5 tips for hiring remote software engineers and software developers
Introduction to hiring remote software developers and software engineers
Hiring for a remote position does not differ much from a standard recruitment especially in the beginning of the process. The same goes for software engineers and software developers. You need to start with a realization of what type of an employee you need which is not always obvious - for instance whether you want to hire a full stack developer, or a backend and frontend developer. After that you post an ad and start interviewing. However, there are some things that you should have in mind when hiring remote software developers and software engineers. Let’s have a look at them.
1. Do you actually need remote software engineers / software developers?
Don’t hire remote software developers when you don’t need to
When recruiting new tech talent, you should first off all check within yours and your staff network whether you could hire someone through a referral. You might realize that getting another person on board is easier than you thought. The problems start when you have already done that and explored the entire network to its limits. Then you need to look elsewhere for software developers and software engineers.
When planning your IT team, you need to look into three things - costs, talent availability and your brand attractiveness vs competition (all other companies hiring software developers and software engineers out there). When your brand is not very recognizable, it will be more difficult for you to hire top tech talent without paying a premium, which you might afford elsewhere. Additionally, when you require a sizable IT team (10+ developers) or are planning to have one, again hiring it in your country especially if you operate in the US or Western and Northern Europe will be very expensive and will only become more expensive with every employee. Additionally, hiring remote software developers and engineers saves you money on all associated costs, for instance, rental.
Go remote whenever you need to save some money or when you have an immediate need that you cannot fill in internally.
2. Don’t overcomplicate things but plan ahead how to work with a remote software engineer / software developer
When you have decided to recruit a remote IT team, you should realize one thing. It is just another recruitment process so do not make things harder for yourself. Go the standard way - write a job ad and start recruiting! Don’t over-analyse if it is going to be worth it or what you will do when an X problem arises. Remote software developers are still developers and unless you start, you will not hire them.
Some things need to be planned though while working with remote software developers. Those include:
- Initial onboarding and training pack
- Daily communication, e.g. Slack
- Daily work framework, i.e. a Daily Scrum
- Performance monitoring and reviews
Make sure to plan those ahead as once you hire the person it will be difficult to change things on the way, especially those related to the initial welcome pack as well as daily work and communication. Even with the best remote software engineer / developer things can go wrong.
3. Timezone of your candidates!
It is key that you look for software engineers and software developers who live in a country with a timezone that is not drastically different than yours. Hiring in Ukraine when you are a company from Australia might not be the best option for your business.
4. Use relevant job portals to get the best remote software developers
While recruiting for remote positions for software developers and software engineers, you can use standard IT portals such as: StackOverflow.com, Remote.co or relevant FB groups. There is also a trick you might use to get high quality candidates with a better cost. Post your job ad for a developer on IT job boards specific to a country. If you are a company from the US or Sweden, you might post your job ad on platforms in Poland such as NoFluffJobs or JustJoinIt, thus being able to hire the local developers on “local terms”.
5. Focus on personality during the recruitment process of a remote IT employee
Working with a person remotely depends on trust. When hiring a remote software engineer and remote software developers, add extra emphasis on the person character. How do you get along? Does the person have the same values as me or my organization? What are this candidate’s motivations and what does he expect from this job? Is he responsible and mature? Will he be doing his job when I am not looking?
Summary
Hiring remote software engineers and software developers does not have to work for every company, but when you see that the benefits are clear for your business, don’t hesitate to go for it. Our consultants at CodePole will be happy to assist you with this process.
