2020 brought the world at a standstill. Even if you have been living under a rock, you might have observed the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
While industries like travel and hospitality are crumbling, the scenario for others is questionable at the same time.
If we come to the tech industry, remote hiring has suddenly become the most lucrative option of all.
You can get things done by hiring remote developers, even when an entire country is at standstill. It wouldn't be wrong to say that remote work is the future.
( Source: https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/remote-work-statistics )
The trends were always in favor of remote. Imagine the post-covid world scenario.
If you're also struggling with remote work decision, this blog would direct you in the right direction.
Why You Might Need a Remote Development Team?
Remote work is great. But first, you must identify the reason you might need a remote team.
The reasons should be concrete and inspire you to act towards hiring a remote developer.
Here are a few reasons that can drive you towards hiring a remote development team:
1. Lack of Desired Skillset Internally
Your product or idea evolves with time. This can also mean that your existing team isn't equipped to handle the bigger aspirations and end development goals on their own.
Sometimes, the skillset isn't refined for more. Sometimes, your developers might not be familiar with a new technology.
In such cases, it leaves a few options, either you train your workforce (which can be a costly and risky endeavor) or hire new team members (which again would mean costly onboarding).
Remote team saves you from the hassle and brings cost-efficiency as it is cheaper to hire expert remote developers with desired skill sets than to train your internal teams.
2. Increasing Development Costs
Software and app development are costly affairs. Developers are some of the highest-earning professionals in the world.
Top it up with the costs of development locally (tech costs, overheads, etc.) and you might find it isn't a good idea, essentially if you are just starting up or have limited sources of funds.
Remote mobile app development teams come to your rescue in such cases. They can offer quality work at a fraction of the cost of developing internally.
3. Improving Time to Market (TTM)
Let's say you have a great idea, but the opportunity is time bound. Or say you fear a competitor launching ahead of you.
In such cases, a remote developer's team can improve your development capabilities and thus boost TTM metric.
You can quickly release an MVP, iterate and launch your product when you have more minds working for you.
So, hiring remote developers can bring down the time-to-market while not affecting costs much.
4. Challenging Management of Internal Teams
With employees under your payroll, you need some set processes and systems.
Let's say if you bring developers on-board, you may find it challenging to manage the HR policies, set productivity systems, give them hardware and arrange for a streamlined workflow.
With remote teams, these problems are addressed right away.
Most remote developers are self-sufficient in terms of workflow management and can even guide you to achieve highest efficiency and productivity.
This brings down costs of management along with reduced hassle of controlling and managing resources.
Types of Remote Hiring Models
Before we jump in deeper to the specifics of hiring remote developers, there is something you should know about the different models.
Remote work can happen from anywhere in the world.
While some organizations prefer hiring locally for remote work, some work with developers from different countries.
Here are some popular ways to hire a remote developer:
1. Local Remote Work/jobs
This is not much common but a viable remote hiring option.
Companies look for freelancers and consultants locally – in their city, state or country and engage them on a project basis.
2. Outsourced Remote Work
This is one of the most popular engagement models.
In the outsourcing model, you can engage a company/team for the entire project.
Generally, the outsourcing/remote development company is situated out of your country (cost benefits) and takes care of day to day activities like hiring the staff, managing the resources.
The end goal of an outsourced model is to complete the project successfully.
3. Out-staffed Remote Work
Generally, the out-staffing agency takes care of wages, bonuses, etc. while the employee works with you on your project.
Preparing for Remote Hiring
Jumping the boat from an in-house team to a remote team shouldn't be an impulsive decision.
Rather, you will have to prepare your organization for remote work. Here are some steps you'll have to take for hiring remote developers.
1. Become Remote-ready (Building business processes)
If you're engaging top remote developers for the first time, then you'll have to build some infrastructure at your end. Basically, this would involve preparing for success in remote management.
If hiring developers is your priority, you'll likely require the following for seamless communication, collaboration and project management:
- Central code repository solution such as Git or Bitbucket
- Document/file sharing solution like Google Driv
- Project management tools such as Jira, Trello, Asana or Monday
- Communication tool like Slack, Skype, Hangout
- Video calling solution, Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, etc. would work
While email can do several things but if you want to scale and take full advantage of remote work, you'll need to use tools that simplify work for you and your remote team.
2. Define Clear Development Outline
You must know that remote development teams have varied skill sets. Each developer has a unique strength.
To achieve desired success, ask yourself, “What am I looking for in a remote developer?”
Define a clear development outline, create an insightful job description and list all the skills you seek in a remote developer you're intending to hire.
Will you be requiring help with the backend development? Do you need a clean code? Do you want something specific? Add everything to your frontend & Back-end development outline.
Think of it as the guiding light in darkness. If you manage to create an exhaustive outline, there are higher chances of remote development success.
3. Screening & Interview Process
Understand one thing. As you open your gates to the remote world, you will be flooded with gifted talent from around the world.
This means more time needed to screen and discover the desired talent. You will need a proper screening and interviewing process.
Having a proper process will help you get each candidate and scheduling interviews with the most promising ones.
