Advantages of hiring remote developers
Saving costs
For the last couple of years, the number of remote employees has increased globally. The situation with pandemic had a major effect on the choice of companies to risk less and perform more efficiently. By letting employees work from their home offices companies managed to save a lot of costs previously spent on office rent and other related expenses such as heating.
Flexibility
On top of saving money, company owners would be able to hire a team of developers in the locations they prefer and would have a diversity of roles in a team. It is nowadays easier to hire a team of developers in Ukraine and a marketing team in Poland, for example. The company owner can easily hire a small team with members in different locations (if time zones allow that) and may have a diversity of roles in one team. Moreover, it is relatively easier to hire employees in different locatons rather than sticking to one with limted number of candidates.
Better productivity and efficiency
When working from home a software engineer can be more productive and would feel no pressure from working from the office. Commuting to the office requires additional energy and time spent. So, the home office really helps employees feel better and be more productive.
Two options to hire remote software engineers
As the company owner, you would consider hiring freelancers or in-house full-time developers. It all depends on the budget and the type of help you would need for your business. If you realize, you would need ongoing technical support for many years for an application or website you own, then in most cases, it would be worth considering an in-house type of employment. However, if you would need short-time support and would require that on a constant basis, freelancers may also assist. Let's consider all the pros and cons.
Pros of hiring a freelancer
- immediate availability without any notice period
- working for a particular rate per hour
- all the tools they require they usually have access to
- freelancers are independent and you will not have to worry about the pers, bonuses, or social package
- they can apply their working mode to yours
Pros of hiring a full-time permanent software developer
- A developer would pass the interviewing process and would perform in the way you expect them to
- You would have a higher level of security when hiring an in-house remote developer
- A developer would be available according to the working hours you require them to
- It would be less expensive to hire a permanent developer
How can I hire a web developer or app developer?
If you have chosen an option to move forward with freelancers, you might be interested in such platforms as Upwork, Fiverr, or Guru.
However, if you have decided to hire an in-house developer since it matches your business requirements more, there are also numerous options you can choose from.
You can make use of such websites as Glassdoor, Indeed, and Careerbuilder. There you could post a job post that would allow you to get applicants directly to your mailbox. The positive feature of using these websites is the possibility to get candidates relatively fast. The con of this option may be that the candidates who applied might not meet the level of your expectations from them.
Another possible and effective way is to use Angel.co if your organization is still in the start-up mode. There you would be able to promote the company business and get appropriate candidates who would browse your company's activities quickly and see if there is a match. AngelList also provides a possibility to see all app developers for hire. You could preview them and see if there is a fit.
Using social networks such as LinkedIn would be helpful as well. You can create software developer jobs and share them among your network. There is also an availability of your job advertising so that you could get candidates to apply to your ad quickly. LinkedIn is an effective tool that helps to view developers' careers quickly and sometimes evaluate them better in comparison to a CV only. You can easily browse some language competence, candidates' education, their job switching, and skills as well as endorsements for those skills. Nowadays LinkedIn has skills assessment tests so that you could see a developer with a particular skill badge.
You could refer to a professional organization. By outsourcing part of your work to a recruitment company, you could save tons of working hours and could focus on more important parts of your business. It is more efficient to cooperate with companies specializing in technical recruitment rather than generic recruitment.
What steps should I take to hire app developer or web developer?
Here are the major stages you would have to go through:
- Pre-screening and screening developers.
- Making a pipeline of candidates.
- Scheduling the first interview.
- Making technical evaluation/interview.
- Onboarding
Pre-screening and screening developers.
Pre-screening and screening phase can include browsing many applications that might have landed in your mailbox. This may also include searching for candidates manually on social networks. The first stage of technical recruitment might be the most challenging since it requires a lot of working hours and effort to find the appropriate people according to a particular company's criteria. In most cases, organizations tend to outsource this part of recruitment to some specialists or companies.
Here are major aspects you should consider when dong pre-screening or screening:
- experience with particular programming languages
- fluency in English or another language you might require
- candidates' location
- the reason for the current job change
- the speed of prior job switching
- their salary expectations
- notice period
It is important to keep in mind that you would have to do some technical evaluation of the candidates before hiring them. That is why a CTO or a technical person in your team would be able to assist with that. It would take at least two interviews and sometimes you would have to ask them to complete a testing task. Some recruitment agencies are also able to do the technical pre-evaluation so that you would be sure you are hiring the right person for your business.
When you have made a decision to hire remote developers, you have to consider the location of the developers so that it would be convenient for the whole team to work together according to a particular time zone. When there is a one or two hours difference, you would not feel a major impact on your working schedule. A bigger time difference might be harder to manage.
Making a pipeline and having the interview
After you have built the list of appropriate candidates, it is time for scheduling an interview. In order to make your recruitment process smooth, you can make use of different recruitment tools such as TeamTailor, SmartRecruiter, Zoho, or similar. The major goal is to keep track of every single stage in your recruitment process not to lose your unicorn candidates on the way. Some recruitment tools have a built-in messaging system for you so that you could e-mail candidates directly from the system. It is very helpful if you would like to be aware of every single step of the recruitment and to make decisions fast.
During your first interview, you can evaluate the soft skills of the developer by yourself or can ask a Recruiter to do that for you. After the first meeting, you can also see if there is a cultural fit. After you had your first interview with the candidates, you might collect the list of those who might be eligible for the technical evaluation.
Making a technical evaluation
To do a technical assessment you can ask developers to complete a testing task or ask them to present some open source work they would like to share with you. If you see a match during the technical interview and the like work they have been doing, this may be a very good sign that you are about to hire the right app/web developer. If there is some hesitation available still, you could take a small break and compare the results to other candidates' performances to be sure.
On-boarding app/web developers
The final step in any recruitment process is onboarding. You may consider preparing a contract beforehand and discussing some contract aspects during the prior stages, such as vacation, bonuses, salary, and similar aspects. It is also worth consulting a lawyer in order to make sure regarding different regulations.
Your workforce is in your hands
It is a well-known fact that companies are made up of people and the right personnel is the most important that each organization owns. The products or services may be unique and help to solve people's challenges. However, it all depends on the people who are offering these products and services or are making them as is in the case of software developers.