If your HQ is in New York, London or the Silicon Valley, you are obligated to pay a fortune for your IT Development team. However, hiring somebody for a lower price doesn’t mean the sacrificing quality. On the contrary, there are multiple advantages of opting for offshore outsourcing.

Here is a short, yet exhaustive guide to follow, if you want to ensure that your Offshore Development team rocks.

Meet in person

Stay with your prospective team for a while, make sure you get on well and understand each other in all senses. People are people, not mere resources, there are certain psychological patterns which are to be followed to ensure they work effectively and they care about your product, and not just perform work because they have to. Arrange a Skype call every then and now at the very least.

Cultural differences matter

There may be certain cultural discrepancies you need to be aware of. Eastern European (for instance, Ukrainian) and let’s say, Indian developers may think and say different things about the same code which is not very good. Indian people don’t like conflicts and they will say that everything is OK, whereas Ukrainians are a bit too rough on the edges. They don’t have any issues telling that the code sucks, while it is just not perfect.

You need to understand those two different points of view. In either case, go for the bitter truth in any project you are investing money in and ensure that employees say what they mean, not what you would like to hear.

Employer branding

The best way to recruit the best talent is to make your brand recognizable, known and attractive. You don’t need just software engineers, after all. You want the cream of the crop, right? If this is true, the competition is going to be tough, and the best way to win it, is to start trying to win it earlier than the others (and to make the best players want to play in your ‘team’).

Treat your offshore development teams the same way you treat your HQ team. Offer perks and try to make your brand credible. Making your brand credible and attractive should be the purpose of your employer branding. As a result, you will be able to attract and retain the best developers.

• Invite engineers to your HQ to stay for a while. This will give them a chance to learn more about your business processes and feel more like a part of your team.
• Treat people nicely, wherever they are from and wherever you are from. Because the key to effective cooperation is via mutual respect and trust. And there is no way you can circumvent it.

Contact IT development companies instead of individual freelancers

If you employ a software development company, it will mitigate the risks. On the other hand, a freelance developer may disappear, and an employee who may suddenly disappear will be replaced with another person of the same kind, thus leading to a corrupt circle.

Yes, the hourly rate of a freelancer is lower, but it is safer to work with software development companies. All the potential risks, sick leaves and professionalism-based issues are covered and taken care of.

Additional Reasons

• Facilitated cooperation. If people inside one team work in one office, it’s easier for them to cooperate and communicate. The number of misunderstandings is reduced.
• Easier to control attendance.
• Internet speed, newest hardware and equipment, access to the latest technologies are much better than the ones individual freelancers have.

How to choose the team

The best developers are not the best speakers. They are not the most talkative people or the ones with the best level of English or the most eloquent, so you should take note of it when choosing which developers to hire.

The code is worth a million words

It would be great to look at his/her code and at his/her activity at Github. Checking social media, for instance, Facebook, Twitter (to see what they are interested in, and what they are talking about).

Opt for asking personal questions to see how they fit into the team, not asking too many tech questions since they can be prepared beforehand and won’t show your candidates real professional level and expertise.

You need to detect their real attitude to work and your product.

Building an offshore development team is like a partnership. If you want your offshore team to surpass the competition, it should become a fully-fledged extension of your in-house team.

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