How to Attract, Hire, and Retain Top Remote Talent in 7 Steps

There is an abundance of people looking for remote positions. As of January 2024, LinkedIn reports that twice the number of applications for remote roles had been received than there were remote roles available.

Still, in today’s competitive talent landscape, companies must adopt strategies to attract and retain top remote talent, even while broadening their talent pool. These strategies often involve refining recruitment practices and embracing a remote-first mindset.

However, many organizations encounter challenges when expanding beyond their local talent pools, including crafting accurate job descriptions, fostering inclusive cultures, and ensuring compliance.

At Deel, we have created a simple seven-step method to help you attract, hire, and keep remote workers. This is based on our experience working with globally distributed companies and managing our own remote team. Our guide provides practical advice on how to build a remote-friendly work environment, including improving hiring and onboarding processes.

With our expertise and global team management platform, you can achieve greater operational efficiency, boost employee satisfaction, and gain a competitive edge in attracting exceptional remote talent. Let’s dive into this step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Build a remote-first company culture and let remote talent come to you

Whether you’re looking to make your first remote hire or your first-ever hire, the best way to attract and retain remote talent is to build an attractive company culture from the inside out. Building an attractive company culture boils down to listening to what workers want and delivering.

• Over 55% of employees look for opportunities that have a flexible work schedule, including the flexibility to work remotely
• Around 33% of professionals believe that having the option to work flexibly would boost their job satisfaction and morale, while nearly 30% think it would enhance their overall work productivity and efficiency
• 98% of employees express a desire to have the option of remote work for some portion of their careers going forward

Typically workers turn to remote roles for greater flexibility, autonomy, and work-life balance. If you can create company values that prioritize and honor these desires, you’ll find that the best remote talent will come to you.

At Deel, for example, we nurture a work-from-anywhere, flexible, and asynchronous company culture. Our workforce lives out these values and is excited to tell friends, family, and connections about open positions. The lion’s share of candidates find Deel through word-of-mouth referrals and re-posted job postings on social networking sites.

An employee referral program is an extremely powerful recruiting strategy. Here’s how top companies run their employee referral programs.

Deel has also created a free employee referral program policy template with flexible components that you can easily adjust to your organization’s needs.

How App Bar secures and retains global talents compliantly with Deel.

See also: 2025 Guide On Hiring And Managing Remote Workers

Step 2: Ensure your job descriptions are for truly remote roles

An emerging trend that has been aggravating remote workers is companies advertising remote positions that aren’t really remote to attract a larger number of applicants. This approach is illogical since there’s no advantage to filling up your pool with people who won’t take the job.

Below, we’ll walk you through the do’s and don’ts of writing remote job descriptions so you can attract the right talent and avoid catfishing.

Job description “do’s”

When writing job descriptions for remote positions, you should include the following:

Time zone requirements

Specifying specific time zones is reasonable for roles that require an overlap with colleagues and customers. This requirement is very common in sales-related roles, for example. Still, asynchronous communication (messaging, video recordings, cloud collaboration, project management software) is very effective for most positions.

With good time management, realistic deadlines, and proper communication, requiring your remote workforce to be online simultaneously is often unnecessary.

Discover why flexible work arrangements are best for employee engagement.

Meeting availability

While keeping virtual meetings to a minimum is efficient, they are effective for team bonding, performance reviews, and check-ins. Specifying the need for the occasional meeting in the job description will help set expectations from the get-go. It will also convey to the worker that you prioritize building meaningful work relationships.

Language requirements

Remote roles attract candidates from various nationalities and backgrounds, which is excellent for improving diversity, equality, and inclusion. However, language is important for effective communication. Specifying language proficiency if it’s an essential job function is perfectly acceptable.

Travel commitments and on-site visits

This is where things get a little more complicated. As long as the worker can work remotely from a location of their choosing 90% of the time, requiring them to make work trips and site visits is perfectly reasonable. For example, event organizers and surveyors will expect travel to be part of their role. However, many professionals realize virtual meetings and events are often just as effective, save time and money, and are better for the environment.

