as with any important decision, referrals help you skip a few steps.

that said, one of my hires at Fomo was a cold, inbound solicitation from a reddit user. now he's our VP of engineering.

one of my hires, i met in a coffee shop in 2014 in New York City. i walked up to him because i could tell he was coding something with Bootstrap. 2 years later he joined us at Fomo.

another hire was a friend of a guy who quit an agency that we fired. how did that connection happen? i can't remember.

and i've recruited still more candidates through social media, via simple tweets like "looking for a Magento developer" that yielded 10 direct messages within hours. yes, i hired one of them too.

to answer your question, start by avoiding every candidate who hasn't already been working remotely. if you encounter someone who says "i'm really excited to work remotely," run. the rest will figure itself out.