Remote hiring is commonplace in the tech market today, not just for certain roles, but for most. But specifically to developers, when hiring or building a team while working remote, what should leaders and HR keep in mind?

Today’s technology marketplace is widespread and not restricted to a certain region, for teams to benefit from the capabilities of diverse engineering talent, expanding the talent candidate pool using remote hiring and remote employee management processes ensures that companies capitalize on the best talent to achieve their growth goals while also giving more candidates (not restricted to a specific city or country) a chance at new opportunities.

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Until a few decades ago, hiring without a face to face interview would have still been considered one of the biggest taboos for any business leader. Over the years, trends have shifted not only in tech but also associated industries making room for more remote friendly working and hiring environments that also allow for a boost in gig work models besides offering better talent opportunities to companies. 

In the tech and SaaS market today, it is common to find certain roles working remote now, in fact, several industry experts have often been vocal about their long-term remote work and remote roles and how beneficial it’s been to them and their teams over time. 

Specifically when hiring developers from a global market though, are there specific factors that hiring managers and business leads need to consider, in order to ensure the best-fit talent-job match? An established team of skilled developers with a global exposure can set in place new fundamentals for any tech product or SaaS company. 

Here is what can help hiring leaders ensure they have the right interview and selection structures in place:

It’s about Code Assessments and Technical Skills, not Just Resumes

While several traditional hiring leaders might still want to rely on the meet-evaluate-test then shortlist hiring pattern, in today’s highly crowded talent market, traditional hiring models are not enough to assess and evaluate candidate capabilities. 

The use of HR Technology and skills assessments platforms can enable teams to structure strong technical interviewing and shortlisting capabilities far earlier on in the interview process to help distinguish the best-fit candidates.

When hiring developers, technical capabilities need to match projected business goals and product roadmaps. When a SaaS and tech company knows what route their product or service is to take, it helps ensure a better hiring framework for technical recruits. This also allows teams to hire developers and relevant technical candidates suited to their need thereby ensuring a long-term win-win for both parties. 

Hiring developers on the basis of their past work record or resume is not enough today, in fact resumes can create a bias in the hiring process. Often times, a detailed resume or work history does not completely portray what a candidate can and cannot do in reality – it takes the right technical assessments and pre-interview tests to determine this. Furthermore, a written resume can never portray a candidate’s personality, but right tools (personality assessments) can help review this, to ensure that while building a remote engineering team – team members are aligned and have like-minded traits so that they can work better together.

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Using Tech to Network and Make the Hiring Process More Personal

A good hiring manager will always have a steady pool of relevant candidates in their database, to meet various hiring needs within the company. A large part of the tech marketplace runs on hybrid and remote models, this could mean that hiring teams are also spread out globally, especially in larger organizations. With various hiring managers from the same company looking at the global market to fill vacancies, it becomes important for hiring teams to use technology to their advantage and reduce the size of this circle by maintaining a steady line of ongoing networking and communication with relevant profiles, continuously. 

Developing the right processes to nurture candidates with the right skills that could play a role in the future of the company is integral to capturing the right talent and keeping them engaged and away from key competition as well. This also helps HR partners at higher levels contribute to actual company ROI by limiting the projected losses that could be suffered due to poor talent acquisition policies. 

Tailoring the candidate experience by automating a continuous flow of communication with top developers of new languages (for instance) is a key factor today. 

A Strong Developer Team is Crucial to Company Growth, Taking Baby Steps is Integral to Establishing Hiring Practices

Most technical candidates today can be hired using hybrid models, this means that hiring managers can consider putting candidates in a temporary role to better understand their capability and value. This also allows existing team members to share their feedback while assessing how well they work with new potential developers.

Collaboration and communication is key to ensuring remote work or work for globally distributed teams flows well, when it comes to developers, there is more at stake. Trial based hiring can also ensure that teams reduce hiring mistakes by shortlisting candidates who won’t fit well with the larger team or those who can’t cope with the pace of their activities.

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End Note

Remote hiring practices and trends are constantly going to evolve to suit today’s dynamic environment and there is no right and wrong approach when it comes to talent acquisition, even for developers. The only thing that should be the core focus for hiring leaders as they build out teams is to ensure they have the best-fit and top talent from the market. This is what forward-thinking companies focus on most in order to build teams that are capable and have the ability to achieve business results.

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