Job description “don’ts”

You should refrain from the following:

“Dressing up” hybrid work as remote

Posting job listings as remote and requiring workers to go into the workplace occasionally is not a remote role and should not be advertised as such.

Temporary remote roles

Advertising a position as remote when you intend to return to an in-person set-up is another misleading tactic that wastes job seekers’ time and energy. The company will also suffer when the remote worker eventually leaves for a permanent remote position.

Location-based roles

Many employers post remote job openings with specific state, country, or region requirements. This often helps indicate language, time zone, and business travel expectations. In some cases, this is due to legal and tax considerations, as employers may want to avoid establishing a permanent presence to hire in countries where they lack a legal entity.

A solution to this is engaging an Employer of Record (EOR). An EOR hires employees on behalf of the organization through its local entities worldwide. For example, if a UK company identifies talent in Bulgaria but lacks a local entity, it can hire the worker through the EOR’s Bulgarian entity. The EOR becomes the official employer, managing compliance and payroll, allowing the company to focus on the employee’s daily tasks.

Discover how ShopBack hired skilled talent in countries without entities with Deel.

Use Deel’s free job descriptions template package to boost your hiring speed and efficiency.

Step 3: Distribute your efforts between passive and active remote candidates

While active talent acquisition can be effective (post a job listing and wait for active job seekers to come to you), diverting some of your efforts toward recruiting passive candidates is also worthwhile since 70% of the global workforce comprises passive talent. Passive candidates aren’t actively looking for work but could be persuaded to leave their current role with the right offer.

LinkedIn is a great place to pursue potential candidates before sending a direct message with an irresistible offer.

There are two benefits of passive recruiting for remote positions:

• Firstly, you can contact the best candidates who already hold (and presumably enjoy) remote working arrangements by searching for potential candidates using LinkedIn Recruiter and filtering results to display workers that mention remote working
• Secondly, your chance of winning over a talented candidate is very high if the worker currently holds an in-office position and you can offer a remote role with greater flexibility, benefits, and perks

At Deel, we close our job descriptions with a total rewards section where we promise (and deliver) flexible and inclusive benefits and perks based on employment status and country.

We provide the following to both employees and independent contractors:

• Paid time off: 12 floating paid holidays per year and a minimum of 18 days of flexible paid time off (more if the employee’s home country demands it by law)
• Annual $800 travel budget to spend on meeting up with colleagues
• Remote workspace membership (e.g., WeWork)
• $30 monthly learning and development spend
• Stock grant options
• Brand new tech and equipment depending on the requirements of the role
• The ability to choose where you work, whether it be your home, the beach, or a WeWork

Every country has a list of legally-mandated benefits employers must provide workers. Use our free benefits and perks bundle to elevate your global employee experience by launching best-in-class perks, benefits, and relevant policies.

Discover how Bowtie Life Insurance attracts and hires global talent with Deel.

See also: Guide to a Competitive Global Employee Benefits Plan

Step 4: Embrace independent contractors and freelancers

There’s more to the talent market than full-time and part-time employees. When looking to hire remote talent, you can’t go too far wrong with gig workers. This group of the workforce is practically designed for remote working since they’ve built their careers on working autonomously, require little to no training, and are not governed by employment laws since they’re self-employed and pay their own taxes.

Independent contractors make up much of the contingent workforce. Independent contractors are, as you know, independent. How they complete their tasks is out of your control, and they don’t have set working hours. If you are an employer that struggles to trust their workers or wants to control every aspect of the job, hiring contractors isn’t a good option for you and could increase your risk of misclassification.

However, opting for remote independent contractors could be a good move if you’d like to benefit from lower employer costs, greater staffing flexibility, and specialized experience. You can also convert a contractor to an employee if the relationship is going well and you desire a more permanent arrangement.

