The Ultimate Remote Tech Stack

We put together a list of 20+ great tools that will help you attract new talent and build strong teams, even if you’re a new engineering manager.

Remote work is the new norm. And that’s great news for you as a hiring manager. For the first time, your options expand beyond your metropolitan area.

But your competition just expanded too. Everyone else is also vying for new talent with open jobs. You need to equip yourself with the right remote hiring stack to find, hire, and onboard your team fast.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Job descriptions

You need to publish detailed job listings the way only you can.

List out everything you look for in a candidate, including personality traits, communication style, education level, languages spoken, etc.

This is an approach called ‘job sculpting’; if done well, it can attract exactly the people who will be successful at your company… and weed out everyone else.

• Textio: Textio helps you make the best recruitment decisions by speaking powerfully and persuasively. Their AI-powered text analysis identifies inclusive language and gender-coded words, which turn off top candidates.
• TalVista: TalVista’s job description optimizer also identifies problematic words and ensures you attract a broad-based applicant pool for your job openings.

Candidate attraction

Your hiring process should not be a one-and-done.

It’s best to put time into your sourcing strategy every single day, even if you’re not hiring at the moment. This is especially true for passive candidates, who are always open to hearing about new opportunities but rarely proactively look for them.

Make sure you have multiple sources of quality candidates at all times. Here’s where to find remote software engineers:

• AngelList: A great source for startup talent, AngelList allows you to post your job listing and watch it soar to the top of most-viewed lists within minutes.
• LinkedIn: You’ll find everyone from experienced developers to recent graduates on Linkedin. The platform also has special features that make it easy for your job listing to stand out.
• Indeed: Indeed has a specific focus on targeted, local candidate searches. And their talent pool is huge.
• Women in Tech: This global community works to empower women and minorities within the tech industry. They also host regular events where you can meet qualified candidates.

Applicant tracking systems (ATS)

Track applicants in one central place? Yes, please. If you’re not using an ATS, you should be.

Applicant tracking systems allow you to track background checks, automate the candidate consultation process, and more. Some even let you run analytics on your applicants, like where they’re coming from and how long it takes them to apply.

• Greenhouse: Greenhouse is a fully integrated hiring solution that makes the entire process easier, from sourcing to training. Alerts, tasks, and notifications help you track candidate relationships over time.
• Workable: Workable helps companies source the best talent, communicate more effectively, and scale faster. Their recruiting platform has helped hire 1 million people in just four years.
• Lever: Lever’s flexible reporting and analytics tools make it easy to see how hiring is going. They can also streamline candidate sourcing and advancement.
• Ashby: Leaders and hiring managers at fast-growing companies agree that Ashby’s recruitment software helps them run their hiring process better.
• JazzHR: JazzHR’s powerful and affordable recruiting software is easy to use. Their ATS provides tools for mass hiring without sacrificing the quality of service.

Skills assessments

Make sure your new hires are ready for the roles you’re hiring them for.

Take the guesswork out of your hiring process with assessments designed to test knowledge in specific skills.

• Woven: Software engineering teams use Woven to raise the bar on candidate quality and experience by evaluating real problem-solving ability skills, like systems architecture, debugging, and collaboration.
• HackerRank: HackerRank’s challenges ask developers to solve problems and practice different programming paradigms.
• CodeSignal: CodeSignal has created an advanced job simulation technology so that hiring teams can find the right talent for roles, at scale.
• Qualified: Qualified’s technical skills assessment uses technology and educational institutions to evaluate software engineers at scale.
• CoderPad: CoderPad’s interactive assessments, live coding sessions, and take-home projects help you understand how a candidate works.

Technical interviews

Technical interviews are one of the most challenging and time-consuming parts of hiring software engineers.

You’ll want to cover the basics, like whiteboard coding and pair programming, as well as topics on current engineering trends like DevOps and data science. These automated tools can streamline the technical interview process.

• Woven: Woven is the only technical interview experience worthy of senior engineers, where candidates are double-blind scored and receive individual feedback after completing problems based on role-specific scenarios.
• Karat: Karat’s innovative Interviewing Cloud platform allows you to host live technical interviews 24/7, from anywhere in the world.
• Byteboard: Byteboard offers an authentic look at how engineers work on the job through project-based questions.

Onboarding

The first few days/weeks of a new hire’s transition into your company are critical. How you introduce them to the team, what they do with their time, and how they use their resources matters.

Get this part right and you’re on your way to creating a great remote culture that thrives on collaboration and high performance.

• Edify: Edify offers a cloud-based onboarding experience that helps new hires get up to speed quickly and feel welcomed into the company culture.
• Lattice: Lattice’s people management platform has layers of data and transparent tools for decision-making, which empowers the workforce to be more productive while also keeping them happy at work.
• Gusto: With Gusto, businesses can be better organized and simplify employee management and payroll processing.

International remote PEO

If you’re looking to expand your remote team internationally, there are a few things to consider.

You’ll need to find a tool that can provide you with the resources you need to manage a remote team, as well as help with compliance and employment law.

• Deel: Deel’s automated onboarding, payroll, and compliance systems allow you to hire anyone in a new country in minutes.
• Remote: Remote is trusted by companies like GitLab and provides international payroll, benefits, taxes, and compliances to businesses of all sizes.
• Rippling: Rippling is a powerful and easy-to-use workflow engine that allows you to manage all of your people operations in one place.

Scheduling

It really is 5 o’clock somewhere.

When setting up a remote team, schedule meetings at reasonable times for everyone involved. Someone who lives in a different time zone will be more productive working at 11 p.m. than 7 a.m.

• Calendly: Calendly helps you schedule meetings without the back-and-forth emails. You can choose the best time for both you and your invitees.
• Interview Schedule: Interview Schedule makes it easy to coordinate times for phone or video interviews. You can see exactly when candidates are available, and if your team members will be too busy to interview.
• Zoom: Zoom’s video conferencing software syncs with your calendar so you can meet with anybody, anywhere. Make meetings more fun and engaging with reactions, polls, hand raising, and music sharing.

Final thoughts

Your remote tech stack is a living, breathing thing. As your company grows and changes, so should your stack.

Define your culture carefully, establish processes for time-tracking and collaboration, implement systems to streamline everything, and always keep an eye out for better tools that will make you more efficient.

With the right tools, you can build a world-class remote team that’s second to none.