Choosing the Right Remote Workers to Join Your Team
When embarking on an offshore journey, it’s important to choose the right development partner. This can either be a third-party vendor, or a dedicated offshore team builder. With a third party vendor, the developers hired aren’t chosen by you personally, but by the vendor themselves, and they may be working on multiple projects simultaneously and for multiple clients too.
With an offshore augmented team — otherwise known as a dedicated remote team or dedicated development team — the sourcing of candidates is done by your offshore team building partner. They will ordinarily have a thorough recruitment process that tests for both technical and personality fit, to make sure they’re a cultural match for your organisation’s values and strategic goals.
The right offshore partner will have a model in place that provides recruitment, alongside managed operations and administration, as well as continued support.
If you opt for traditional outsourcing, your engineers aren’t in it for the long term and while it’s good for short-term projectsIf you opt to build an integrated offshore software development team, your offshore developers are full time colleagues that are completely dedicated to your business.
Have a live interview
Since Covid, the world of remote working has become more commonplace, and even right now in a world of hybrid work models your developers might also work from home occasionally.
However, in the context of this article, when we talk about remote workers, we’re just talking about workers who work in a different location to your HQ in North America, Australia, Western Europe etc.
So, if you want to build an offshore software development team in a location such as India then this article will help you to choose the right people to make everything work as seamlessly as possible.
Of course, live interviews during the pandemic weren’t really possible, but now they’re back on in many parts of the world. A live interview, or at least a live component gives you the opportunity to get a real feel for how the candidate will fit into your team from a personality perspective.
You can also check if they’re well presented and if they’re keen to take a look at the team in action, in person.
Test their competencies
Your dedicated remote team will have to go through a series of technical tests to determine their competencies in the skills you specified in the initial meeting with your offshore partner.
Before building the roadmap, the specific skill sets and tech stacks required for your business will have been discussed, and candidates sourced as per those requirements.
Technical testing might be conducted over several rounds, to replicate the iteration-style methodology of software development.
Even if a candidate isn’t successful, the feedback given can help them in future applications and positions, and it looks good that you as a business took time to properly evaluate their skills. In an age of review sites such as Glassdoor, this can prove invaluable from a brand perspective.
Ultimately, every candidate you interact with — whether successful or not — goes on to become a brand ambassador. It’s important in the digital age to keep an eye on these things during the hiring process to make sure the candidate’s experience is as smooth and enjoyable as possible.
Determine their level of self motivation
This is where personality tests as part of a strict and thorough recruitment process are so crucial to building an ideal offshore dedicated remote team. When you have one set of engineers in one location, and another a continent (or two!) away — making sure everyone is equally motivated and self-driven is really important.
Because key stakeholders may be in Europe, then engineers in India for example won’t get ‘face time’ with them. For some, this can be demotivating, but for others it isn’t a problem. That’s why assessing your developers’ personalities is a key part of any proper recruitment process.
Think about it like this: your offshore software development team is a seamless extension of your one at HQ, and it’s important to make sure everyone is on the same page. Although, salary differences in different locations can sometimes prove to be a small hurdle to overcome when making sure everyone feels equally rewarded.
Proactive communication
When working with an offshore software development team it’s key to communicate both efficiently using the plethora of methods available in the digital age. It’s also supremely important to communicate goals, objectives, as well as individual and team successes. This helps to keep people motivated and committed to the team’s overall objectives, as well as the business’ strategic mission.
It doesn’t have to be an ‘all expenses paid’ retreat once a month, but regular online meetings between your home and offshore teams can prove invaluable.
Likewise, within the team — it’s important that managers also make sure to give the same amount of attention to both sets of engineers.
Because ultimately, the goal is for both teams to be a seamless part of the global engineering setup of the company. One without delineation between the ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ sites.
Conclusion
If you’ve looked at the outsourcing route and decided it’s not for you, and have decided to go offshore then you’ve come to the right place. Whatever your choice, it’s important to make sure you have everything in place to make sure you can get the right developers for your needs.
When building a dedicated remote team it’s important to cross off all the things in the article above. With diversification and digitalisation high on the agenda of CTOs, CIOs, and other IT leaders in a way not imaginable before — software centricity, and the engineers needed to facilitate the shift, are more important than ever.
