We are living in an era where interconnectivity and global collaboration have torn down all physical constraints, evolving the landscape of talent acquisition and paving the way for recruiters to hire for remote work while transcending boundaries.

Remote hiring has become a necessity, especially for startups and organizations that are stretched thin on funds or looking to save up on operational costs, and there is no denying it brings forth a plethora of benefits for them, but it comes with its own challenges and limitations and demands hiring managers a nuanced and comprehensive approach to do it right.

This all-encompassing guide is not confined to just outlining the systematic process that involves employing meticulous steps and considerations to effectively identify, assess, and integrate remote developers into your team, but also covering the sources you can do remote hiring from, the dos and don’ts while working with remote developers, the benefits of remote hiring, ways to streamlining and the making the hiring process inviting and a lot much more.

So, without further ado, let’s address your actual query: How to hire remote developers.

How To Hire Remote Developers: The Right Way

With remote hiring done right, you can harness the impact of interconnectivity and global connectedness and save on costs, just like IBM, which saved $50 million, and Sun Microsystems, which saved $68 million in real estate costs by leveraging remote hiring.

Defining Your Requirements

Contemplate and churn out a template specifying not only technical skills but also soft skills you require for effective remote collaboration. Ponder upon the role or project you are recruiting developer(s), and while keeping that in mind, jot down all of your requirements so you can curate a perfect job description that is not missing anything and is all-encompassing.

Outline things like the level of experience needed for the role, such as whether it is entry-level, mid-level, or senior level, what exactly the developer or developers would be doing, and what is fulfilling for your organization.

Create a Detailed Job Description

Create a job description that is articulate, transparent, vivid, and with no ambiguity. Mention everything that you think may concern you or the developer, i.e., the project or role description, required skillset, the salary (also if it is negotiable or not), duration, working hours and days, etc. 

Also, take one step ahead and detail the information about the team structure, burden of work, number of employees, how the remote developer will fit into it, etc. Specify if there is something you think is unique and not available normally in companies that the potential candidate should have a hang of it and at least be familiar with at the basic level.

Craft a job description that allures maximum developers into applying for it upon coming across it, just like the description you are currently reading.

There are seven things that every job description must have: the detailed title, employment type, articulate overview or summary, responsibilities, qualifications, company culture, your contact preferences. Create a job description through which you can hire remote developers in USA from anywhere in the world.

Choose the Right Platforms

The allure of hiring developers for remote work is infinite options at your disposal; you don’t have to compromise on quality, and you get gazillions of options. We will get into ways and a list of platforms you can find developers on later in the blog.

You can browse those and select platforms on different parameters, you know, based on specific skills, demographics, etc.,  you are targeting. Leverage social media platforms. Groups on these platforms have communities with members of thousands. In those groups, you can expand your reach and reach out to people with verified profiles or users with high karma; let’s assume you are looking up on reddit.com.

It’s important to note that, similar to how individuals searching for “How to Hire Remote Developers” may find themselves on blogs and platforms, those looking into “nearshore partners near me” often navigate to these same platforms. Therefore, platforms serve as the crucial gateways to success, as they play a pivotal role in connecting you with the right partner, which is essential.

Screen Resumes and Portfolios

Once the description is out here, you will start getting stacks of resumes. The first thing you should do is sift through them, skim through them, and remove the low-quality resumes so the process does not become daunting for you. When running through the resumes, look for consistency in skill sets across various projects and notice the evolution of skills and responsibilities over the candidate’s career.

Look for qualities and traits that fit the defined role closely, if not fully, and assess if the candidate fits your criteria for the job. For remote developers, you can look for the following qualities:

• Long-term potential for support and growth
• Ability to produce results
• Strong work ethic and ability to operate independently
• A clear understanding of projects and necessary project management skills
• A positive, proactive attitude
• Baseline skills and a willingness to learn
• Good common sense
• Experience with similar roles and team structures
• Values that match your company values
• An interest in growing and potentially leading others

Once you have sorted the potential candidates, email them and set up a time that you both are available. As it is going to be a video interview, send the link ahead of time.

