Underestimated Criteria Choosing Your Remote Development Team Provider

This is an extension of my LinkedIn post written earlier this year.

Often, our potential clients consider the following criteria choosing their vendor:

CRITERIA 1. Recruiting (= Candidates Quality)

How does it usually work? The Client is defining an ideal candidate profile. And, waits for 5-7 days to get the right candidate vetted by the recruiting team, interested in this particular project and tech stack. This is a very good criteria to use, I agree, but with limitations and constraints given, you may still get a GOOD candidate from a BAD vendor, or SO-SO candidate from a DECENT Nearshoring provider.

Is this criteria important? YES. Is it sufficient? NO.

CRITERIA 2. Pricing put on the candidates (or, pricing model disclosed by the Vendor to compare to others)

You may like or dislike the final number you receive as a monthly (or expected monthly) cost per developer. Needless to say, the more transparency and context you get in regards to this number, more you will understand (and trust) your further relationships with the Vendor.

Important questions to add on this criteria would be:

From this cost you pay, how much generally speaking a developer earns himself or herself, and where it stands compared to the overall market benchmark. As you would want to be sure the price you are paying goes to someone who will be doing the job, and that amount will be motivating to him or her.
What is the roadmap for the cost to be changing, based on current plan, or based on how else clients are operating already. This might be important for you not only budgeting your expenses log run, but also to be aware of what the labor market is prompting in regards to wages growth in time, and how sustainable such growth will be to your model.
Any hidden/undefined/miscounted expenses you may have with the candidate start, or any time afterwards. May those be annual bonuses, or professional events participation, or your corporate standard MacBook Pro being not part of the standard hardware set for your Vendor.

(vague) CRITERIA 3. Overall “gut feeling” in regards to the communication style, etc

Vague enough, yet this always makes the most impact. While we all operate the numbers, comparison tables and criteria, in most cases it all comes down to whether you see or you don’t, working with these people long term, trusting them how to build your remote development team, its local management, and so on. Hard to assess, yet, too important to miss it now.

These 3 are used in 90%+ cases, and I can barely remember a client stepping into relationships with us, not operating these 3 factors.

Unfortunately, especially at the initial point, a potential client cannot objectively find out the answers to many else important questions that will put a huge impact on their remote development team delivery in time.

So! Things that will put even more impact and value on your team delivery, are:

UNDERESTIMATED CRITERIA 4. Company’s ability to be flexible in regards to your specific needs, different from any else organization in the world. Be sure you will need that, very soon after you start.

UNDERESTIMATED CRITERIA 5. Level of representation at the Vendor’s side, who will be dealing with you and your colleagues on a daily basis. With Mobilunity, this surely will be myself and Alfie, our Business Development Director.

UNDERESTIMATED CRITERIA 6. Vendor’s ability to Retain the people of your team. Which, obviously, is super important

These underestimated criteria are my subjects for other posts, soon.

So, while we are very much confident our Recruiting Service overall is one of the top on the market, I encourage everyone to give maybe even a deeper look at the vendors of your short list.

And consider all possible factors, important now and to be important in future.