There are a few must-have skills you need to evaluate in each and every candidate you interview.
Things to Look for in a Remote Development Team
Once you have things sorted at your end, it is time to start evaluating the talent. Well, you need to have a keen eye for a few skills while interviewing a candidate:
1. Deep understanding of the requirement
Any candidate you consider for hiring remotely must have a deep understanding of your requirement. It goes without saying that you should ask several questions about the technology or framework.
You can even give them a small project aligned to your actual requirements to gauge their depth of understanding regarding a technology or stack.
2. Demonstrated and relevant track record
You must check the dedicated hiring developer's past portfolio and analyze if the work done previously is relevant to your project.
Ask them to share credible and relevant samples for the projects they executed in the past.
Check if their projects depict their expertise, critical thinking ability and expertise.
You must realize that the top app developers must have a critical mindset and problem-solving approach because web and app development can get tricky at points.
A developer with a relevant track record would help you sail through turbulent tide and take you through.
3. Experience of working remotely
Not everyone can work remotely even if they are good at their work. So, you should carefully choose resources who have worked remotely in the past.
Without direct supervision, not everyone can work towards a goal.
So, you will want someone who understands the nitty-gritties of remote work, is self-motivated and can produce results without constant supervision.
Steps You Should Take Before Actually Hiring A Remote Developer
1. Define Project Timeline
As said earlier, having a clear outline helps immensely. Just like a clear outline, you will have to define the exact project timeline.
This will help developers understand your expectations better and plan their work for maximum productivity.
At the same time, timelines give a sense of discipline and orderliness to something unknown- like working from miles apart without any real contact.
So, if you want to hire a remote developer and want to leverage his/her expertise, you need to be quite clear in your outline, approach and timeline.
As you know, any goal should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound.
Talking of time-bound, it is essential to have a proper timeline for each sprint, a feature you want to add or an app you want to build.
2. Contract
Once you have finalized on a resource and have clear timelines and goals, the most important step is to formalize the engagement.
Just like an employment contract, your remote hiring contract should include everything you want to enforce. Some essential points to include in your contract are:
- Roles and responsibilities
- Engagement fee/salary/rates
- Goals
- Timelines
- Availability
- Termination
- Ownership of Assets
- Non-disclosure
3. Configure Tools & Providing Access
We talked about being remote ready by using tools and platforms. Now, before you engage with someone remotely, it's important to set up a proper collaboration structure.
Think of email service, code repository, communication, file sharing, instant messaging, project management and video conferencing to start with.
Configure everything and prepare for providing access to your remote developers in a secure manner. .
4. Invite & On-board
Once you're ready, it's time to welcome your new remote resource to your startup or company.
The best way to do so is having a standard onboarding process.
You might want them to be familiar with everything and everyone.
You would also like them to understand the culture- what's expected and what's not.
Give them the access to everything they need and make them comfortable to integrate in your work processes.
5. Schedule Routine Engagement Sessions or Calls
Your remote team must not feel left out. At the same time, you must ensure that there is some form of connect and coordination.
Scheduling meetings, engagement and project update sessions would make them more accountable.
Having regular meetings (daily, weekly, fortnightly) would also eliminate issues due to time zones and would ensure timely product launch.
At the same time, it would make your organization more inclusive. Something every startup is striving for.
6. Continuous Evaluation
You have a great remote team. You have the processes. You have everything in place.
But this can quickly crumble if you don't evaluate the performance.
So, its important to keep evolving your performance standards and continuously evaluate the work being done remotely.
Not only will this improve your end-results but will also make you a better, serious and committed organization.
Best Countries to Hire Remote Developers
1. India
India is traditionally known as a country of thinkers, tech geeks and high-quality remote developers.
Proficiency with English language, commitment to goals and deep understanding of innovative technologies are some of the traits in favor of remote Indian developers.
You might realize the potential of Indian engineers and developers by the fact that all major tech companies have a huge workforce hailing from India
2. Argentina
Argentina is known to have a sound tech ecosystem right from the school level. Technological literacy is high making it one of the lucrative options to hire a remote team.
Though Argentinian developers are proficient with several technologies, the slow internet speeds and non-English speaking audience can sometimes ruin things for a demanding project.
3. Ukraine
Ukraine has a strong educational backend that prepares its engineers for the IT industry. Many companies, schools and universities offer free tech education with employment options.
Ukrainian tech guys are great at software and app development.
But being a non-English speaking country practically behind the iron curtain can bring a lot of challenges during project execution.
4. Poland
Developers from Poland are known for high-end QA and usability testing. They are even good with several programming languages.
Though the lack of English as a major language and low population can make Poland costly for remote hiring.
Wrapping Up
Finding and hiring a remote developer is a hard task. Not everyone would match your wavelength. It can take some time.
But it's always better to look forward towards industry trends.
Right now, top Indian developers are highly sought-after because of cost benefits, easy coordination and commitment towards goals.
If you're thinking of hiring a remote developer for your startup, we are ready with everything we have.
Our strong track record and an expert team onboard can promise you best results for your innovative startup in custom app development, web development or any other specific technology.
Get in touch with our experts and experience the difference!
