Hiring and Building a Remote Software Development Team
The trend of hiring a remote software development team is observed to have become popular in the recent past. Advanced communications have made it possible for workers to live elsewhere and complete their work for their employers who may be resident in another country in another part of the globe.
However, the question is whether it is right for your organization to hire a remote development team. If so, how do you go about hiring and building a remote software development team? In this article, we attempt to weigh the pros and cons and use the best practices for hiring a remote software development team.
Do you need a remote software development team
Remote software development teams can function as efficiently as in-house development teams. However, for a specific project, if you are not sure about hiring an entire technical group for the organization, going the remote way is recommended. Are you looking to hire an offshore software development team? Your case is strong if the following points are true for you.
You want to add, remove or replace people as per your requirement.
Yours is a start-up with a shoestring budget.
You want to avoid any knowledge deficiencies and management issues.
You want to widen your skill base without any compromise on the quality of the output.
You want to reduce the risks of developing a new product by yourself.
You want to find and hire the best developers in your team from a huge talent pool.
You want to get a 16-hour workday by taking advantage of the different time zones.
You want quick results.
Hiring a Remote Development Team – How to go about it
According to surveys, more developers want to work remotely after the pandemic. They want to work from anywhere and want added flexibility and increased productivity. Thus hiring a remote development team could prove beneficial to you. However, you want to hire the finest developers for your offshore team. Let us see the different steps involved in hiring an offshore software development team.
Where to pick up your developers from
Freelance forums
For short-term projects, hiring freelancers may be the best option for you. Posting an ad on different freelancer sites (Upwork, Guru, Fiverr, etc.) will help you to find the right people. If your project is a long-term one, the best is to hire from companies that offer to recruit dedicated offshore development teams for you or can field their candidates. This will give you the stability that you require.
B2B Portals
Accessing B2B portals is a good idea to get information about firms that could help you to hire remote developers. Clutch is one such platform. Visiting websites like Goodfirms may also provide you with good options. Going through shared knowledge and reliable B2B portals may yet be the best way to locate trustworthy outsourcing firms.
This is the most sought-after platform which makes talent acquisition easy. Though recruiters use this platform more than anyone else, you may be able to set up a dedicated software development team.
Hiring a Perfect Software Development Team
Below are the exact steps you can follow to hire a team of dedicated remote developers.
1: Make a list of the teams
Once you have narrowed down the list of teams, according to your requirements/specifications, you can then pick out the best team. The next few steps are likely to be the most critical and can make or break your project. So, it is important to complete these steps with due diligence.
2: Be Clear About Your Needs
Before you interview the developers who will make up your project team, ensure that you understand your project requirements clearly. This includes the image of your brand that you want to project in the marketplace.
3: Conduct an interview
Conduct interviews for all the teams at hand and choose the best one. Also, ensure that you interview more numbers than are necessary to form a team according to your needs so that you do not fall short of talented developers. Be clear about the questions you will ask of the developers so that you can pick a strong team.
4: Set Clear Objectives
Setting clear objectives for the team is half the job done. They must be prepared to face challenges to get the job done. You must make sure that they are aware of your expectations of them.
5: Screen them on technical competence
Ensure that they meet all your project’s technical competence requirements. This will help you to select the most competent candidates. Also, check their completed projects.
6: Final Interview
You can also blanket this process with a final interview. This is only for the candidates that you have placed on the safe side.
Remote software development team management best practices
How to manage a software development team is an often-asked question. Managing remote software development teams well is the key to completing a project. Here are some best practices that you can follow:
The team members and you should exercise mutual respect and transparency.
In-house and remote workers should be treated as if they have the same talent and productivity.
The in-house and remote teams should have access to the same resources.
Both teams should be provided equal funding and opportunities.
Invest in quality project management software that is used specifically for managing remote teams (Trello, Zoom, Slack, etc.).
Engage with the remote team regularly while encouraging team spirit.
Give freedom to team members to express their opinions.
Foster open conversation through regularly scheduled meetings.
Make sure you appoint team members who can all converse in the same language that you know well.
Good quality communication with the team will help improve the trust factor.
Conclusion
Though it is a challenging job to build, hire and maintain a remote software development team, a team that has strong credentials, a good reputation and having many already completed projects under their sleeves is likely to provide you with the best outcomes.