Once the initial is done, set up the technical interview that simulates real-world scenarios and problem-solving exercises during the interview and assess the candidate’s ability to articulate their thought process.

Technical Assessments

Because it is kind of a role that demands a deep understanding of the tech stack, so craft a dynamic test that has a mix of theoretical and practical assessments. You may go on a call and see him solving collaborative coding challenges to assess teamwork and communication in a remote setting.

Communication at Helm

Tell them about your expectations about the communication. Tell them the protocols of conveying, querying, etc., so they know the benchmark and what they live up to. Apart from this, you may have a conversation aiming at the assessment of spoken English. In remote working, verbal communication is key to the successful delivery of a project, you can assess written communication skills through written exercises or sample documentation. Another thing you can do to gauge verbal communication skills is assess the candidate with role-playing exercises during interviews.

Evaluate Soft Skills

You can simulate real-world scenarios or create conflicting scenarios and ask them how they would handle and tackle such situations. To assess the candidate’s adaptability skills, you can discuss how the candidate has handled change in previous roles.

Check References

You can also ask specific questions about the candidate’s approach to remote work, or try to get a character certificate or similar document from the candidate’s previous companies.

Check connections on the candidate’s LinkedIn profile and inquire to people about the candidate who worked or worked in the same he has about how the candidate handled challenges, especially those related to remote collaboration.

Consider Time Zones

Discuss strategies for managing time zone differences, such as asynchronous communication with the candidate before getting on board, ask him to be specific about them, and clarify expectations regarding availability for meetings and collaboration.

Trial Period or Project

If you are having the candidate on a probation period, tell the candidate about the success criteria for the trial period and relaxation. Tell them the factor that will determine the permanency. Tell them how you would be helping throughout the trial period and provide the candidate with a mentor or buddy for smoother integration into the team.

Remote Work Tools and Infrastructure

Give the candidate a detailed overview of the tools and platforms used for collaboration, version control, and communication within your company, and discuss if they have been using them or if they would need time to get the hang of them.

If the candidate has a strong portfolio and is well-versed in his skills, you can offer training sessions or resources for the non-core things to help the candidate get acquainted with your tech stack fully.

Negotiate Compensation and Benefits

Let the candidate know the perks, compensation, allowances, and bonuses you offer to your employee. Negotiate the salary and start teh onboarding process. 

Onboarding Process

Develop an onboarding checklist covering both technical and cultural aspects and send the contract to selected developers. During the probation period, you can schedule regular check-ins with HR and team leads. Once he has signed, you have landed the right developer for your company.

Benefits of Hiring Remote Developers

Hiring remote developers brings forth a plethora of tangible benefits, given the hiring is done right, and the developer specializes in the tech stack you hired them for.

• Remote Working Increases Productivity: It is time to debunk the biggest myth in relation to remote working that it would lead to laziness; rather, studies have shown it boosts productivity. Just think about it, no getting ready, no commutes, fewer distractions, more breaks, no background conversation or colleagues dropping by, comfortable work environment, etc.
• More Freedom and Better Work-life Balance: Work-life balance has become the most talked about thing in the town, with employees finding it hard to keep up with both. Working from home gives freedom to employee, letting them customize their workspace to help them focus better with the liberty to take breaks without feeling judged and no distractions and churn out the best.
• Cost Effective: Remote hiring saves you in the operational cost of running a company, for example, diminishing the cost of renting an office and utilities while expanding, maintaining, and keeping it clean, fewer servings and less stock of food, etc. All of these combined saves you a lot on taxes as well.
• Wider Pool of Talented and Experienced People: Remote working disregards geographics. It is not necessary to hire from the best local talent; foreign talent can turn out to be a game changer. Also, hiring remote developers means you are working 24/7.
• Better Employee Engagement: Remote working relieves developers from mental exhaustion and keeps developers engaged through advanced communication and collaboration tools. There is a group in which the whole team communicates and requires each other’s input, so it is a myth that developers working from home may suffer from laziness or inactivity.
• Expert and Agile Teams: When you hire remote developers, you have access to the global pool. Just imagine you post a job, and there would be many experts who would not merely for the fact they don’t like to travel to locations and work. So, you have an expert at your disposal who would not have been if you were hiring for an onsite position. And this factor has given life to the word agility, which was once a buzzword.
• No Commute for Developers: There is so much time that goes into getting ready and traveling to work, and this all becomes aggravated if traveling on a road with congestion at office time, so no fatigue and time waste for developers working remotely.

