How to Hire Remote Developers in 2023?

Harvard Business Review in its 2014 study anticipated that hiring remote developers is more productive as opposed to having in-house teams. The study also stated employees working in a remote-based setup are happier and more productive than those working in a traditional setup.

Although the concept of hiring remote workers is not new, it is the latest norm. As we are living in a pandemic, the gig economy is flourishing as companies prefer to hire freelancers more. They say by 2028, 73% of all teams will have remote work.

However, hiring remote developers with the right attitude, knowledge, skills, vision, and proficiency level is not easy. The expertise and proficiency of the app developers impact the building of successful software.

To help you deal with the challenge of hiring a remote developer, we will first explain the benefits of hiring one and a comprehensive guide on how you should go about finding the right team of remote developers for your startup or business enterprise.

Benefits of Hiring a Remote Team

There are plenty of good reasons why your business needs a remote team of skilled developers in today’s time:

1.     Continuous Delivery

Usually, remote teamwork is around the clock and is what makes them the most attractive option for companies. As remote workers are generally from different time zones, just imagine one or other parts of your app are getting developers at all times. Isn’t it so convenient?

In fact, remote workers are less distracted because of their active work culture and fewer breaks. They commit to getting work done within the deadline and certain quality standards. Thus, less time to market improves the significant chances of your product finding its presence felt on the global market.

2.     Effective Engagement

In the midst of Covid-19, it has been observed that remote developers are more engaged while working with you instead of teams working in the organization. Using virtual conferencing platforms, it becomes a lot easier to be able to connect with the teams.

Remote teams seem to be more mentally present, active, and dedicated to their work. This is one of the reasons why organizations trust people working from different parts of the world. Not just work vise, but you get to learn so much about their culture, traditions, language, ethics, food, and whatnot.

3.     Expanding your Global Reach

As you collaborate with remote developers, directly or indirectly you sort of expand your brand reach. They act as unpaid brand ambassadors to promote your products. The fact they closely work with your startup so you don’t have to worry much about attracting prospects, leads, and customers to your business.

This way you actually get the benefit of your developers being geographically spread to different regions of the world.

4.     Meeting Innovative Business Needs

Thanks to advanced digital technologies, new business opportunities are emerging every day. To address these ever-evolving business needs of today’s digital space, you need to onboard remote developers who have a knack to meet the latest needs with their knowledge and skills.

This is how businesses improve their efficiency levels. In a highly competitive world, seasoned developers with experience working on software projects can play a dominant role in changing your business game.

Indeed, when a business needs expansion across markets, it just can’t get better than hiring a team of remote developers with the ideal set of skills and expertise.

In-Detail Guide to Hire Remote Web & Mobile App Developers

Now, let’s jump over to learn how to hire a remote team step-by-step. Many companies follow these well-tried and effective techniques that make it easy to onboard freelance developers. Let’s have a look at that down below:

1.     Finding the Top Developers

This is the first step toward hiring a team of remote engineers for your project. There are two ways for searching for the best talent:

• Job Postings: To find experienced and skillful developers, you need to reach out to as many as them. Many techies and developers frequently visit job sites like; AngelList, LinkedIn, Stack Overflow. So, these are the best job listing sites so far to spread the word about hiring remote developers.
• Freelance Marketplaces: If you have app development work for a short period of time, consider posting a job on freelancing websites such as Upwork, Freelancer, Guru, Peopleperhour, and more. Be sure to hire a freelancer who has worked on several projects and is top-rated. Apart from that, you can search for the best talents on social media - Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, or Instagram. Approaching talent on socials is pretty easy and convenient.

2.     Screening of Applicants

Once you have shortlisted the best remote developers for your next app development project. It’s time to screen each one of them through a meticulous evaluation process. To hire remote software developers with the set of technical proficiency that resonates with your project, you have to be ready to spend your time on this step.

