How to Find Developers Online: Options & Alternatives

What’s on the Global Employment Market?

A good starting business strategy for many organizations across the world is to hire remote teams. They try to find developers for startup to make a breakthrough for their product launch.

According to the App Association research, approximately 223,000 IT jobs in the US are open and remain unfulfilled due to a lack of developers. Such a dramatic demand for seasoned professionals has led to the companies raising the salary rates; thus, an average salary for the software developer in the US is $104,425 a year. Moreover, considering the fact that US colleges and universities annually graduate only 30,000 students with computer science specialization, it will take more than 8 years to cover all available positions.

Regarding the situation in Europe, since most industries are dependent on IT, the shortage of talents in this sector is highly threatening the business growth. Let’s take Sweden, for example. They have indicated that approximately 70,000 jobs require developers with particular hard and soft skills, and these developers are missing on the local market. Despite the country’s extremely high level of economic development and overall wealth, experts predict a considerable downturn in the production and services-providing segments. While exploring options to find developers online, considering the services of employer of record companies can offer administrative support and legal compliance, allowing you to focus on selecting software engineers for hire for your project.

The reason why many countries in Europe and America are facing a shortage of talents lies in the fact of an insufficient number of graduates in STEM (Science, Technology, Economics, and Maths). Based on the statistics, a shy number of 8% of STEM graduates move on their careers in computer science specialization.

What Are the Ways to Find Developers Online?

The problem of finding IT specialists is emerging whenever you need extra developers for a large-scale company or to find developers for startup, you are in front of a wide variety of options where to find a web developer for your custom needs. Let’s take a look at available options and alternatives.

Hire Freelancers

One of the first ways of hiring employees online is to go to freelance platforms. They act as a marketplace that unites clients and thousands of freelance developers across the world. A client submits the requirements, and the platform matches it with appropriate candidates. Another way to find developers on a freelance platform is to post a project’s profile so that the workers apply for its completion. Such cooperation can save your time for the search as well as labor costs since, if compared with the in-house employees, freelancers usually have lower salary rates. Usually, this model is utilized if a client has a short-term project with defined requirements that can be completed by 1-2 developers.

Go for Part-Time Employees

Another way of hiring employees online is to offer part-time occupation via the same freelance platforms or traditional channels of job search (used by recruiters). Technically, the developers are not added to the company’s staff, thus no taxation is implied on you, but at the same time, they will complete the duties once the need occurs. By cooperating with developers on a part-time basis, clients pay a fixed salary, which, again, is lower than a regular one that you would pay to on-site employees. Part-time developers, if being located in your city, can also come to an office in case you schedule meetings or important events.

Contract-to-Hire

If you have doubts concerning hiring full-time developers or freelancers, contract-to-hire allows you to try collaborating with developers on a particular set of terms and conditions. Based on this way, both parties sign an agreement with a specific length of the project and when the contract ends, the employer and employee decide on further cooperation. The benefit of such work is that there are no responsibilities after the contract expires since both client and contractor are aware of the contract peculiarities.

Hire Remote Development Teams

Most questions like “How to find an app developer?” end up by inclining to outsourcing or nearshoring, the services that provide you a remote development team in another country. A vendor offers its services of hiring employees, selecting and testing them, providing office space, covers informal activities and is responsible for personnel retention. Based on your preferences, you can nearshore or outsource your employees; the first one means to hire developers in close proximity to your country while the second one means to go off from the domestic market. The outsourcing model is when you relocate the project to another country, where your vendor takes full control of operations, starting from assigning developers and ending to managing the technical issues. Nearshoring service providers, on the other hand, perform the role of a mediator between you and your team. After your team is set, you manage the whole process of project execution on your own.

Freelance Developers Contract-to-Hire Nearshoring

Pros

– A rich range of options 

– Fast services delivery

– Low costs 

– More projects can be done 

Cons

– They can easily quit the project

– Potential low quality of services

– No legal background to claim misconduct 

Pros

– Fewer costs involved

– Minimized risk of failing by running a trial 

– The cooperation is legislated 

Cons

– If fail, you will need to go through the process again

– Usually, candidates are quite hesitant of this model

Pros

– Smart costs for services

– Prolific quality of services

– Timely delivery

– Total control of your development team

– Data security and property rights are preserved 

– Minimized risks of staff turnover 

– Office maintenance and hardware is not a client’s concern 

– Huge talent pool

Cons

– Communication issues 

– Cultural and language barriers 

All three models answer your question “Where can I find software developers?”. Hiring freelance developers is cheap and fast, but at the same time it brings a high-impact threat to your business since no legal contracts are involved in this cooperation, thus, freelancers can easily let you down. Contract-to-hire, on the other hand, is beneficial as trying out before buying eliminates many risks, but again, you can lose candidates and time during this sort of ‘trial’. Outstaffing remains the most common and reliable way of having a distributed team. On the contrary to freelance developers, where visual contact isn’t guaranteed and miscommunication occurs quite often, the vendors of outstaffing services manage to create transparency in communication and schedule personal visits. Moreover, there are many working ways on how to gain maximum productivity with your remote team. 

How to Find a Good Web Developer: Outstaffing Step-by-Step

You are now offered to take a look at the process of hiring remote development teams through outstaffing services. 

Step 1 – Plan and Analyze

Although the key advantage of hiring remote developers through nearshoring is that the full-cycle recruitment process will be done for you, the prosperity and success of your collaboration depends on how clear and detailed you presented your organization. Set the goals (from small to bigger ones), define the strategy of cooperation (suitable approach for interacting with your future team, possible frequency of personal visits, creating corporate culture), and align your corporate goals to the project’s ones.

