When you decide to launch a software project, the first challenge is always finding and hiring the best developers for the job that can do the work within your budget. This is nearly impossible when you are a start-up with limited experience and funds. Most companies hire offshore software programmers to overcome these issues but finding offshore developers can be challenging, too. Let’s look at how to hire offshore software developer teams.
Why Hire Offshore Software Programmers?
A few years ago, most people would hire developers close to home because it was the easiest and simplest option. However, times have changed. For one thing, technology is moving at a rapid pace. Thanks to the advent of the cloud, agile software-as-a-service companies are usurping even the biggest enterprise businesses. Unless you can get to market faster and more cheaply than the competitors, you won’t make it in the highly competitive tech world.
We also think a little bit differently about the way we work nowadays. Thanks to the pandemic, work is no longer tied to a destination. We can hire the best people for the job, wherever they are, and use tools like Zoom and cloud-based communication channels like Slack to stay in touch. That has been great for developers who can live anywhere they like and do their day jobs from home, but it’s wreaked real havoc on the labor market for companies and recruiters. Developers living in remote small towns can work for big global brands anywhere in the world instead of their local IT office. It’s good news for the big global company, but the local start-up is going to have a hard time filling their vacancies.
Hiring an offshore team is the best way to overcome the skills shortage, and there are other benefits too. When you hire an offshore team, you work with a ready-made team of skilled developers with years of experience and their own equipment. They are highly educated, highly trained, and proficient in English. It’s also considerably cheaper to hire a developer offshore than in countries like the US or the UK.
Of course, you have to find offshore dev staff that can live up to their promises first! Because you aren’t familiar with the country, the language, or the company (and always can’t visit them in person), there’s always a risk that the team you hire doesn’t quite live up to the lofty claims on their website.
How to hire an offshore development team
The first thing you should do is ask for recommendations. You can go on sites like Reddit or Quora or ask LinkedIn interest groups if they’ve ever worked with any offshore companies they can recommend.
Then, start the shortlisting process. Send a few questions over to the various offshore companies. Ask to set up an appointment to discuss their experience. This is a good test in and of itself: if the company is very slow to get back to you or isn’t able to communicate in English (or your language of preference), you should probably avoid them.
Once you meet with an offshore company, ask about the way they handle projects, their past experience with projects that are of the same nature as the one you are working on, their team structure, and what they will provide. You can gently quiz them on how long it takes to complete a project of this size and what they would need to gauge their level of expertise (and honesty!)
Don’t forget to ask how they handle non-delivery or missed deadlines! Things do go wrong from time to time, and you’ll need to know whether or not you’ll foot the bill for their mistakes.
Then check out their references. Call their past clients, review the work, ask for samples and read online testimonials. If it doesn’t exist (or seems manufactured), that should be a red flag.
Conclusion
Offshoring is very common these days, and it should be easy to find the right team for your project. However, before you hire offshore software programmers, you have to be sure that you really found the best team for the job. Do your research, and everything should go smoothly.
