What are your company's hiring procedures when it comes to your staff? Do you hire remote staff or do like to keep it the old fashioned way (face to face interaction)?

I'm really interested to know and LEARN more about the methods used by other hosts. For example... Do you drug screen your employees for insurance/liability purposes and to promote a safe working environment? Do you run background checks?

What about remote staff such as "Sales reps", is hiring remote employees safe? How do you go about the hiring process in such a situation? I mean, how can you be sure you're hiring a real, competent person?

Trusting your servers and your business to anyone is a HUGE risk. Look at the HostGator incident, for example. I can't find the link (someone post it if you can plz) but I remember it being a big deal, and the employee was even prosecuted and sent to prison.

If hiring remotely i wouldn't provide a tech root access until they prove they know what their doing and have shown they are competent through their ticket responses.
It's a bit like a forum you wouldn't give a new user moderator privileges, Although as you get to know them you can increase their access. Same with employees you try to get to know them.

Most everything I have done over the last 7-8 years has been remote, as far as corporate jobs go. If you are going to hire a remote staff, definitily ease into their access. I would definitely look through some of the bigger hosts policies and see which ones you would like to mirror. I think with support workers, I would definitely make sure they are local to you, sales reps can be remote and pay them heavy on commission vs salary.

I also own an offline business with my wife (cleaning), we don't do drug screens, but we do do a quick background check. Only once have I not hired because of the background check. Considering we are a cleaning company, I don't get the best of the best workers.

On other tidbit, document everything, both "high" end workers and "low" end workers can make your life hell later on if a dispute were to arise.

Good luck

We don't hire any remote employees, although a number of us can work from home when needed. No background checks or drug screening here. Have we ever fired anyone - yes. Hiring anyone is a huge investment in your time, resources and finances - be very careful.

In reality unless you actually get in your car and go to a physical workplace we all work via remote only these days the term is to telecommute.

Most employees these days telecommute for the hosting industry unless the company is a large one and actually has a physical office.

Best to keep in house within the company, hiring techs from india and giving them root access is dangerous business potentially and you have no idea who your dealing with