So, it is best to analyze their developer accounts with popular platforms such as GitHub, Stack Overflow, and more. In Stack Overflow, look for the volume of responses they give to questions. This shows how actively they participate in the community. While for GitHub, take a look at their volume of contributions, the number of followers they have, and the amount of time they spend interacting on the platform.

3.     Take a Simple Coding Test

In this step, you can assess a developer’s practical coding skills by assigning them a simple software project. Along with giving them the assignment to work on, they are also given access to the different environments which they can use at ease. They can access libraries, platforms like GitHub, and frameworks for their coding tasks.

Such tests don’t just judge the theoretical knowledge of a coder but also deep analytical skills. These tests are usually carried out involving automated tools with less human engagement and the effectiveness in filtering out the applicants with decision-making skills is laid out.

4.     Interview Each Candidate

The main purpose of this interview is to check whether the applicant would fit into the role and the company’s ethics. Usually, the HR department conducts this round to assess the attitudes, values, and personality of the candidate.

During this round, mostly behavioural questions are asked to the applicant about their hobbies, likes, dislikes, and activities they want to do in their free time.

5.     Technical Interview

Of course, you are hiring a software engineer and primarily your focus would be on analyzing technical proficiency. Once the soft skills interview is going on, the next round of interviews would be about technical aspects.

A panel of interviewers would interview about the projects they worked on, problems they solved, roles, and logic they chose behind every solution. When you’re hiring a skilled team of developers, a live coding session would be an important part of the interview process.

6.     Create a Legally Binding Contract

Once the developer has successfully reached this step, it’s time to make the legal contract. You can either make an agreement for 3 months i.e trial period or you can make it full-time depending upon the project requirements.

7.     Begins Remote Onboarding

Your formal hiring process might be over but remote developer’s onboarding is equally important too. During this, you have to set out the communication channels, reviews, and project meetings.

In addition, you’d need to prepare a list of things your new employee should be aware of about the company. It is imperative to designate a senior team member to communicate with remote developers and sort out their queries if they face any trouble understanding the project management tools.

Some Cool Hacks to Hire Remote Developers in 2023

Here are some simple, fast, and easy tricks that entrepreneurs, businesses, and startups can use while hiring remote app developers this year.

1.     Find the best fit for a particular skillset

Hiring remote developers means looking for a particular set of skills needed to outperform the development job. You can easily filter out candidates on the basis of their collaboration skills, technical competence, time management abilities, and organization skills.

2.     Discuss the scope of work

The SOW document outlines the description of the project’s requirements in detail so there remains no gap of understanding between the organization and the remote developer. Be sure to factor in the deadline and guidelines to be followed during the project.

Discuss the scope of work in advance with the potential candidate so you know the project requirements match the skill set of a developer.

3.     Set your expectations clearly

In order to shortlist the right candidate for your app project, write out your description of the ideal remote developer. This way, you’d know the potential you’re looking for. Be clear about it before you hire the one.

4.     Find a great communicator

How fast your developer learns, understanding what is being conveyed, and how well they make everyone agree to the important aspect of product development are some of the critical elements of a developer’s skills.

So, to evaluate the communication skills of a developer, you must plan a scrum meeting and observe their interactions with the team members or ask them to develop an estimate for the project requirements and see how they perform.

5.     Look for an ultimate team man

A competent developer would always be a team member. To complete the task successfully, a developer would move along the team and help everyone to perform to the best of their abilities.

Some key ways that help you discover the potential of a developer as a team player include - checking their in-project collaborative skills, asking about how they helped their teammates in the past, and doing the reference check to whether teammates respected the developer’s ideas and suggestions.

Conclusion

Certainly, hiring remote developers may seem complex in the beginning, but it’s a rewarding activity once you finally select the ideal professional for your project. Now when you know the benefits of hiring a remote developer, we are sure you won’t settle down with an in-house team.

Even if you lack hiring skills, you can still hire remote web and app developers by going through the above-mentioned helpful tactics. So, be sure to follow them and make ways to build a successful collaborative relationship.

It’s a time to shape the digital success story of your brand keeping the business process highly efficient and effective.