Hiring Offshore Developers: The Do’s and Don’ts

2023 was not an exception to being a hard year for businesses. It bestowed challenges like the lack of specific expertise or the need to cut app development costs to be profitable. And venture companies were cutting their investments, as you can see in the graph below. 

Europe Venture Dollar Volume (Q2 2023)

Source: CrunchBase

All of those issues put a tremendous strain on any kind of business. The best solution is quite simple but complex to realize: hire offshore and outsourcing developers.  

Let’s uncover what offshore app development is, its benefits, and challenges and solutions. And finally, a comparison of offshore and outsourcing development collaboration models.

What is Offshore Development?

Offshore development is hiring an external team or team located in a different country to perform software development tasks. 

It allows businesses to tap into specialized skills and benefit from price-to-quality ratios worldwide. The average developers’ hourly rate in Eastern Europe would be around $55, while for Northern America or Western Europe, the rates fluctuate around $70 per hour. This makes offshore and outsourcing development so efficient.

With the increasing globalization, offshore development has become more than just a cost-saving measure. Now, it’s the best way for strategic collaboration.

The Key Benefits of Hiring Offshore Developers

Offshore development can vastly help startups overcome resource limitations or take advantage of expertise by outsourcing software projects to non-local teams.

Using the power of global talent through offshore and outsourcing development is a crucial business strategy. Especially nowadays, when the competition is hard, and businesses find new edges to leverage market conditions. 

Beneficial Price-to-Quality Ratio

Offshore development provides access to a high level of expertise at a lower cost due to different economic situations. Budget-friendly options for offshore and outsourcing cooperation reside in Eastern Europe. Apart from generally lower rates, those countries offer the same excellent developer outsourcing services and good communication skills. 

Many businesses have already used this approach and proved it reliable—Google, Microsoft, WhatsApp, Siemens, eBay, and others offshore their outsourcing services from elsewhere. 

Access to a Vast Pre-vetted Talent Pool

Countries known for their expertise in development frequently prioritize education, resulting in a constant supply of highly skilled and technically proficient professionals.

On-site engineers can be a significant investment. However, you would be limited mainly by your resources. Cooperating with different outsourcing teams from different cultures can broaden your horizons, bringing more value. Let’s use a more concrete example. For example, C# is used by more developers in Germany than India, while Ruby developers are easier to find in Eastern Europe. 

This offers businesses the best pool of talent that can be easily accessed with minimal recruitment challenges.

Reduced Time-to-Market

By utilizing developer groups located across time zones, businesses that offshore can successfully operate on a nearly 24/7 basis. This constant workflow speeds up the stages of development, guaranteeing that products or outsourcing services are launched ahead of rival startups. 

Businesses will also have more options for scaling, as cooperating with offshore and outsourcing developers offers more flexibility than in-house engineers. Working with the best offshore developers, you can choose whether you want to turn the cooperation into a long-term or short-term collaboration.

Improved Quality

Offshore development opens a new perspective on software, allowing the best developers to engage with different cultural views and creative ideas. 

A fresh, innovative point of view can open a new wave of opportunities, enriching software development with novice ideas. The talent pool nowadays tends to prefer developers with narrow but sturdy expertise, and about 77% of business owners find it difficult to hire developers to fill the roles. However, the flexibility of outsourcing amplifies your results by cooperating with developers with specific technological knowledge. 

For example, you can hire an AI development team that will only work on one part of the product or look for developers with a comprehensive understanding of one certain technology. In Sloboda Studio, we pride ourselves on being proficient with Ruby on Rails, among other technologies. However, RoR brought us where we are now, and if you consider using this technology, we will match in work style.

It’s also important to note that offshore and outsourcing development frees up resources you might otherwise spend to hire the internal team. Finances and time spent on management will be yours with an outsourcing service. It’ll be easier to put this time into more crucial business processes.

How to Hire Offshore Developers: Step-by-Step Decoded

This guide presents five steps to help you hire offshore and outsourcing development talent or build a team of software engineers. From outlining project details to establishing communication channels, each step aims to promote alignment, and transparency, and achieve your project goals. 

General Steps of The Hiring Process

1. Defining Your Project Requirements

Speaking from experience, when we work with our customers, they usually already have defined project requirements. If they don’t, however, we offer a helping hand through a consultation procedure. This consultation aims to discover your pain points and clearly define how our team can help you.

