Want to know what not to say in a remote interview? Interested in how to blow your CEO’s mind with your work? Ready for the secret to being a brilliant remote worker?
In today’s episode I spoke to the very thoughtful Sondre Rasch, one of the three founders of SafetyWing*, a remote company that offers a health insurance product for nomads, remote individuals and remote teams. He’s from Bergen in Norway, now lives in San Francisco, has a Polish fiancee, and business-wise splits his time between Estonia and Norway while running SafetyWing and it’s 100% remote team.
Just after we finished recording this episode Sondre said that the interview felt more like out loud reflections; you can really hear him thinking before he speaks and even though I edited out some of the pauses, this is really felt in the quality of his responses. He talks about their autonomous, responsible culture that enables creativity & productivity to thrive, about building an infrastructure for an online world and how that effects the way they operate as a team, and I particularly loved his advice for being authentic… which made me realise that the ‘barrage of buzzwords’ that — while great for hurdling recruitment software — shouldn’t be bandied around at interview. Talk, he says, like you would with a friend. I hope you enjoy it.
Key highlights from this episode include:
Work more autonomously and responsibly.
“I do find that when people work remotely, you have to find a culture that works with more and more kind of autonomous, responsible culture. Because you can’t be kind of standing next to, you know, your your colleagues to see what they’re doing. So you have to rely on them a little bit more, you have to depend on them a little bit more, but you also can make much more use of their creativity.”
Try your own ideas.
“We kind of encourage people to just kind of go ahead and try their own ideas… they don’t have to ask anyone for permission. Each person is sort of the locus of control when it comes to their own thing they’re doing, you know, the designer is doing the design and the the customer service person is is responsible for the customer service responses and instead of someone telling other people what to do, what we want is for that person to you know, really try their best to try their own ideas.”
Make sure the company values align with your own.
“One of the primary things we look at is that they want the same thing we do. And how do we sense that? Well, if they’re pro remember work digital nomadism things like that, that’s a very good sign. Because if you want the same thing, you know, that’s a very good recipe for a good relationship over time.”
Don’t use a barrage of buzzwords during the interview.
” … during interviews, the main way that someone comes across is not authentic is when I had the sense I’ve heard this before. It’s like, real time deja vu moment because there are a lot of phrases and you know, words that are trendy. And so often when I talk to people and I get sort of a barrage of buzzwords, but I find myself you know, just wondering like, but who is this? Who is this person underneath all the buzzwords and that’s kind of who we’re trying to get and get a good hold off.”
Approach your work wholeheartedly.
“So what makes Namira a great remote worker? So, one, she works independently anonymously and creatively. Right? So that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s the foundation. And what does that mean? It means that when she, whenever she’s off to do something, what comes back is always better than I could have thought of. And it’s something that, like, I could sit up all night and not come up with that. And it’s because of course, because she has approached that, you know, wholeheartedly to make it the best she can.”
*I love the Health Insurance offering from SafetyWing so much that I’ve partnered with them. This means that should you invest in their global health coverage I’ll receive an affiliate commission. This keeps me and my podcast going, so thank you so much in advance 😉
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