How to Hire Remote Developers

5 minutes read

Mobytelab Team

Posts a few seconds ago

Outsourcing is becoming an integral part of business economics for most companies to cut labor costs, including salaries for their personnel, overhead, equipment, and technology. Consequently, hiring remote developers is booming dramatically nowadays. Working from home is no more limited by different locations and different time zones. A large pool of talent is accessed by many tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook were working with no barriers.

However, hiring remote developers and working with them is always a challenging thing. A remote software developer should focus on their work and have high responsibility. Normally, some developers don't focus on their work, so that's why hiring a remote developer and working with them is always a difficult road to cross. This article will help you with some ways how to hire remote developers and filter out the right talent and work with them remotely.

What we will cover here are four basic steps to hire remote software developers or remote development team:

Step 1: Well-defined your demand

Step 2: Where to spread job description

Step 3: Choosing the right candidate

Step 4: Effective work Process.

1. Well-define your demand

Before hiring remote software developers or freelance remote developers, you need to define your ideal candidate. Listing all answers for these questions helps you to define clearly the target in hiring remote dedicated developers. What does your dream developer look like? Which traits do you need this person to have? What is the candidate's position? How skillful are their technical tasks? When will you hire remote developers to work for your company? How much adaptability they have to understand your culture because it reflects on their job and results.

In the job description, you should know the complete role and responsibility of the remote developer and what you required from them. And mention all the requirements clearly so that the right candidate can apply for this job and get the right person for this post. If you are no in a technical background, you must know little about the technologies and framework. So that you can find out the right remote dedicated developers. You must mention all these details in the job posting:

• Describe the job requirement completely: skills, experiences, age, working hours, type of technologies required
• What project or area, project timeline
• Payments, benefits, and incentives
• Job conditions, hours working rate

2. Where to hire remote developers

After having a well-prepared Job description, you must determine which channel will best hire remote developers. It depends on your company's budget, demand, and project scale. There are so many options to spread your job offer and get suitable candidates.

2.1. Use job platforms

If you'd instead hire a remote developer and not a team, it's better to use a job board or platform which is very efficient and provide the best services. There are plenty of reputable websites where you can hire freelance remote developers or engineers searching for new jobs or projects. Here's a list of the most commonly used platforms to hire developers online:

2.1.1 Your social network

One of the best ways to find a trustworthy freelancer is to ask around like your partners and colleagues who may know a qualified developer in their network.

You can also share your offer in a network of professionals like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter if you have many followers. Post a job in your social media network where you can share with your colleagues and online followers. You can even make a kind of marketing campaign for this and get the right talent. It's a network of professionals. After all, you can get the number of candidate details, and it's your task to find the skilled candidate.

2.1.2 Other platforms

You can post a job ad on popular job boards or freelancing platforms, or you can use headhunter service to approach talented IT candidates and find the best ones. These are some of the best places to look for potential remote developers, such as:

• FlexJobs
• We Work Remotely
• Working Nomads
• Landing.Jobs
• Jobspresso
• Remote OK
• NoDesk
• Remotive
• Remote.co
• The Muse
• SkipTheDrive
• VirtualVocations
• Letsworkremotely
• Remote Work Hub
• Remotely Awesome Jobs
• Go Remote Jobs
• remote
• EuropeRemotely
• Work in Startups

Stand out from them, here is the shortest list of platforms that are most popular for developers worldwide.

• Upwork is the most popular source for freelancers. So you can post the job description of your project, and you can receive dozens of candidates' resumes in a few hours.
• Freelancer.com has a similar algorithm with Upwork. However, their database of specialists is smaller.
• Toptal allows searching for the top developer thanks to its meticulous pre-screening system, which means that only top developers can get there.
• Remote offers three options to hire remote developers by browsing developer profiles to choose someone, posting a job and waiting for applications, or allow the AI algorithm to select the best candidate for you while covering all legal requirements.

Moreover, you can try some developer communities, such as Github, Hacker News, and StackOverflow. It means that you can put your job posting right where the potential candidates will see it, even if they're not actively looking for a job.