Creating an Inviting Hiring Candidate Experience

Most of the time, you have everything to offer an aspiring remote developer who is looking to work for an offshore company, but your hiring process fails to give that impression that can dissuade them from taking an interest in applying for your announced positions.

Here is how you can create an inviting and seamless remote hiring process that compels more and more developers to complete the application till the end.

• Articulate Communication. The level or kind of communication you reflect or follow while recruiting makes or spoils the initial impression of your company, based upon which the candidate makes up the first impression in their mind and decides to take you seriously. Recruitment in person allows you to make interviewees comfortable with gestures and communication so they become more overt and comfortable, but online, it is all words on the flip sides of the screen.
• Leverage The Tools at Your Disposal. Tools like Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet have made it easy for recruiters to conduct video interviews regardless of time zone. These tools expose you to each other rather than just a static picture. You can use tools for prescreening candidates whose data you have to streamline the interview process further.

Where to Find Remote Developers

Though if you go to lengths in search of developers of exactly your choice, here are a few most common ones.

• Developers tend to have their own website acting as their portfolio, and you can hire based on that.
• You can hire through word-of-mouth referrals or your network.
• Social media has people sharing their experiences and helping people with development; you can hire them as well.
• Developers have made them available on job boards to hire; you can hire from there. the most popular ones you look up on are ZipRecruiter, Indeed, and Glassdoor. Newer services like FlexJobs are explicitly designed to help you find remote workers.
• Hire developers from freelancing platforms.

Top Websites to Hire Remote Developers

Below are the top websites where hiring managers can tap into a vast global talent pool for all kinds of tech needs.

• Turing
• Toptal
• Fiverr
• Upwork
• LinkedIn
• Aloa
• RemoteBase
• Slash
• Working Nomads
• REINTECH
• Dice
• RemotePlatz
• Social Media Groups

If you are super concerned about time zones and communication and wondering how to choose a nearshore partner, well, here is good news for you: you will have to do nothing but adhere to the same procedure as for hiring remote developers.

Dos and Donts While Working with Remote Developers

Globalization and interconnectivity have enabled hiring managers to find talent beyond their backyards. Considering that more developers than ever are working remotely today, there are dos and don’ts to have the talent preserved for a longer time.

Dos:

• Expand the realm to handpick developers from as much as possible; don’t be hasty while hiring.
• Encourage and foster open communication so developers know they will get support when needed.

Don’ts:

• Obfuscate it for your remote working developers to communicate and work; rather, streamline the process.
• Work with someone you think you find it hard to work with

Tweak: How To Choose A Nearshore Partner

You can find developers for remote working onshore, offshore, or nearshore, and it is like finding a partner, so the best option would be opting for a nearshore partner, like having someone on your team from the same region whose hiring will set aside communication and timezone problems.

Hire Remote Developers in USA From Anywhere

With remote hiring, you can find talented and experienced developers who are well-versed in their tech from anywhere around the at lower rates than in the USA.

Conclusion

We really hope you are confident after reading our guide to your query, “How To Hire Remote Developers.” In the past, when you would fill the vacancy for a specific position, you sometimes would have to compromise on quality, and the candidate would undergo training. But with remote hiring, quality issues are no longer the problem. Companies in Covid19 pandemic have seen the results of remote working; workers were even ready to have a cut in pay, and many were ready to switch jobs if asked to come to offices. So, hiring developers for remote work is quite risky if not done right or the wrong integrations happen, but if done right, it has already been a game changer for companies. We, in this comprehensive blog, are equipped with insights into everything you need to know prior to or while hiring remote developers.