep working or to provide a sense of camaraderie that keeps you going. So hiring managers will want some assurance that you’ve got a grasp on how to push through the inherent distractions and distance of remote work.
6. What’s the Key to Making Sure a Project Is Successful When Working Remotely?
A lot goes into successfully completing any project—remote or otherwise—but hiring managers are going to be especially interested in how prospective hires would approach a project when in-person collaboration isn’t an option. Clear communication is key when you can’t chat with people on a whim like you can in the office.
7. Tell Me About a Time When You Had to Adapt to Change.
You’ll often get some variation of this question during the interview process—whether for a remote job or not. But being adaptable is especially important when you’re part of a distributed team, as it can sometimes be more challenging to coordinate schedules or keep everyone on the same page, and you don’t have the benefit of your colleagues being a few steps away to deal with the change together. That doesn’t mean you can’t support one another, but even that takes a bit more initiative when you’re working remotely.
8. Tell Me About a Time When You Had a Conflict With a Coworker.
The employer wants to know whether you can recover if things break down. Disagreements are inevitable, so knowing how to navigate and defuse misunderstandings before they get out of hand is an incredibly important skill—especially when you’re part of a remote team. Coworkers who see one another on a regular basis tend to have more opportunities to resolve misunderstandings, while folks who work from home will need to be more proactive about getting things straightened out when conflicts arise.
9. Tell Me About a Time When You Weren’t Sure How To Do Something. How Did You Go About Seeking Out Information?
When you’re part of a distributed team, you’re pretty likely to run into situations where you don’t feel 100% clear about what you’ve been tasked with. And while that’s normal and totally understandable, it’ll be important for you to demonstrate that you know how to navigate these gray areas. “Managers want to be confident that you will be able to find the right people and information to engage with for a deliverable without having them right in front of you,” Jones says.
10. Do You Have Any Questions for Me?
This question is code for: So are you interested? (Hint: Interested applicants always have questions!) This is your chance to show that you’re thoughtful, well prepared, and truly understand what it’ll take to succeed on a distributed team. Remote work environments don’t typically allow for you to ask questions as frequently or casually as you can in the office, so demonstrating that you’re organized and proactive about gathering information will help you to stand out.
This also happens to be an excellent opportunity to learn more about the company culture so that you can determine whether a prospective employer is going to be the right fit for you.
“Employers are going to be evaluating you based on your behavior. Do you show up on time? This signals reliability. Do you answer challenging questions clearly and forthrightly, and disclose your flaws? This signals honesty. Do you help facilitate a successful interview through attention to the allotted time and by bringing prepared questions? This signals initiative. Finding ways to demonstrate these traits throughout the interview process “will make you a significantly stronger candidate. So spend some time reflecting on how you’d like to answer these questions, then ask a friend to join you on a video chat to practice your responses.
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