Tips to Interview and Hire Remote Developers

Interviewing remote developers is different than interviewing a local professional for a permanent position. As a matter of fact, most companies interview candidates based on their knowledge, technical skills, experience, and overall caliber.

However, interviewing a remote developer is more than just accessing their technical skills. It includes scanning their communication skills, commitment, motivational triggers, and tech prowess. In fact, there is a lot more than what usually seems to be the case.

But before you hire remote developers, it’s imperative to consider their availability, collaborative skills, aptness to work independently, and the potential to solve problems rationally.

Well, it may not be possible to understand a prospect completely. Therefore, we have compiled a list of tips to help you hire the right dedicated offshore developers & build an efficient team for your project.

Guidelines to Follow While Interviewing Remote Developers!

Interviewing a remote developer can be challenging and tedious. In order to save your energy from this tiring process, you need to act smart from the beginning. Follow these guidelines and you will be good to go!

1. Remote Work Experience

Though previous remote work experience does not really highlight a candidate’s suitability. It can be useful to understand their comfort level & reliability.

You can go through their previous tech work and comprehend if they are a pro or not. It will help you tailor the interview process. If they have the right attitude, skills, and prior experience working without on-site supervision, you can move ahead to the next step of the process and hire developers.

2. Ability to Use Various Tools

Collaboration apps, emails, time management skills, tracking software, messaging apps, video calling, and conferencing; these are all important and necessary part of a remote team toolset.

It must be mandatory for all remote developers to have these tools. Also, ensure to conduct all the interviews via similar tools to test their ability. It will help you assess the offshore developers via cues and check their basic technical capability.

Can they operate the tools? Are they comfortable using software that is already being used in your organization by the existing remote employees or in-house developers? Do they have minimum tech requirements at their personal workspaces?

These questions will help you understand if your remote development team is eligible for a successful collaboration.

3. The Workspace

Though many prospects aren’t equipped with an office like setup. That’s why it’s recommended to work with an offshore development center rather than freelancers.

Working with an offshore development center will give you the assurance that your remote team is working from the office, not home. Moreover, a remote development team is more organized, offering you scalability and reliability.

Recommended Read: Why Work with an Offshore Development Center rather than Freelancers?

4. Managing Conflicts

In order to make your outsourcing experience blissful, it’s necessary to focus on communication and collaboration.

These are vital to ensure that a candidate can handle the little issues easily & tactfully; that are bound to crop up the work. Furthermore, managing conflicts with coworkers, subordinates, seniors, and others are critical aspects of working with remote developers.

As a recruiter, it’s your responsibility to find out how easily your offshore developers can handle a situation. Would they be smart and polite enough to settle the issue or do they have an unappropriate approach that makes things worse?

A peek into their personal conduct is necessary to evaluate this factor.

Tip: Always take notes about the reasons a candidate is not suited for a position with your company. This way, you can be aware of your recruiting process to be more efficient by eliminating candidates earlier in the process in the future.

5. Meeting Deadlines

There’s a common misconception about freelance remote developers. It’s that remote employees are excellent multi-taskers, capable of handling their housework, personal lives, and emergencies.

While it’s true that many of them can manage and dabble well but it’s not because of their ability. Instead, they are excellent with work management strategies.

Therefore, whether you are planning to hire freelancers or set up an offshore development center, it’s important to discuss how will your remote employees manage the tasks. Candidates who stick to scheduled calls have better work ethics.

You may simply ask them questions about how do they manage a tough situation or cope up with stress due to strict deadlines. Their stories of victory can help re-affirm your choice.

6. Time-Tracking Software

Most remote workers have a strange problem – their switch on and off time. Some remote workers find it difficult to keep track of time and continue working even after the day is over. On the other hand, some lose track of time and lag at work.

Time tracking software is a great way to manage freelancers, remote teams, and their respective managers. Most managers and remote developers stick to the tracking software. Therefore, you can easily check their daily, weekly, and monthly tasks as well as the progress of the project.

Recommended Read: 21 Best Practices to Manage Remote Teams

7. Connecting with What’s Trending:

Passion for a role is often tested by comprehending a candidate’s interest in that particular field. You may be able to gauge a lot from a potential’s curiosity and willingness to learn. It will help you determine whether the prospect has an interest in the work.

You can find if their ideology matches your organization or not? You could try to know a bit more about their interests, the blogs they read, and Twitter accounts they follow. These factors reveal a lot about the interest of a dedicated offshore developer.

There is no scientifically proven technique to hire the right developer and conduct perfect recruitment. It takes a lot of subjective analysis and evaluation to make it happen. You will first have to understand & define your core beliefs and then search for a candidate who can match your organization’s work frequency.

Want to work with the best team? Get in touch with us & hire the top offshore developers from India.