As you may know, there are certain advantages to hiring remote developers from the Philippines. Chief among them is that you get access to talented and driven developers, but at a much reduced cost compared to hiring an in-house developer in the US. But in order to get optimum results out of your remote team, it pays to consider a few things.
Skill level of developers
Obviously, hiring a remote developer with a high level of skill and solid experience means you can expect quality output and even faster production. But there is another advantage: With skilled and experienced developers, you won’t have to worry about spending additional time, costs, and other resources in training.
Patterned after Western universities, most colleges in the Philippines regularly produce talented software graduates year after year, and these developers go on to hone their skills further within the country’s robust IT and BPO industry.
Of course, being able to attract the right Filipino developer that your business needs is another challenge altogether. This is why we always stress the importance of preparing a comprehensive job description, including clarifying “must have” vs. “nice to have” skills and experience. Completing this simple step not only allows you to be more focused in your recruiting efforts, but also helps set expectations with regards to the responsibilities of your remote developer.
If testing is part of your screening process, consider administering a coding test. Alternatively, consider requesting code samples from applicants as another way to understand their coding style and evaluate their knowledge.
Deliverables and deadlines
Speaking of responsibilities, it is always recommended to plan deliverables ahead even if you are still in the process of recruiting your remote developer.
With clear deliverables in mind, you will have a better idea of which competencies to look for when screening your developer candidates. Once you have picked your remote developer and finished your new hire’s onboarding, you can then proceed to setting deadlines to ensure that the software project progresses through its expected phases.
Communication and meeting schedules
In any collaboration, communication skills may be as important as technical skills and experience. One of the advantages of hiring a remote developer from the Philippines is that the country is home to professionals who have a good grasp of the English language and even American culture.
But communication overall is not just about familiarity of a language, but a means for achieving understanding between two or more parties, especially in attaining a common goal. The same thing ultimately applies when you work with a remote developer. It goes without saying that collaboration can be aided immensely with the use of the right tools. In this day and age, you can take full advantage of popular options like Google Hangouts or Skype, in order to communicate regularly with your offshore team. You can also use project or task management tools like Slack, Trello, or JIRA.
When working with a remote developer, scheduling meetings will be important, too. Depending on your needs, you can set the frequency of meetings either daily, weekly, or even monthly. Yes, the Philippines happens to have a time zone that is 12 hours or so ahead of yours. However, you can still overlap your schedules so that you can keep in touch with your developer as often as you like. For example, if your developer works a 6 AM to 3 PM schedule in the Philippines, he will get two hours of overlapping time with your company’s 8 AM to 5 PM schedule if you are based in the Mountain Time Zone.
If you are new to working with remote employees, consider partnering with a remote staffing team. CoDev has been partnering with diverse clients in hiring remote developers from the Philippines since 2010. With our business model, we take care of the recruitment, HR, payroll, and overhead aspects of your offshore team, so that you can focus on working with your developer and growing your business.
