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You don’t know it yet, but you need Kelsey.

She’s an ideal fit, the right mix of smarts and experience, temperament and personality. She’s the missing link your department has been looking for, needing. Thankfully, the need is mutual. Kelsey is looking for a job.

Unfortunately, you don’t know Kelsey exists because she lives 1,691 miles away. And you probably never will because, right now, there’s a room full of candidates sitting outside your office, eager to impress in a face-to-face interview.

You’d hire one of them before spending the time and money to source long-distance talent, right? It’s more convenient, after all. Not to mention less expensive, less risky. Kelsey can’t compete with that local, in-person pool … right?

Wrong. There’s a trove of online tools designed to help you easily find and confidently hire Kelsey. You just need to start using them.

17 Tools to Find & Interview Remote Candidates

If you’re not sourcing talent outside of your zip code, then that’s too bad because your competitors are. They’re using a variety of tools that streamline how they find and connect with candidates, specifically knowledge workers.

Most of these tools fall under one of three categories:

• Basic video conferencing tools, which create authentic connections.

• Applicant tracking systems, which automate the recruitment process.

• Technical assessment platforms, which test critical knowledge and skills.

Let’s take a closer look …

Basic Video Conferencing Tools

I live in Chicago. My three nephews live in Maryland. Physically, we’re hundreds of miles apart. But that reality, somehow, melts away as soon as my sister picks up my FaceTime call. That’s when the boys rush in from every direction, vying for their piece of on-screen real estate, giggling through their gap-toothed smiles.

It’s a wonderful experience, warm and personal. It feels real, like I’m there with them.

That’s what makes video calls so potent and powerful: They help us forget we’re not in-person. They cut through the distance. They put Kelsey on the same plane as all those in-person candidates.

Use these tools to achieve an authentic connection with anyone, regardless of how many miles separate you:

1) Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is available to anyone with a Google account. Beautiful, simple, and intuitive, the Hangouts icon has become a standard fixture on desktops around the world. Your candidate will have it.

Price: Free.

2) Skype

Skype is proven. In addition to video chats, it can also be used to place high-quality global calls.

Price: Free. The “Business” plan, however, runs around $2 per user per month.

3) Spark Hire

Spark Hire is like Google Hangouts or Skype, except you don’t have to be present during the interview. The tool lets candidates record their video answers on their own time, while you’re off in another meeting, or eating lunch, or sleeping.

You can then watch and evaluate on your time, when you’re ready.

Price: $99 a month will get you started.

4) VidCruiter

VidCruiter can display your logo in the corner of the screen during a video interview, giving the process a professional, official veneer. The platform offers a variety of similar customizations that are simple to test and apply.

Price: Tailored to each customer, true to the platform itself.

Applicant Tracking Systems

Hiring only one person can be a long, involved process. Hiring many people, all at once, successfully, can be impossible. There are too many boxes to check, too many tasks to juggle. You’d need a team to make the process efficient and economical … or would you?

An applicant tracking system, or ATS, is software that helps managers and recruiters streamline the hiring process by digitizing and automating essential hiring functions, like scheduling interviews or performing background checks.

An ATS can also be programed to crawl resumes and find great-fit candidates, like Kelsey. This will save you time and energy. There is no doubt it’s a valuable tool, especially if you’re hiring several positions at once.

Curious? Here’s our list of standout platforms:

5) Jobvite

Jobvite, like any ATS, does a lot. It’s a CRM. It performs crisp video interviews. It also sports a highly customizable interface that’ll give candidates an honest representation of your brand as they carve through the interview process.

Price: $500 per month for less than 100 employees plus a $1500 ‘activation charge’ (which includes training).

6) Betterteam

Betterteam can automatically write your job ad for you. It can then post that ad to more than a hundred popular job boards and sites, like Glassdoor, Monster, CareerBuilder, and LinkedIn.

Want to add a job board to your website? Betterteam lets you do that, too. No coding skills necessary.

Price: Free to start.

7) HireVue

HireVue uses predictive analytics and machine learning to determine, for example, if an applicant will turnover quickly, among other invaluable tidbits. Also, if you’re having trouble configuring one of the platform’s many features, HireVue’s paramount customer service will help you get back on your feet.

Price: The “On-Site” package will run you $499 — $899 for unlimited interviews per location. There are also “Recorded” and “Live” packages.

8) Homerun

Homerun lets you set up a dedicated career site that you can easily tailor to perfectly reflect your brand and culture: Control every image and word, every font and color and form.

Unlike other platforms, Homerun lets companies categorically be themselves, a quality candidates will always recognize, even if they’re 1,691 miles away.

Price: €19 per active job opening per month, which is the “Pay For What You Use” plan.

9) Hyrell

Hyrell has all the bells and whistles you’d expect from an ATS: Easy interview scheduling, seamless communication features, job board posting, stellar account management, responsive technical support. Except Hyrell is optimized for franchise-based businesses.