You can find contractors and freelancers via the following talent marketplaces:

• Upwork
• Workana
• Fiver
• Flexjobs
• Freelancer
• Hubstaff Talent
• Toptal

Discover how Tiqets hires compliantly around the world with Deel Contractor of Record.

See also: How to Legally Hire Independent Contractors Worldwide

Step 5: Master virtual interviewing

The next step in the recruitment process is to conduct a solid virtual interview. Deel has grown a team of over 2000 remote roles in the past two years using remote interviews alone.

The remote interview process is similar to traditional face-to-face interviews, with a few adjustments. Here are a few guidelines to ensure they run smoothly:

• Avoid back-to-back interviews: Give yourself at least 20 minutes between calls to allow time for run-overs and meeting prep
• Check your tech: Whether you host your video interviews on Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype, or another video platform, double-check that you’re signed in, have given permission to the software to use your microphone and camera, and have conducted a quick audio and video test
• Encourage a natural conversation: The separation of a screen can cause virtual interviews to resemble mini webinars. It’s common for both parties to pull up notes and profiles to use as prompts which can interrupt the natural flow of a conversation. Instead of diving straight into the interview questions, the interviewer should explain that the interview is an opportunity to go beyond the information in the application and get to know each other on a deeper level

Discover six remote interview tips to help you conduct non-awkward calls and source the best talent.

Discover how MELD’s remote team is effectively managed through Deel.

See also: 9 Strategies to Manage a Remote Team on a Budget in 2025

Step 6: Compliantly hire your remote worker

Once you’ve found your ideal remote employee or contractor, it’s time to hire them. If you’re hiring workers who live in the same jurisdiction where your business is headquartered, the hiring process is pretty straightforward since you follow the local employment laws and regulations.

However, if you want to hire a remote worker from another country or jurisdiction, you’ll need to follow the employment laws and regulations in that country, which can be a little more complex.

In the latter scenario, you have a few options:

• Hire independent contractors: Hiring independent contractors is more straightforward than hiring remote employees since you won’t need to follow local employment laws. You will, however, need to ensure that the relationship and work contract are in line with local contracting laws, which can differ from country to country
• Set up a local entity in the employee’s country: Opening a local entity (or foreign subsidiary) can take anywhere from three to twelve months to complete compliantly and can be a large financial investment. Only then can you hire and onboard your new employees. Deel provides entity setup services to ease the stress and burden of /setting up entities in any of our supported countries. Our experts handle the complex processes, giving you a smooth path to global expansion
• Engage workers through an EOR: A global Employer of Record is a company that engages and pays one or more employees on your behalf. An EOR enables companies to legally work with employees in another country or jurisdiction without setting up an entity in that location. You retain control over the employee’s workload, schedule, and performance. And for the employee, the experience is no different than if you were to hire them directly

An EOR can help you accomplish your global expansion goals while complying with complex international laws and regulations.

EORs can also provide support with the following:

• Background checks
• Compliant contracts
• Misclassification prevention
• Employee onboarding and offboarding
• Run global payroll and tax filing
• Administer benefits and perks
• Terminations
• HR and administrative duties
• Equipment provisioning
• Immigration and visa support
• Compensation and equity
• Policies for remote and distributed teams

Deel EOR has been named the G2 leader based on having the highest user satisfaction score and largest market presence among Employer of Record products.

Discover how Exnaton uses Deel EOR and Deel Contractor for its global team.

See also: Everything EOR: A Guide to Employers of Record.

Step 7: Streamline virtual onboarding

The next step in the recruitment process is virtual onboarding. Your onboarding process is essential as it can affect your company’s employee retention, productivity, and overall success.

20% of employee turnover occurs within the first 45 days of employment, meaning many new hires leave a new job before they officially complete onboarding. To avoid this, you should make your onboarding process as streamlined, effortless, and welcoming as possible.

