How to Hire & Manage a Remote Software Developer Team

How to Hire & Manage a Remote Software Developer Team?

Planning to hire remote software developers or a software developer team?Congratulations!You are on your way to making a positive impact on your business. It will be a convenient decision for you in terms of cost, talent-pool opportunities, sustainability, employee mental health, and many more. But you have to get yourself prepared properly to hire the right team or individuals and manage them. You will face a lot of new challenges and have to overcome them. Without hiring the right one and managing properly, you can’t get the expected output. Let’s get started with the procedure that will help you to hire the right individual or team for you and manage them to get the best output.

Benefits of Hiring Remote Software Developers

Cost Effective: Whether you are hiring from your country or a country where employee cost is lower than your country, it will minimize your cost in both cases. If you hire from countries like South Asia, you will get employees at half of the cost compared to USA or Canada. Along with that, if you hire from USA or Canada, you will save a lot because you won’t need to pay for office rent, employee benefits, tax, or insurance.

No Office Management Hassle: It will relieve you from office management hassles along with office rent, tax, employee benefits, health insurance, or any other overhead cost.

Global Talentpool Option: You will be able to hire developers from every nook & corner where as for on-site hire you are bound to hire developers only from your city or country. It will help you to hire best talents for your company.

Better Employee Productivity: As your developers will work from their convenient location, won’t face any traffic jam, and can spend more time with their family, it will boost their productivity.

Environment Friendly: Sustainability is a major concern now-a-days. Remote hire will save fuel that would be used by your employees to commute to office and electricity that would be used by your office. Environment experts and activists are encouraging remote work for a sustainable future.

Read more about the benefits of remote software developer here.

Primary Planning

Before you jump into the hiring process, specify your goals along with the expectations from the individuals or team. To make this easier, ask yourself the following questions-

1. Which skills do you need to complete your project?
2. How many hours it will take to complete your project?
3. What will be the project completion deadline?
4. How many developers will be needed to complete the project within this deadline?
5. How much is your budget?

Now make an excel spreadsheet with these parameters to make your hiring process easier. Sort your candidates according to this sheet to find the best match for your project.

Create Job Post & Spread It

Prepare job description with responsibilities, required skills, experience, remuneration, working hours, job nature, and project details. Then post them in platforms like LinkedIn, Upwork, Fiverr, etc. You can also post job in social media like facebook or relevant groups of facebook. For instance, if you are hiring a software developer, you can post job in software groups or communities.

Shotlist Candidates

It’s a common practice whether you are hiring remote or in-house developers. But, it’s important. After posting your job circular in social media, LinkedIn, or any other platforms, you will receive tons of resumes. Collect them and shortlist candidates based on their experience, skills, & industry relevance. Create different folder & upload the shortlisted resumes in that folder. This process will narrow down your workload and increase the quality.

Analytical Ability & Personality Test

OpeNo matter how much experience or skills a candidate has, without having a sound analytical ability, he/she can’t cope up with new job or challenges. Someone might have 5 years of experience & tons of skills, but if he/she doesn’t have sound analytical ability, you can’t expect the best output from him/her. Along with that, as you are hiring developers, a person with better analytical ability, will perform better naturally. Now, what about the personality test? Well, personality of your employees matters a lot. No matter, whether your employee is a developer or a graphics designer, if he/she has personality problems, behaviour issues, or something like that, you will face a lot of difficulties to manage your team. Moreover, one employee with personality problem might ruin a team of twenty members. However, you will find a lot of analytical and personality test on the internet.

Practical Task

After filtering the candidates based on analytical ability and personality test, prepare a practical test for them to justify their software development skills. Create a practical task based on your project details. You can take help from experts or from the internet to prepare the task. Include questions that will help you to understand if the candidate has enough skills and experience to deliver your project. Assign a software development specialist to evaluate the task if required.

Verbal Interview

A verbal interview is important to have an in-depth understanding of someone’s skills & experience. After finding the best match candidates based on practical task, arrange a verbal interview to justify their skills & experience deeply. Additionally, evaluate their communication skills in English as people from different language will work together in your remote team. As you are hiring developers from different location globally, you can arrange the verbal interview through zoom or google meet.

Special Requirements

As your remote developers will work from home or at least from outside of your office, make sure that your developers have their own computer, stable internet connection, & UPS backup in case of emergency. People form different races, cultures, and religions will work together in your remote team. So, make sure your hired employees are compassionate and respectful when it comes to the matter of diversity.

Onboarding

After you have found the best-suited candidates, arrange the onboarding process. Tell them to submit their required documents like their academic certificates, NID scanned copies, bank details, experience certificates from previous employers, etc. Don’t forget to check their local tax policies and other regulations related to employment individually because they will be from different countries or states. Arrange an orientation program to introduce your company and values to your newly onboard employees.

How to Manage Your Remote Developers

Managing your remote developer team is more challenging than hiring it. Make sure you put your best effort to manage and organize them. It’s not rocket science. It’s a matter of proper planning and execution. Here are some tips to manage your remote developer team-

Maintain Fair Communication

It’s recommended to use communication channels like Slack, MS Teams, or Skype to ease communication between your team. The more they can communicate with each other and with you, the better they will perform.

Make Yourself Accessible

Instead of being a boss, be a leader. The best practice will be to have a friendly relationship with your developers & maintain frequent communication to have an update on what your team needs. It will keep them motivated and boost their productivity.

Use Project Management Tools

There are a lot of project management tools that make things easier for you. We recommend you use project management tools like Asana, Trello, or Jira to manage your project. It will help you to track the progress, instruct, & meet the deadlines.

