How to Hire Top Remote Talent Without Resumes

Back in 2011, Zapier began as a side project started by three friends who loved tinkering with technology. As we quickly began to grow, we faced difficulties around hiring talent that I never could have predicted. These difficulties were compounded by the fact that we've always been an entirely remote company.

Even as a 20 person startup in 2013, Zapier would receive thousands of applications for open positions. For a large team, this would be overwhelming. For a small team like us, it was next to impossible. Sifting through every resume and ensuring we moved the right people to the next stage of the process could take us days, or sometimes even weeks.

We were growing rapidly, and we needed to hire talent. Eventually, we came to the realization that resumes are an ineffective way of gauging a person's abilities. So, we ditched the resume.

We tasked ourselves with creating a unique way to evaluate and hire top talent from around the world without ever meeting candidates in person or reviewing their resumes. Additionally, we committed to getting back to every applicant within seven business days at every stage of the interview process. Here's how we did it:

1. Write an Incredibly Detailed Job Description

Let candidates know what they're in for when they apply. A good job description should explain the ins and outs of what you do as a company, along with a detailed description of what role the position plays in the company, the problems the employee may have to solve, and how the role contributes to the company's overall success.

A compelling and detailed description goes a long way in getting applicants invested in both the company and the role.

2. Conduct Prescreening up Front

You can only do phone screens with so many people. By asking questions on the application that a recruiter would normally ask in a phone screen, we get a better and more thorough understanding of candidates from the start.

Not only does this help us eliminate bias (the only identifying information we collect is name and email), but it also allows us to talk to more candidates than simply looking at resumes would.

Resumes are typically written in broad terms to appeal to most typical roles within a company. Many of Zapier's roles are atypical relative to the industry, so resumes don't necessarily translate for fit.

Resumes also don't tell you what a person is passionate about or how they approach problem-solving, so they could drive you to eliminate candidates who may have actually been good fits for the role.

In a recent posting for a recruiting coordinator, we included questions to test candidates on the basics of the role, asking things like:

• Do you have experience as a recruiting coordinator? If yes, how many recruiters did you work with at one time?

• Tell us about a time when you identified a bottleneck in a process. How did you resolve it?

• What app(s) do you use to stay organized? Why did you start using them? •

You have emailed a candidate twice to schedule an interview with no response. What would you do next?

• What are the top three tasks you would tackle first from the following list?

1. A candidate asked to reschedule their interview that is in one hour to the following week

2. A hiring manager asked for an update on getting a high-priority candidate scheduled

3. A candidate with a pending offer would like to speak with you about onboarding

4. Our CEO asked you to set up a call with a candidate for the following week

5. Sending out a batch of weekly update emails to candidates for a role that is currently on hold

6. Setting up a new Zap to ping recruiters about interview reminders

7. Pulling the weekly pipeline report for the team

8. A support ticket came in saying that our application link isn't working on the jobs page

• What do you imagine to be the biggest challenge for this position in Zapier's remote environment? How would you go about overcoming that challenge?

Questions like these give us a good idea of someone's aptitude for the role, and they allow us to evaluate their written communication skills, which are essential for a remote environment. These questions also give candidates a good idea of the problems they'll be working on, and we can get into more detailed questions during the second interview, saving both our recruiters and candidates valuable time. People who are excited about your company will be willing to complete these tasks, and they often enjoy the process. Those who aren't a good fit will skip your post or forget to do it, which turns the application process itself into a unique filter.

3. Don't Shy Away From Automation

While some things are best left to humans, there are areas of the interview process we automate to save our recruiters valuable time. For instance, our recruiters have a series of Zaps that trigger once a candidate verbally accepts a job offer. Our recruiters update their status in our applicant tracking system, which automatically notifies the candidate's new team on Slack and sends the candidate a contract to sign via DocuSign. Once they've done that, the contract will automatically be sent to me to sign and upload to Dropbox, which in turn notifies the onboarding team of a new hire. This saves our team countless hours of administrative work and ensures nothing gets lost along the way.

Career paths are rarely linear, and our hiring practices allow us to find top talent from around the world and evaluate candidates based on the skills they've gained through experience, rather than on incidental things like where they went to school. For example, one of our back-end engineers has a bachelor's degree in linguistics and a master's degree in divinity. Imagine trying to explain the transition into a technical role on a one-page resume!

While it may seem unorthodox to some, ditching the traditional way of evaluating candidates has been highly effective for us. Over the past seven years, we've grown to more than 250 people in 21 countries around the world while consistently maintaining a 90 percent or higher retention rate.

Wade Foster

Wade Foster is the CEO and cofounder of Zapier.