October 2020

Vettery hiring trends:
Remote work

As a marketplace connecting job-seekers with top companies, Vettery has seen a tremendous uptick of demand for remote work since March. Vettery data shows that 24% more employers are now open to remote hiring. Likewise, the pool of remote candidates has never been larger and more diverse, with 51% of new candidates open to remote positions and skewing higher for minority groups. We put together our key findings of recent trends towards remote work for both candidates and employers on Vettery. 

Vettery data has shown few companies are opening back up offices permanently. As a result, we’ve seen a significant increase in companies open to remote candidates.

We surveyed Vettery clients to measure their view on office reopening. By and large, COVID-19’s impact has shifted companies to fully remote for the foreseeable future. Among respondents, 61% of those have had their offices closed indefinitely, 16% have an official reopening date, 15% are open but optional, and just 3% require office attendance.

While companies have largely changed plans to operate in a remote environment, many are still not committed to hiring for a fully remote workforce. In our survey, 24% have recently changed their remote policies to allow for remote-only employees. 35% of clients shared that they have no plans to hire permanent remote-only employees.

Remote work has improved the interview process. 22% of companies state that the shift to remote work has made the interview process “significantly easier,” with only 2% of respondents saying that remote work has made the interview process “significantly more difficult”. While evaluating skills in the remote interview process has remained largely the same, 57% of companies believe showcasing company culture has become more difficult.

Based on our analysis of over 50,000 interview requests, the percentage of messages mentioning “remote” spiked from 3.3% in January to 12.3% by September but has remained relatively flat since. Despite their openness to remote employees, companies are not marketing remote work as a workplace benefit more frequently.

Job-seekers have significantly increased their preference for remote job opportunities

Since March, we’ve seen a significant shift in job-seekers indicating that they are open to remote work. That is up significantly from early COVID levels, and it appears now over half of candidates are indicating a preference for remote work. 

38% of active Vettery candidates have indicated a preference for remote work. 23% are located outside of the top 15 US markets*, while 11% are international (non-US).

*New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Toronto, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco, Phoenix, Detroit, Seattle

Remote work drives diversity and inclusion

From decreased business expenses to an increase in productivity, one of the biggest benefits that remote work provides is its ability to improve diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Without the restriction of location, remote work creates the opportunity to bring diverse perspectives from different locations and backgrounds across all job levels, functions, and teams.
 
Employers can significantly increase top candidates if they allow remote applicants. We took Vettery’s top 5 tech roles and compared the percent increase of candidates from local-only candidates versus open to remote candidates. Below you will see the data comparison of the top tech roles for local candidates vs. open to remote candidates in Boston, New York, and San Francisco.

Our data shows open-to-remote candidates skew higher for minority groups. Open-to-remote candidates skew over 20% higher for African American or Black and Veteran talent, highlighting how remote work can usher in a more diverse pool of candidates for employers. 

The data used in this report is taken from internal data from the Vettery platform. This data was pulled in October 2020 and reflects both active candidates and clients on the platform.
 
While we currently do not require candidates to self identify their gender or race - in an effort to better understand our candidate mix, we partnered with a third party to assist in providing information about our database of candidates.
 
Additionally, we used additional data conducted from a client survey, which was sent to 3,812 contacts that were a combination of current subscribers and users of our platform that were active 90 days pre-survey. The number of responses to the survey was exactly 100. This survey was conducted in July 2020.