Step 2 – Create Your Candidate’s Profile Requirements

This step is probably one of the most important for the recruitment process as it helps to understand your needs, thus finding the right employees to complete your project. In order to fulfill a profile of your candidate, make sure to consider not only hard skills (experience, tech stack, infrastructure knowledge), but also soft skills such as flexibility, motivation drivers, communication level, and other.

Step 3 – Signing the DNA

An important step before starting cooperation between a client and vendor is to sign a contract. Outstaffing services presuppose transparent and legal background for partnerships; this includes signing contracts where a client defines the information which cannot be disclosed, highlights property rights, and data security. The contract also contains the duration of cooperation, terms and conditions for the developers (that includes salary rates, a probation period, termination notice).

Step 4 – The Search Engine is Started

Once the recruitment team has collected all information they start the search. The vendors usually have a so-called ‘bench’ – vendor’s in-house developers that can start working on your project immediately, so the first search destination is to analyze the availability of internal resources. If there are no available candidates, the recruiters proceed with checking their own candidates’ base and post the vacancy on job-boards. Another way how to find remote software developers is direct search of candidates (LinkedIn, for instance, contains a vast pool of talents that considerably saves time for searching).

Step 5 – Internal Interview and Test Task

As the vendor comes up with a list of potential candidates, they schedule the interviews. During internal interviewing, recruiters define the details that are important for a nearshoring provider, such as employment type, personal qualities, experience in working with a client directly, and other aspects. Usually, recruiters bring 4-5 shortlisted candidates for the client in order to save your time and pass you only those who perfectly match your requirements.

Step 6 – Now It’s a Client’s Turn

When the recruiters define the final list, they pass the profile to a client. Upon agreement, they decide on additional interviews with developers, where a client talks to the developer and, if needed, asks them to do a test task to estimate the skills on practice. When the client decides on the candidates, the vendor defines the starting date for the developers and the process begins.

Important thing – with Mobilunity, all the recruitment stages are complementary and if shortlisted candidates do not fit, the client has no commitments and doesn’t have to pay for anything.

How to Test Candidates?

Key aspects to test, key questions to ask, and key areas to define – let’s take a look at how recruiters at Mobilunity test the candidates on numerous criteria.

  1. Screen the social media – prior to the interview, recruiters find (or ask personally) a candidate’s social media profiles to check personal life details (hobbies, leisure, family) and make sure there are no issues that can make things difficult.
  2. Soft skills – asking for motivation drivers, stress factors that can undermine their productivity, how they manage overload, time-management skills, communication approach, and playing around a fictional situation that can possibly occur during project execution to see how a candidate deals with it.
  3. Hard skills – depending on the required expertise of the developer, recruiters provide test assignments to validate the tech stack knowledge.
  4. Cultural fit – to make sure there are small risks of miscommunication due to the different cultural background of a developer and client, the recruiters thoroughly assess both parties.
  5. Define candidate’s goals – here, it is important to understand the intentions of the developer and make sure there are no hidden stones (such as a programmer decides to move to another country in 3-4 months).
  6. Understand the attitude to negative feedback –  nobody is ideal and sometimes tense situations can occur, therefore it is important to understand how a candidate will react.
  7. Identify responsibility level – devotion is something that has a high impact on the project’s flow, so here recruiters need to consider their abilities to meet the deadlines and overall requirement.
  8. Strengths and weaknesses – recruiters need to define these matters as when the candidates claim their weaknesses it means that they are aware of them and ready to fix those, while naming the strengths shows the art of selling and a level of confidence.
  9. Define team collaboration skills – a lot of projects require developers to interact with the client’s in-house team, which is why recruiters need to find out if that can be a problem.
  10. Ask for personal strivings, career growth preferences, and other professional goals.

How to Run an Interview with a Remote Developer: Top 7 Tips

Interview is given not only for the candidates to be selected but also for the company to be accepted by the candidate. So here are top 7 useful tips on how to conduct a clear and concise interview.

  1. Introduce the company and the project.
  2. Job description as a map – in order to not get lost in the process, always carry vacancy requirements as a road map.
  3. Applicant’s CV – a candidate’s resume is the face so make sure you develop a list of questions to ask based on the CV.
  4. Listen carefully to each response and make important notes.
  5. Avoid biased questions – regarding religion, politics, race.
  6. Focus on behavior and the clarity of answers.
  7. Provide space for the candidate to ask questions too.

How to Find a Software Developer: Bottomline

In the 21st century, it is no longer a difficult task to find web developers online. Freelance platforms, contract-to-hire approach to have a trial, and outstaffing services for staff expansion –  each of these options offers you cost-effective benefits, a wide range of candidates, good quality of services, and timely delivery. However, as was mentioned above, outstaffing services are considered as the most reliable and effective. Mobilunity is one of the leading outstaffing vendors in Ukraine and has managed to gain a prolific reputation by fast recruitment process, transparent and legally-grounded cooperation. The vendors are guaranteed to receive world-class professionals according to their needs and project requirements. Mobilunity does not stand aside modern trends in sourcing developers and is always striving to deliver top services.

How to find a web developer is no longer a problem. Mobilunity is ready to recruit, retain, and create solid relationships for your collaboration. Reach out to us and let your business grow!

All salaries and prices mentioned within the article are approximate NET numbers based on the research done by our in-house Recruitment Team. Please use these numbers as a guide for comparison purposes only and feel free to use the contact form to inquire on the specific cost of the talent according to your vacancy requirements and chosen model of engagement.

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