Those are popular developer hiring platforms. However, there are some massive differences between a freelancer and a full-time remote team member. There are multiple risks in hiring freelance developers, including confusing and time-consuming selection processes, questionable quality of work, a lack of engagement and commitment to the project, language/cultural differences, missed deadlines, security risks, and more.

2.2. Outsource the project to a vendor

One of the other ways to hire remote developers is by outsourcing your project to a vendor. In this way, you don't need to waste time to find the right talent, your vendor will be in charge of it, or they have an available workforce to handle your project. Outsourcing software development has become a common practice today thanks to plenty of benefits such as:

• Cost efficiency. The cost of outsourcing a project is lower than hiring an in-house development team or a team in your own country.
• Time-saving in finding IT talents
• Staff flexibility
• Reduce risks

The role of an outsourcing provider is to find and hire a remote development team or remote developers for a client. The remote development team can vary in size depending on the client's needs. The provider takes care of all the administrative and legal issues, including recruitment, payroll, taxes, sick days, and benefits for the developers. You can manage your remote developers with the methods and tools you like and come to visit them whenever you want to, while your service provider will handle all organizational matters. Before selecting the country, you will be outsourcing to, consider the following:

• The communication ability in English.
• Culture compatibility of vendor your working style.
• Different timezone
• Reliable and long-term collaboration
• High level of security
• Possibility to hire just one developer or an entire team
• Payment only after you hire a remote developer
• No administrative hassles

Here are some most well-known countries for outsourcing suggestions

2.2.1 Ukraine

Ukraine is one of the top destinations to outsource web development. The country keeps following global trends and showing expertise in big data, AI, mobile development, blockchain, and cryptocurrency project. With over 200,000+ IT professionals in the IT outsourcing industry Ukraine owns a lot of competitive advantages that attract companies around the world consists of:

• High rate of English fluently developers - around 85%
• Ukrainian tech companies are continual developed with a global mindset
• The reasonable ratio for hiring remote developers
• Little different timezone compared with most European countries
• Only 11 holidays with paid time off
• Ukrainian freelancer remote developer gain experience faster, be creative in solving problems
• Modern offices with comfortable working conditions
• Experts in Java, Ruby, and PHP programming

According to our research team, the average hourly rate for hiring a remote developer in Ukraine is

Senior iPhone Developer – $56 / hour

Senior Android Developer – $43 / hour

Fullstack Javascript Developer - $55 / hour

2.2.2. Poland

Poland has earned a reputation as a top choice for IT outsourcing and high-quality software development. The HackerRank index had Poland in the third position behind China and Russia. Poland works with PHP the most among all programming languages, but Java and .NET are also widespread. The country also excels in quality assurance and usability standards with many advantages such as:

• Skilled IT Professionals
• Polish developers are hardworking, innovative, and competitive
• High English proficiency
• Developers are flexible and agile
• Highly educated workforce
• Strong economy

According to our research team, the average hourly rate for hiring a remote developer in Ukraine is

Senior iPhone Developer – $53 / hour

Senior Android Developer – $45 / hour

Fullstack Javascript Developer - $50 / hour

2.2.3. India

India has been a preferred outsourcing destination by many western countries. And it's not just for customer support and BPO, as they show in mainstream media. India is a hub of tech companies, and businesses across the globe have been putting their faith in Indian IT outsourcing companies for their tech needs. India has an education system that focuses on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM subjects), with 2.6 million graduates each year. Despite tons of talent going overseas, India remains a vital outsourcing location.

India focuses on the latest technologies like Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud, Social Media, and Mobility. Indian developers are actively catching up in machine learning, AI, GIS, and blockchain technologies.