Price: Ranges between $200 – $800 per month. There’s also an “Enterprise” package.

10) Lever

Lever helps companies source, interview, and hire “top-tier” talent, people who may not even be job hunting at the moment.

Price: You’ll have to contact Lever to get a custom quote, which, depending on the features, typically falls between $300 and $3,000.

11) LinkedIn Recruiter

LinkedIn Recruiter leverages the network’s more than 400 million users — along with premium features, like InMail and analytics tools — to help you find the ideal person. You can also source from anywhere with Recruiter Mobile, a convenient app.

Price: It’s $899.99 per month for the “Corporate” plan. The “Lite” version comes in at $239.99 per month.

12) Newton

Newton uses smart, decision-assistance tools to help small- and medium-sized organizations manage every stage of the hiring process. The platform also has a baked-in compliance feature that helps protect employers against fines and lawsuits.

Price: The basic package will run you $399.99 per month.

13) Proven

Proven streamlines the hiring process for small businesses, letting you post a job ad to more than a hundred popular job board sites, then categorize your responses into buckets for quick, convenient reference.

Price: Your first job ad is free. After that, you can pay-as-you-go for about $10 a pop.

The Technical Assessment Platforms

Kelsey, by the way, is a coder. A very good one, in fact. Based on her experience, you have every reason to believe her. But you can’t know for sure until you test her … live.

You could fly her in and go through the expensive motions: Airfare, lunch, hotel. Or you can send her a link and watch her work, in real time on your screen, as she takes your test remotely. The latter is easy thanks to these platforms:

14) CoderPad

CoderPad lets you watch engineers code in real-time. It supports over 20 languages, including C/C++, Swift, Java, Ruby, and Python. The platform also allows you to playback an interview, stroke-for-stroke, so you can show others involved in the selection process.

Price: You’ll pay $50 per month for a “Personal” account, which allows one user to conduct a maximum of 20 monthly interviews. The cost goes up from there.

15) HackerRank

HackerRank is rooted in crowdsourced coding competitions called CodeChallenges, which you can post directly on your career page to attract candidates. You can also use the platform to run a CodeSprint, which brings thousands of programmers together to compete in the same competitions.

This process lets the best talent organically rise to the surface.

Price: You’ll have to speak with sales after your 14-day free trial is up.

16) Interview Zen

Interview Zen lets you create open-ended coding interviews that are as unique and role-specific as necessary. Here’s an example from the site:

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”.

Price: Free.

17) Codility

Codility, like the other tools on this list, will help you source, screen, and interview technical talent. But the platform’s insightful and objective assessment scores help non-technical recruiters make more informed decisions.

Price: Single users pay $159 monthly. Equipping multiple users, however, will require a conversation.

“Hi, Kelsey,” you say, “how was your flight?”

“It was quick and easy, thank you for asking,” she says, smiling. “It’s so nice to finally meet you in person.”

You smile back, eager to make her an offer.

“I know,” you say, “it feels like I already know you.”

What are your favorite tools for finding and interviewing remote talent? Share them in the comments below.

To hit revenue and growth goals, your company needs customers. To get customers in an inbound world, your marketing team is responsible for generating leads and funneling them over to your sales team. The question is … how many leads?

When your boss asks you what your lead goal is, don’t just pull an answer out of thin air. Your projections need to be based on math and rooted in your company’s larger goals. That’s where our new lead goal calculator comes in.

To make it easier for marketers like you to set your lead goals for the month, we created a calculator template in Google Sheets and Excel that will calculate exactly how many leads your inbound marketing efforts need to drive each month for your sales organization to hit their numbers and your company to meet its growth goals. With just a few quick inputs, like monthly revenue goal and average deal size, this template will do all the math for you.

You can download the Lead Goal Calculator here. It’ll help you:

• Calculate the number of leads you need to hit your revenue goals.
• Measure current sales close rates.
• Assign dollar values to each of your major lead sources.
• Track monthly lead generation by channel.
• Commit to a monthly lead goal.

You can also use this template to experiment. For example, try changing the conversion rates and just see how your lead goals go down or up accordingly.

Ready to start calculating your lead goals for next month? Download our Lead Goal Calculator today.

Establishing credibility isn’t just about asserting your intelligence or expertise.

Real credibility comes from a careful balance of trust, empathy, and good judgment. And it needs to be attentively nurtured throughout your client relationships.

To help you avoid unintentionally damaging your credibility, we’ve compiled a list of six seemingly harmless phrases that can undermine your credibility and communicate to the client that you aren’t fully on their team. Are you guilty of using any of these?

6 Phrases that Kill Your Credibility with Clients

1) “This tactic is guaranteed to boost your conversion rate by 60%.”

Avoid exaggerating or overselling the successes of your services — your clients can smell insincerity a mile away, and it’s sure to turn them off. Presenting them with inflated numbers or unrealistic claims won’t boost your credibility, it will make them question whether you can provide any honest value to their business.

