How to Hire Remote Developers in 2023

Looking for a good developer?

Yes, so are most of the companies out there. Developers’ demand is on the increase. Now, most of them are used to working remotely, and this has become their ‘normal.’

Developers are usually offered great opportunities and conditions. Even so, 54.7% of them are open to hearing about new positions, although they are not actively looking for a new job.

So, why is this market so popular, and why is finding a good remote developer team still so challenging?

• The first part of the problem is the increasing talent pool. Normally, the bigger the choice, the bigger the challenge. This is mainly happening due to the fact that most developers now are not required to have formal computer science education and become developers through various courses and tutorials. This narrows the entry barrier into the development world, making it bigger and bigger.

• The second aspect of the problem is the remote part. This may not sound like an issue at all, but rather an asset. But still, hiring remote workers of any kind does have its own challenges and requires a special approach and a different recruiting process.

So how to do it? How to find and recruit quality remote developers in this new year that’s ahead of us? Here is a step-by-step guide on this issue.

Tips to Help You recruit Remote Developers

As a headhunter or an HR specialist, you probably have your hiring process and steps that you take. Well, now, in order to hire remote developers, you, as a specialist in your field, should tailor that process to suit the job requirements.

Recruiting top talent for your company can be a challenging task, and when it comes to hiring remote developers, the process can become even more complex. The key is to implement effective recruitment processes, and maximize the benefits of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO).

Hiring people from all sorts of fields certainly doesn’t make you an expert in all of them, so using previously prepared tools such as coding assessment platforms or soft skills tests will only make you better at your job. Here are some tips and possible tools to take into consideration when recruiting developers.

Be Prepared with Interview Questions

The most thorough tool for checking technical competence in a candidate is, of course, the technical interview. This technical interview is preferably conducted by a subject matter expert. However, regardless of who is conducting it, the interviewer must be prepared. This means including C++ interview questions, and questions referring to JavaScript, Python, and other major programming languages, depending on the job requirements.

This type of assessment offers an in-depth evaluation of the knowledge of the candidate by asking them all sorts of specific questions and giving them job-relevant, practical tasks and exercises.  Another asset of the interview as an evaluation method is that it allows you to see how the applicants express themselves and how they communicate. A lot of great developers have difficulty communicating exactly what they want, even though they are experts in their field.

Use Technical Portals and Platforms

Use technical portals and platforms for coding assessment. They evaluate the candidate’s knowledge through hands-on practical tests where they assess the candidate’s understanding of applying algorithms, data structures, and various other important computer programming aspects. Good examples of such platforms are LeetCode and Codewars.  This method will provide you with a quick filter if there are too many applicants.

But be careful, and there are some disadvantages to this type of ‘mechanical’ evaluation. An applicant can have a low score on these tests but still have good soft skills or potential for learning but lack experience in applying different concepts. This is usually referred to as the ‘hire for talent’ strategy. These nuances can only be seen through the eyes of the interviewer. So these technical platforms should be just the first round and the entrance door to the in-depth technical interview that should follow.

Proof of Previous Work

Ask for possible proof of previous work. This isn’t always available, but it’s definitely the most relevant evidence of one’s qualities and professional skills. Developers don’t usually create portfolios. They can attach it to their resumes. But you can ask for contributions to public repositories or contributions to open-source projects where their work is visible.

Personality and Soft Skills

As for every other job, remote developers need to have other skills besides technical knowledge. This is where soft skills and character traits come into place. As any HR specialist knows, they are as important as the job competencies, if not more sometimes. Let’s say most developers have the technical knowledge more or less or have the potential to learn what they will need for the job. But not all of them have the personality and the character that the company or the team needs.

Here you, as a job recruiter, will look for skills in interpersonal communication, work ethics, conflict resolution, time management, etc. The HR interview is crucial for this part. Any professional references also serve as testimony to the soft skills of the developer.

These methods and tools should not exclude one another but rather complement each other in giving you the whole puzzle. When done in combination, they will serve as your tools to make the essential first elimination process.

How to Make ‘Working Remotely’ Work

We mentioned that finding a good developer is one thing, but finding a good remote developer adds a completely new perspective to the job hunt. Although most developers are now used to working remotely, there are still many things to look for in the candidate to make this work.

There are some things that can be incorporated in the job description and asked by the employers to ensure that the good developer you’ve found will do their job remotely. Here is what can be incorporated as part of a remote work job hunt:

Time management is probably the first and most important aspect. Remote developers should be able to organize their tasks and responsibilities around the company’s and team’s time schedule. Although they are left to do the job within their time, they must still follow calendars and schedules given by their employers. There are several ways to make sure this happens. Here is one of them.

Regular Meetings

This is something that is already a practice in many companies. By scheduling a regular daily or weekly meeting, all remote workers are obliged to give a short report on what they’ve been doing during that period of time. This also opens a platform for giving and receiving support and help, as well as team problem-solving.

It ensures that everyone is on the right track and is equally involved. It also gives space for comparison and positive competition within the team or company. Finally, by including remote workers in a regular short but effective meeting, you keep them alert and make them organize their time better.

Project Goal Alignment

This comes as a consequence of regular meetings and keeping everybody on the same track. If remote developers are part of a team (which they usually are), being in line with everybody else and working towards the same goal is the main sign of successful performance.

Communication is also crucial. How, where, and when remote developers communicate is of utmost importance since they won’t be seeing each other in person. The latest trend remote companies are applying to ensure flawless communication among workers is

Asynchronous Culture

In a nutshell, it’s a way of communicating where everybody is mindful of why and how they try to contact another employee. Emails and messages should be well written and contain as much information as possible instead of several chats throughout the day.

Async culture for remote workers leads to more productivity and prevents long chats and losing time in perpetual explaining and communicating constantly. Therefore, effective and reasonable communication is something that should be sought in potential candidates and valued as a quality.

Ready to Start Searching for Your Remote Development Team?

We’ve offered you several most relevant aspects that should be included in the recruiting process. Not only that, but this article gives you practical tools with which you should cover these aspects.

These will ensure that once you’ve found the remote developers you need, they will want to stay in the company, and working remotely as a team will function properly and efficiently because the struggle does not stop only at finding the right remote developers but rather continues into making them want to stay.