They are claiming to pre-screen candidates which in case of remote job I think is not a bad idea.

So, another TopTal without the Top?

RemoteMore is for remote employment, with TopTal you get pretty much only freelancing.

AFAIK TopTal is mostly remote freelancing, often matching Silicon Valley to Eastern European programmers (not possible unless remote).

Sorry, that was what I meant - TopTal is about remote freelancing. But it is not about long-term remote jobs. Getting projects from time to time fits some people, but some people will prefer to work with one company for the long-run, a d that's what RemoteMore is about.

It's much easier to do remote freelancing/contracting/consulting than employment. For employment the target company has to incorporate in employee's country or you need to have a branch that acts as an intermediary; not sure if you won't be on a legally shaky ground and forced to accept the programmers you connected as your own employees.

How do you pre-screen people to get if they will be a good fit for remote?

Well, that would be their value add. I've been working remotely for over 5 years and anecdotally I'd say there are quite a few characteristics you could evaluate to get a feel of how good someone would be for remote. Some of them I'd say would be asking for how they've worked before, what their daily schedules are like, how they've handled communication, how often they respond to the screening process and such before getting into actual work knowledge.

IMO you’d look for time management and communication skills as well as a strong sense of self-assessment and independent decision making.

Note that the comment you're replying to asked How, not what do you screen for. How do you screen for the skills you've outlined?

Thanks for pointing it out, and ya its really hard to do. I think you identify certain signals and do the best you can in your interview process to flesh them out, for example:

1) History of working remotely successfully in the past

2) Strong verbal or written communication skills, i.e. ability to explain complex ideas concisely or to break down large ideas into consumable smaller ones.

3) Higher education background, indicating the ability to push through benign task and consistently reach performance goals (c's get degrees)

4) Aligned long term-goals for example, engineer foo wants to hit a certain salary level by gaining an expertise in $tech_x, and at the same time your company has domain experience in $tech_x that could facilitate for your employer

5) Ability to break down past projects in the context of "how would you do it differently with a do-over" or "what are some examples where you mismanaged technical debt"

None of these ideas are perfect, and execution in the interview is perhaps the hardest part. I myself am a college drop out which makes it ironic that I would suggest people with degrees make for better remote workers, but when it becomes a search for signals a degree from certain tiers of universities is too hard to pass up as a hiring manager who just wants to do a good job.

OP here - ^ that's one very good a answer!

Yes, pretty much like that. I wrote one long reply in this thread on what we're looking for and it is about the same as this post above.

I would qdd to it that experience with working remotely successfully is a great predictor, but it leaves out the candidates that have not worked out remotely so far. In that case, the focus becomes on the other indicators.

The recruiter fees start at 20%, and they are usually 30%+.

Also, with our service, the companies get instant access to lots of pre-screened developers, which they don't with recruiters.

Pre-screening is nice, but not much of a value add. Sourcing candidates is the hard part, and this service can only present the candidates that have entered profiles. No outreach, no advertising at any level.

Perhaps C-levels are 20%, or maybe in the Bay Area, but the standard elsewhere is 15%.

fwiw 15% is really low in my experience, across a range of locations and hiring at all levels . More common would be 1/4 or 1/3 1st year salary, with 3mo trigger (or clawback)

Of course YMMV.

I am in CO, ~30% is pretty standard for anything in tech.