After the offer letter and work contract signing process, the employee should flow into their remote onboarding and training. Pre-recorded step-by-step tutorials and resources are a great way to get team members up to speed asynchronously. Video conferencing and communication tools like Slack, Zoom, or Google Meet will allow the new hire to get involved in team-building activities, regardless of their physical location.

Here is an overview of virtual onboarding tips and best practices:

• Welcome new hires to the team before their first day
• Give new employees early access to their tech stack so they can get familiar
• Schedule waterfall check-in meetings
• Have other team members lead training sessions and introduction video calls
• Share a personalized onboarding plan that lists the tasks, role-specific training, and meetings scheduled for each day of the onboarding process
• Survey your current employees about their onboarding experience
• Mix self-led learning with social events and interactive activities

By the end of their onboarding experience, remote employees should feel comfortable with their entire team, knowledgeable about their tools and tech, and excited to get going in their role.

See our guide to onboarding an asynchronous worker for a detailed onboarding plan.

When onboarding new hires through Deel, a custom workflow leads the new hire through a streamlined onboarding process. This starts with a welcome email to the Deel platform, followed by a frictionless contract signing, work authorization document processes, and an optional background check.

Key features include:

• Easy self-service platform: Workers can access their salary and benefits when they need them, edit their personal data, withdraw their money through their preferred payment method, access their health insurance and other benefits, and so on. They get to skip the unnecessary communication touchpoints, like contacting HR to complete these tasks for them or waiting for approval from another remote team member who might be in a different time zone or operating on flexible schedules
• Payroll and benefits enrollment: Deel takes care of all payment and benefits administration required by law in the country the employee resides in, and additional perks a company chooses to include in the compensation to attract global talent, including company equity. This can be a particularly useful, strategic approach for small businesses, who may not be able to afford expensive benefits for their foreign teammates. With Deel, even startups and small businesses with limited resources can afford to offer competitive perks to their international employees
• Easy equipment and software provisioning: With Deel IT, you can choose from a standardized catalog of over 230 products, including laptops, IT peripherals, and furniture. We keep stock of high-spec devices for immediate deployment for roles like engineering. You can set team or location-specific policies and budgets and define leasing or purchasing options. Deel IT’s 24/7 support ensures new hires have immediate access to reliable IT assistance, reducing frustrations and minimizing downtime
• Coworking memberships: With Deel workspaces, your team can enjoy an all-access pass to 600+ WeWork locations. This pass includes meeting rooms, high-speed WiFi, and hot desks, enabling your workers to stay productive while they work remotely from anywhere in the world

Discover how Finder reduces HR admin by 20% and cuts onboarding time in half with Deel.

See also: Elevate Employee Onboarding & Offboarding Efficiency with Deel

Step 8: Prioritise career growth

With recruitment and onboarding successfully completed, it’s time to shift your attention to retaining both new and existing talent. Fostering employee development and supporting career growth are essential for keeping remote team members engaged and helping them envision a long-term future with your organization.

With Deel, you benefit from:

• Custom training courses: Create and manage engaging courses quickly with our AI-driven learning management system
• Performance management: Implement comprehensive feedback processes, including 360° reviews and OKRs, to ensure fair performance evaluations
• Career management: Offer clear, competency-based career progression frameworks that outline transparent paths for advancement
• Engagement surveys: Use surveys to regularly check in on workers and gather employee feedback on career development opportunities and remote interactions, allowing for targeted improvements

Discover how Freeletics upskills leaders and saves costs with Deel.

See also: 9 Learning and Development Trends to Future-Proof Your Workforce

Attract, hire, and retain top talent with Deel

Today’s world of work requires solutions that go beyond borders. With Deel, you can engage top remote talent wherever that happens to be in minutes, eliminate payroll admin tasks like managing benefits and taxes, and never have to worry about HR admin or legal compliance ever again.

Request a demo to learn more.