For hiring, remote work means more expertise, research finds
Zhenyu Liao said researchers found three important reasons why hiring managers have higher expectations for remote workers.
Remote work during the COVID19 pandemic may have relaxed company expectations concerning employees’ business attire.
But it raised expectations for employees’ qualifications, work experience, skills and education credentials when hiring, new research from Northeastern University finds.
“When a firm started to shift to remote work, the specified job requirements and expectations [for hiring] were increasingly getting higher and higher,” said Zhenyu Liao, Joseph G. Riesman research professor, Thomas E. Moore faculty fellow and an associate professor of management and organizational development at Northeastern.
The research, led by Liao, was recently published in Administrative Science Quarterly, a journal that examines organizational studies, or how individuals, groups, and institutions interact, collaborate, and adapt within various environments.
To investigate remote work and hiring, Liao and colleagues analyzed more than 50 million job postings for both remote and in-office work from 28 European countries between 2018 and 2021. The job listings spanned “nearly all industries and occupations,” researchers said, and were compiled from private job sites, public employment services, recruitment agencies, online newspapers, and corporate job boards.
The researchers found that compared to otherwise similar in-person positions, remote jobs tended to list about 25% more skills, request 0.1 additional years of work experience, and more higher education credentials.
The research found several important reasons why managers have higher expectations for remote workers.
First, remote work attracted many more applicants – from 20% more to 10- or 20-times more than in-person jobs, according to the research – because the talent pool came from a larger geographical area than the typical applicant pool. This provided hiring managers with a higher number of more qualified applicants, according to the research, and allowed them to raise skill requirements to screen out the “astronomical” number of applicants for remote positions.
“I post a remote job and I have 600 clicks in two days,” one human resources manager told researchers. “I’ve had to build a hiring process where the barrier to entry is higher, because otherwise the volume is just so completely overwhelming.”
Hiring managers also told researchers that because remote workers missed out on the spontaneous conversations, meetings and mentorship and training opportunities that naturally arise in the office, they wanted to hire people who already knew how to do their tasks and who could independently solve problems without relying on any additional training on the job. This led to increasing skills requirements for remote jobs.
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A lack of interoffice personal interactions also meant that managers were more focused on measurable and quantifiable performance metrics for evaluating remote workers. Judging workers based on measures such as teamwork and mentorship were less important for evaluations, Liao said; the number of tasks checked off, and your “individual performance matrix,” was the focus.
These factors combined to make the COVID pandemic an example of a “skill upgrading” or an “upskilling” period, Liao said. These eras occur when the labor force learns new skills to make them marketable amid shifting economies, technological revolutions, or even cultural changes. Liao said previous “skill upgrading” events included the “Rosie the Riveter” era when World War II prompted American women to join the manufacturing workforce and when the digital revolution ushered in by the labor force learning computing skills.
The research concluded with recommendations on navigating this current upskilling era.
Hiring managers have to remember that remote workers need to be independent and able to prioritize and schedule effectively, Liao said. And he recommended that managers schedule regular, informal times for employees to connect and promote the kind of casual problem-solving or relationship-building that normally occurs in a work environment.
Universities also have a role to play in this upskilling, said Jared Auclair, dean of Northeastern’s College of Professional Studies.
Auclair said universities should provide “custom, non-degree learning options” to provide graduates with the necessary skills that a modern job requires. And they need to do it quickly.
“Employers don’t want to wait for degrees – they want custom credentials at the speed of business,” Auclair said. “With AI accelerating skill obsolescence, this isn’t a future problem—it’s a present one.”
For job seekers, particularly those who are younger and have limited experience, Liao said they should evaluate remote work carefully.
“We have to be aware that remote work, maybe at an early career stage, is not the most optimal option — not only from the skill-development process but also for learning about the entire industry,” Liao said.