Only set requirements that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). This makes them clear, quantifiable, feasible, aligned with project goals, and time-sensitive. Sometimes, after we estimate project goals and requirements, it becomes visible that clients don’t need a to hire senior developer, but a middle specialist will fully cover their needs. This approach drastically decreases web product development costs.

2. Selecting the Most Reliable Offshore Development Company

Hire developers from outsourcing companies with a proven track record, positive client testimonials, and experience in projects similar to yours. Consider factors such as company size, expertise, and the industries they’ve worked in. To improve the evaluation process, you can review the customers’ testimonials and ask the company to connect you with their current or past customers. 

3. Interviewing the Team 

Interview the developers you consider to fit into your team. You can interview the representatives of the companies you’ve selected to see if they would be a good fit according to your previously set goals and the company’s values. 

You might want to ask the following questions: 

1. What development methodology do you use?
2. Do you offer post-release support services? 
3. Do you offer different pricing models? 
4. Who will own the IP rights for the project we develop together? 
5. How long will it take to acquire the team I need? 

With Sloboda Studio, the latter question contributes to our fast and no-bureaucracy processes. We are ready to provide the CVs of our developers during the first two days of communication. It’s even before any papers are signed! This way, we can find you a dream team in just two weeks.

4. Setting Effective Communication With Your Offshore Development Team

Establishing efficient communication with a talent for hire is vital for starting viable cooperation. This process must tackle the most prominent communication challenges. When considering collaboration with offshore web app development engineers, ensure you have freed the spots for regular meetings in your schedule according to the time zone where you’re looking for developers. 

We also recommend having an intro call with your preferred selected developer. This will give you more insights into how they settle communication within their organization. In turn, this might help you evaluate the effectiveness of potential work.

5. Providing Regular Feedback

Establish a system for exchanging feedback with chosen talent, promoting mutual respect, and guaranteeing that the project consistently meets its fundamental goals. Ensure the feedback is timely and inform every team you interviewed of your decision, regardless of whether you chose to work with them. 

6. Onboarding

With offshore staff-augmented teams, talent onboarding is much less needed than in-house hires. However, you still need to ensure that your new team has access to all the necessary resources to start working, documentation, and information for an efficient web development process.

Sloboda Studio: Top-Rated Offshore Development Company

If you’re looking for an offshore app development team, check out our portfolio and offshore development choices to see if we’re a good match for your business.

13 Years of Proven Track Record

Sloboda Studio stands out as a software development company with over 13 years of expertise in providing software development services. Along our journey, we have carefully accomplished over 200 projects, which proves our dedication to delivering outstanding work. Here are our specialties: 

Sloboda Studio Competencies

Expertise in Ruby on Rails and Marketplace Development

Sloboda goes beyond providing clients with software development only. We have detail-oriented middle and senior Ruby on Rails developers for hire and experienced project managers with extensive experience in the marketplace industry.

Our team can assist you in complicated decisions, ensuring that each line of code is goal-oriented. The Ruby on Rails software we work on brings incredible results, such as 75K+ users, getting acquired by Amazon, and raising over $40M in funding, and those are just some examples.

Using the Latest Technologies like Python and ChatGPT

Our team combines the power of technologies like Ruby on Rails, Python, Stimulus, Hotwire, and ChatGPT (OpenAI). This combination enables us to develop efficient software customized to our client’s needs. We continuously update our technology stack and keep up with industry developments. It helps us ensure our clients receive the best and most impactful software.

Transparent Communication and 5-Step Hiring Process

We prioritize keeping clients informed throughout every software development stage, from the very start. Working on trust and alignment is crucial to us. We achieve it through consistent communication and a thorough hiring approach. 

In the graph below, you can see the usual hiring process we use when finding relevant developers based on our clients’ product needs. This simple approach shortens time-to-market, allowing our customers to focus on more crucial business tasks.

Hiring Process at Sloboda Studio

Never Leaving a Project Behind

In addition to completing the project, Sloboda provides support to ensure that the deployed software remains efficient and effective.

Challenges of Hiring Offshore Developers

Start exploring development for many advantages, including tapping into a global talent pool and saving costs. However, it’s crucial to recognize and deal with any challenges during this process. Being proactive in identifying and addressing these concerns can guarantee the success and efficiency of offshore partnerships.