According to our research team, the average hourly rate for hiring a remote developer in Ukraine is

Senior iPhone Developer – $30 / hour

Senior Android Developer – $25 / hour

Fullstack Javascript Developer - $30 / hour

2.2.4. Vietnam

Vietnam is also not new to outsourcing. Asia outsourcing still holds the top two spots as the world's most dominant outsourcing destinations. Meanwhile, Asian-Pacific countries like Vietnam, an emerging powerful IT outsourcing and offshore development center, are getting noticed day by day. Vietnam will be the destination for many significant technology corporations in the world thanks to owning plenty of competitive pros and honor awards:

• Profuse workforce and youthful population with growing skillset
• Strategic Location in Asia
• Fast, stable economic growth
• Competitive labor cost
• According to TopDev's report, Vietnam has about 400.000 IT Engineers and over 50.000 graduated IT Students from over 153 IT Institutions per year.
• Vietnam ranks 29th in terms of Skillvalue Worldwide in Developer Skills Chart Of Skill Value Report in 2018.
• Rank top 06 worldwide in Developer Skills Charts Of Topcoder Report in 2016.
• Rank 23rd worldwide in Developer Skills Charts of Hackerrank's Report in 2016

According to our research team, the average hourly rate for hiring a remote developer in Ukraine is

Senior iPhone Developer – $24 / hour

Senior Android Developer – $23 / hour

Fullstack Javascript Developer - $28 / hour

2.3. Build your remote R&D

Instead of getting support from job agencies, companies can establish your recruitment website to advertise your company. Investing in this will attract a lot of potential candidates to apply CV to your company. You can create incredible amounts of content, blogs, podcasts, surveys, research papers, etc., to introduce potential customers. So when you're ready to hire a remote developer, your website will be a job platform where receiving candidate's resumes for your open remote job.

Building a platform for a company requires providing most of the company information, but some things still need your attention, like:

• The technology stack includes a wide range of services but looks for core competencies.
• Successfully delivered projects are shown through their case studies to get an idea of their accomplishments over the years.
• Events and recognitions that the company received which is the chance to build a brand, and good developers like competing.
• Cooperation models are various which you choose a suitable one to work for your remote developers and clients.
• Adding some references from clients, info about the team, and much more. All of this should tell you about the company's market position and its development expertise. At this point, the best way to continue would be to contact the company directly.
• Don't forget to publish remote opening jobs for freelancer remote developers or remote development teams to apply and join your company.

3. Choosing the right candidate

After scanning and choosing some qualified resumes for remote positions. It is time for selecting the right candidate by doing a great interview. The interview process is a crucial part of remote work. You need to follow some steps to filter and hire a skilled candidate.

• Be clear in your mind, take your time, and find out the right skill that you actually need.
• Slow down and look through all candidates carefully.
• Prepare for a pretty long journey through the list-filtering out.
• Interview then get some more information from them etc. You can set some algorithms for this and follow this algorithm to find out the skilled person for your projects.
• Put the candidate to work and give him one project to start and see how he fares in real-time.
• For hiring a remote development team, make team interviews. It helps figure out if a candidate will be a great employee or if the team is looking for something different.

4. Effective work process

The final step is onboarding. If you hired the right person, expect many questions from them in the first few days. Be around and communicate a lot — it also makes freelancer remote developers feel welcomed. Psychology is pretty essential. You have to make an effective team together.

We need to set an effective process and follow all the developers from time to time. Most of the clients and companies make a big mistakes. They hire a remote developer and let them work on their own. Well, you've hired the intelligent person, and they should handle it all themselves. It's wrong. It's important to handle and help remote developers from the first day. Help them set up servers, give all necessary repositories or logins, help them meet the team, etc. To make a successful onboarding make sure to:

• Have the paperwork ready: the contract, non-disclosure agreement, new email account, your new employee's information,... are essential and need to be taken up even in a remote environment
• Set clear expectations from the beginning: What are you expecting from them? What are they expecting from the company? It's also helpful for them to understand how communication works and how they expect to communicate in the team.
• Encourage socialization: It's easy to talk about how fantastic your company is or how everyone is friendly but keep in mind that you are not in a physical office. It means your new dev won't get to speak with people in the hallway; you need to encourage them and your team to gather in a zoom meeting and get to know the new employee or make a fun virtual activity to strengthen your culture.

Mobytelab focuses on software consultant, product design, UI/UX design, web & mobile application development and ASO.

Do you need help on building a custom software. Leave a message to us.