When Should You Hire Offshore Software Developers
It is unfavorable to hire an outsider team who has no idea how your business run, what your business value is, and what you are standing for to solve or complete a task. But sometimes, it is not the best choice to use the in-house team to work out the secondary business tasks as well.
For many big and well-known businesses like Apple, Microsoft, Skype, etc outsourcing to an offshore team is the best choice to complete the tasks or to polish the work. Software outsourcing is one of the common areas for businesses to outsource. We can’t deny the biggest benefit of outsourcing is to cut costs.
A quick running through the definition of software outsourcing: is the practice of hiring a team of project managers, developers, designers (UI UX), engineers (Big Data, Data Science, Software, Bridge System, etc), and IT experts to help to deploy one specific product. Putting a few in-house members in outsourcing to overlook the development process is also common. This not only will help the developers to get the products right but also make sure it’s up to the brand image.
There are slight differences between onshoring, nearshoring, and offshoring. Onshoring is the most expensive when a company hires a third-party company within the same country as it, while nearshoring is to hire a development firm located in a nearby country and offshoring is to hire an outsourcing company that based in a country across the world or on another continent.
Outsourcing software helps businesses to save money, also support them with high-quality services. Companies with less IT experience or background can easily accomplish their goals.
Despite some obvious reasons like you lack IT experts to be able to develop the new app for keeping track of the employee’s working progress or to build a new website for your company with all the functionalities and key visuals like you want, how do you know it is time to get an offshore team onboard?
This is a clear sign:
You want to get ahead in a crowded marketplace
This is one of the obvious reasons to hire more software developers to help you stay ahead of the game and respond to all of your customers’ expectations in your industry, especially when you have a small pool of local developers’ talent available.
Many businesses are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire talented developers when they foresee the capabilities these engineers bring. But what if you’re a small startup company? Or a medium-sized company with a limited budget due to all of the overhead costs, or you’re in the midst of a financial crisis because of the coronavirus? Hiring costly onshore developers to get the jobs done doesn’t sound so appealing.
This is when outsourcing to external vendors in another country, or in another continent to be precise, is a good option.
According to the statistic done by Indeed, the average software developer salary in the USA is around $106,816, in the UK is $59,072, and in Australia is $47,417, however, the average salary of a Vietnamese software engineer who has around five to ten years of experience, for example, varies around $10,000 annually, or $15,000 for the one with 20+ years of experience (Salary Explorer). There is a big gap between software development firms in Vietnam and Western countries. Besides India and China, Vietnam is gradually becoming a large ICT service provider. With the pay rate even lower than China but still guarantee the same high-quality services, Vietnam should be your top offshore software outsourcing provider.
However, to successfully form an offshore outsourcing team, here are things you should take into consideration before the beginning of bidding.
1. Define the goals and requirements
This first step which sounds obvious in fact is an important step. We always ask our clients to define the goal and clearly state their requirements and expectations for us. This is an important benchmark. Besides the tech knowledge, skills, tools and frameworks, experience, personal skills, etc, we’d like to ask our customers to pay attention to the goal. How will this project help you to solve the current problem?
Next, you should refine the list. Which skills are the must-have, which skills are nice-to-have? By doing this you can choose the offshore developers that are in alignment with your business value. You can do this by creating job descriptions for all relevant positions. Make sure that you write everything thoroughly. Includes duties and responsibilities.
2. Technical tests
When interviewing them, include technical tests. Because you’re going to hire an offshore team, you want to ensure that their ability to write code is efficient. You can use online coding test platforms like HackerEarth, Talview, etc.
Real-time technical tests reflect a lot of the potential developers’ knowledge. You can analyze their knowledge by looking at how they approach and solve a problem, address roadblocks. If you don’t have enough IT knowledge, then we assume you have an in-house IT expert to help you out. You can appoint your in-house member to supervise the whole process as well.
3. Cultural compatibility is important
It is not usually mentioned, but cultural compatibility is really crucial when hiring human resources. Company culture is a set of shared values, goals attitudes, and practices that characterize one organization. Company culture isn’t just the vibe in your office, it lies in recruitment, retention, and even performance, basically in every aspect of your business. 66 percent of job seekers consider culture and values are the most important. But only 28 percent of executives understand their company’s culture. Company culture is part of one organization’s success.
When cultural compatible, the workflow runs smoothly and effectively. Finding an offshore team that has the same value and company culture as you is beneficial since all team members are motivated and committed when working.