Set Specific Goal

As you are not supervising your developer team directly, you have to set a specific goal. Specify day-to-day progress and check the growth every day. Set number-based goals if possible.

Challenges of Managing a Remote Team

There are several challenges that you will face when you will manage a remote team or individuals. To get your expected result from your team or software developers, you must know how to overcome them. TechCare has a decade of experience in hiring and managing remote software developers. Here are some tips for you from our experience-

Communication Gap

Your software development team will work remotely. They might be from different time zones, cultures, races, and countries. So, naturally, there will create a communication gap along with a lack of interaction between them.

How to Overcome: Use communication apps like Slack, MS Teams, or Skype to maintain communication and create interaction. Try to arrange a video call at least once a day to understand each other.

Lack of Supervision

As your team is working remotely, you can’t supervise them directly. This might cause indiscipline and you might not be able to track the progress of your given project.

How to Overcome: Set specific and number-based goals. So that you can avoid micro-management and track the ultimate result. You can use project management tools like Asana, Jira, or Trello to track your project and details.

Lack of Team Collaboration

As your developers are working from different locations and not interacting with each other, team collaboration will be a challenge for you. Without a smooth team collaboration, you can’t build a dynamic team.

How to Overcome: Always make yourself available when your team needs you. Also, give them opportunities to build relationships with each other. You can also appoint a scrum master to make better collaboration between your team members.

Security Issues

Cyber security is a major concern for remote team management. Any security breach might cause financial and reputational loss for your company. As your developers or team members will work from their own devices, fear of security breaches is always there.

How to Overcome: Create awareness and train your team members regarding security issues. You can also appoint a cyber security specialist to monitor and train your employees about cyber security.

Social Isolation

The major problem that remote employees face is social isolation. Human beings are social animals. They need to have social interaction with colleagues and peers. As your remote team members are not interacting with each other in the office, they might fall into isolation and depression.

How to Overcome: Arrange remote team building sessions and activities. Let them have social relationships with each other. Read this article to have a better insight into remote team-building activities.

How to Get the Best Talents for Remote Team

Focus on your company branding. People love to work with well-known brands.
Offer a better amount of salary compared to your competitors.
Focus on skills rather than degrees or certifications.
Check out your candidate profiles on LinkedIn.
Give advantages to tech-savvy candidates.

Pros & Cons of Remote Developer Hiring

Pros
Cost Effective
Global Talentpool Opportunity
No overhead, tax, or employee benefits
Better Employee Productivity
Environmentally Sustainable

Cons
Lack of Communication
Lack of Supervision
Cybersecurity Issues
Social Isolation
Different Timezone Adoption

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What are some best practices when hiring remote software developers?
Ans: Make the application process simpler, offer a better salary, focus on practical tasks, take opinions from your senior teammates, and give the candidates a brief on your company culture.

Q2. What are some best practices when managing a remote team?
Ans: Give your team the tools they need, avoid micro-management, set clear & number based goals, encourage team-building activities, recognize good works, invest in training, & appoint a scrum master to help them.

Q3. Apart from experience and skills, what should I look for in remote developers?
Ans: You should look for personality, communication skill, and device issues when hiring a remote developer. As people from different languages will work together, so, communication in English is important. Also, make sure your hired employees have their own computers to work on.

Q4.Is South Asia a better option for hiring remote employees?

Ans: Well, there are regions like Africa, Soth America, South Asia, China, etc where you can hire remote employees at a lower cost. But, South Asians use English as their second language, so you will get an advantage in communication. But, that’s not all. Even if you hire remote employees from Canada, it will save costs as you won’t need to pay employee benefits, office rent, taxes, or other office expenses.

Q5. Why some companies don’t like remote hiring?
Ans: We have discussed some challenges that everyone will face to manage remote teams. Usually, people who don’t know how to overcome those challenges, don’t like the remote hiring option. Apart from that, it’s a new concept. So, it will take a little time to make everyone understand the benefits of remote hiring.

Why Managed Remote Team?

The idea of a managed remote team is new. So, let’s have a clear understanding of how it works. The managed remote team refers to a concept where a company will hire employees on behalf of you and manage the team with full responsibility to complete your project within the deadline with ensuring the highest quality. Suppose, you are running a hospital business. You need hospital management software for your business. So, traditionally you have to hire a software developer team.
But, you might not be an expert in software development. So, you have to hire experts in that field along with the team. Then, you have to invest in their training as well. It will take time to start the project if you have to work on these things. More importantly, will you fire those developers once your project is done? To avoid these issues, we recommend you to hire managed team where the team will do everything on your behalf. Here are some benefits of hiring managed remote team-

You will not face any office management issues like office rent, tax, insurance, or overhead expenses.
No training sessions or fees are required. You will get results from day one.
You will get global talent pool options and can hire the best developers around the world.
No team building, time zone, project management, or employee management hassle. A technical project manager will take care of these issues.

Final Thoughts

Whether hiring or managing a remote software developer team, it’s not an easy job. Apparently, it’s a new concept and resources are not that available. So, you need to train yourself first if you are thinking about hiring remote developers for your company. TechCare is working to make remote hiring easier for companies. If you don’t want to go through the hassles of remote hiring or managing your team, you can contact with TechCare. TechCare will help you to hire globally the best software developers with experience. We will train them and manage them to get your project done. We will also appoint a Canadian technical project manager to ensure your comfort and the highest quality of your project. Hire remote software developers and redefine the company culture. Best of luck!