Linked: Why publishers say opening up remote hiring has grown and greatly improved the applicant pool
Honestly, I don’t know why this is even newsworthy, isn’t it obvious that this is true?
“We were putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage” by not hiring more remote workers, Kiley said. “If you say [a job] is New York-only, you’re really limiting who you can hire.” When a media company hires in one specific market, its staff will only look like that one market, Seward said. Business and product employees across the country may not have big media companies in their area, but opening up a job to remote workers lifts that “arbitrary barrier” and brings media jobs to other regions, Seward said.
Yes, I know, clearly, it is not obvious to many, and yes if you’re going to go this route that means you’ll have to actually figure out how to be a remote-first team, training managers to work from that mindset. And yes, as the story mentions about publishing, you’ll have to make some choices about salary adjustments. In the story, they talk about New York versus not New York, I think the tech equivalent would be various West Coast locations compared to others. Full disclosure, I work for a company based in Seattle, which has a higher cost of living than where I live. I might actually get paid a bit less due to that, which you could view as unfair, or you could view as my competitive advantage over other candidates who might have been hired for this job. It’s a tricky question.
Still, I think it’s clear that opening up the hiring process to people who don’t live in the immediate area creates a more diverse pool of talent to choose from. That we have to go out of our way to tell people that makes me question what companies are doing, or really care about, when they talk about being diverse.
Why publishers say opening up remote hiring has grown and greatly improved the applicant pool