Remember: there’s confidence, and then there’s just plain bragging. Your clients only care about your past successes in the context of how they can directly provide value now, so avoid reading off a laundry list of accomplishments or stats. It can come across as self-serving and out of touch with the client’s specific needs.

Even if you’re not overtly exaggerating, be sure to cut out lofty words like “guaranteed,” or “absolutely.” These can come across as deceptive and pushy, and fail to communicate what your agency can actually do.

Focus on explaining the genuine value of your agency’s services. If you highlight a few proven strengths, rather than a showy list of claims, your client will be more likely trust your expertise.

2) “Sorry I couldn’t get that to you by Wednesday — something came up.”

When your actions don’t align with your words, you end up falling into what Prasad Kaipa calls a “Credibility Gap.”

Avoiding the Credibility Gap starts with setting realistic expectations and time lines on projects, and keeping an open line of communication to alert your clients if anything goes wrong or takes an unexpected turn.

Kaipa explains to Harvard Business Review that the best way to set realistic expectations is to be more aware of what you’re promising. He recommends checking in with yourself regularly and asking, “Am I saying something that implies a promise? What are the odds I can or will actually follow through? How can I articulate my ideas and concerns in such a way as to not raise false expectations?”

If you realize too late that a deadline isn’t feasible, don’t freak out. It’s not unusual for unanticipated issues to arise during the course of a project, but as long as you remain transparent and clearly communicate the issues to your clients, your credibility isn’t likely to suffer.

3) “We call this marketing approach ‘Infrared Magical Marketing Synthesis,’ or IMMS.”

Credibility requires clear and accessible communication, and nothing undermines this more than an overuse of jargon or acronyms. Overcomplicated words and insider phrases don’t help you connect with your client — they create barriers.

People often unknowingly fall back on jargon when they want to sound clever or informed, but in reality, it can end up hurting your credibility much more than it helps.

When you rely too heavily on jargon to convey information, it can diminish the meaning of your message and cause unnecessary confusion. Even worse, it has the potential to isolate your client and make them feel like an outsider in your discussions. Using too much jargon can also come across as evasive — like you’re unwilling or incapable of giving clients a simple, straightforward answer.

Before meeting with a client, comb through your presentation and eliminate any jargon-heavy words or acronyms that don’t actively contribute to your message. Your clients will appreciate the directness of your communication style, and will likely be more receptive to what you have to say.

4) “Although the numbers look bad now, this tactic has actually worked for many of our other clients.”

Ignoring or glossing over factual evidence in favor of selective, anecdotal evidence isn’t just a rhetorical fallacy, it’s also a major credibility killer.

The client hired you because you have expertise they think can benefit their business, and that means admitting when an approach isn’t performing as well as planned and pivoting towards something with more potential. When you scrounge around for evidence that supports a not-so-great approach as a way to salvage it, you end up falling victim to confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias occurs when you interpret all evidence — even ambiguous or anecdotal evidence — as confirmation of your preexisting beliefs. This can cause you to problematically overlook alternative possibilities that could benefit the client more than the current approach. In other words, you get so focused on pushing a particular strategy that you fail to see any real evidence against it.

The best way to avoid confirmation bias and keep your credibility intact is to focus on new evidence as objectively as possible, and prove the value of your work through clear reporting. If you’re scrambling to justify a particular tactic, it’s might be time to let it go, rather than damage your credibility attempting to defend it.

5) “I just don’t think that approach is going to work.”

Anyone who’s ever worked in a people-facing role knows how challenging it can be to always see eye-to-eye with clients — especially when you feel like you’re caught in a cycle of endless revisions that never seem to make them happy. You want to make sure your professional opinion is properly asserted, but it’s important to know when to step back defer to your client’s judgment.

If you get in the habit of shooting down your client’s input or ideas, they’ll start to think you haven’t taken the time to fully consider their point of view. Pushing back without proper justification can make you seem reactive and unthoughtful — and that undermines your credibility.

One of the best ways to establish your expertise and make your client feel comfortable and respected is to know when you don’t have the best answer, and let your client make the final call.

6) “Does that make sense?”

This seemingly innocuous phrase has the potential to be so damaging to your credibility that Jerry Weissman, a leading corporate presentations coach, has written a whole article on it in Harvard Business Review.

When you follow up a presentation or assertion with, “Does that make sense?” it has two negative implications, according to Weissman:

1. Uncertainty on the part of the speaker about the accuracy or credibility of the content.
2. Doubt about the ability of the audience to comprehend or appreciate the content.

Not only does this phrase make it seem like you’re unsure what you’re talking about, it also calls into question the competence of your client — which isn’t a great way to build a positive relationship.

Weissman recommends a switch to “Do you have any questions?” to avoid the negative connotations of this phrase. It’s a simple switch that can save your credibility from taking a hit at your next client meeting.

What phrases do you avoid using with clients? Let us know in the comments.