Cultural Differences 

Consider that different cultures might have different approaches to getting the job done. For example, Eastern European countries generally have a perfectionist way of working. They keep up with their deadlines and will propose insights to improve the software. This ownership mindset usually drives developers worldwide to create thorough sprints and work scopes to achieve maximum results.

Time Zone Differences

Coordinating becomes challenging when your team is spread across the time zones. However, most top companies aim to achieve better results with their time-zone-sensitive communication. Imagine a US-based firm cooperating with an Eastern Europe-based team. Developers work while the customer rests. Afterward, the customer has time the next day to check up on their work and set new tasks for the time of their next working sprint.

Establishment of Trust

Establishing trust requires an intentional approach. The absence of supervision can sometimes lead to doubts about productivity and commitment. Hence, trust becomes not a soft aspect but a crucial element for successful offshore collaborations. So, you need to ensure proper management for your team. With several approaches to offshore software development, you can guarantee that the responsibilities will be shared. Other approaches allow you to start to manage the unit yourself. 

Quality Сontrol

Ensuring efficiency and the best results are crucial for the success of any project. However, maintaining that consistency becomes a significant challenge when teams are located in different places. Differences in training, infrastructure, and resource availability can lead to variations in the outcome. 

The distance between team members can make providing hands-on training and real-time QA checks difficult. Additionally, diverse operational practices influenced by industry norms can impact how we achieve perfection. With a universally understood mechanism for QA, projects may encounter inconsistencies. They might lead to rework and resource spending.

How to Overcome the Most Frequent Challenges of Hiring Offshore Developers

The changing world of offshore software development brings forth distinctive obstacles and remarkable possibilities for companies. Though these challenges may appear overwhelming, start implementing measures to transform them into growth drivers. Let’s delve into the strategies that can lay the foundation for collaboration in offshore endeavors.

Choose a Company That Has Experience Working With Your Target Market

Cooperating with companies with experience specifically in your niche is essential. Each business has its requirements and needs, but each industry also enforces limitations and rules. Banking will demand more strict compliance with regulations depending on the region it is based in, and the healthcare industry also has distinctive legislation. 

Market understanding is also drastic regarding UX/UI and general software functionality. Every feature in the software must be carefully and deliberately integrated to ensure high ROI. This effect is only plausible if your app development team knows what the end client wants.

Establish Clear Communication Channels

Establish regular intervals for communication, daily or weekly. It is critical to start managing operations effectively. This approach ensures all stakeholders are on the same page. It also allows teams in different time zones to plan their work accordingly. 

Utilizing platforms and shared calendars to facilitate this process can further enhance communication. In turn, this ensures that every team member feels included and well-informed.

Set Realistic Expectations

Building trust is crucial for offshore engagements, especially in today’s virtual world. When working in an environment that prioritizes trust, it’s important to have reporting. This means discussing achievements, challenges, and roadblocks as a team. Without this type of communication, your expectations can be set falsely, leading to disappointment.

Over time, these transparent practices form a foundation for a resilient partnership based on trust.

Implement a Rigorous Quality Control Process

Inconsistencies in quality can undermine the advantages of development. That’s why it is crucial to prioritize quality assurance. It involves more than routine checks. 

Implementing an assessment process can ensure that tasks go through multiple levels of scrutiny before being finalized. Encouraging peer reviews enhances the quality by fostering a sense of collective responsibility. Regular training sessions, updated with the industry standards, are essential to ensure that all teams, regardless of location, share a common understanding of the expected benchmarks.

What Offshore Cooperation Model to Choose? 

Each model offers advantages that fit the project needs and client preferences. 

Staff augmentation provides flexibility and allows clients to have control.

Dedicated developers and teams offer streamlined processes, potentially reducing the managerial burden on the client.

To choose between these models evaluate your technical expertise and the desired level of control. It is vital to evaluate the project requirements and organizational structure before selecting the model. This ensures a smoother project progression and a successful outcome.

Comparing Three Cooperation Models

Concluding Thoughts on Offshore Development in 2023

Overall, hiring offshore developers has more benefits than challenges in 2024. The process is easy with a reliable development vendor, enabling you to free more resources. 

There is a chance to make development more cost-effective with offshore and outsourcing services. Unique expertise and a large talent pool make this option attractive to companies worldwide. 

Are you interested in offshore development? Contact us to learn more about how we do it in Sloboda Studio.