The caveats of remote hiring and what makes it so hard

Remote hiring is the new normal for developers as the demand for developers keeps increasing. However, there are challenges to remote hiring for tech, particularly when it comes to hiring from talent-dense areas like India.

Paul Graham made the case for international hiring back in 2014. He said that international talent can make hiring easier, and your company better. But, no one took it seriously enough. Hiring international talent is complicated and can be tough.

Why international hiring was hard 5 years ago

When it comes to hiring international talent, there are a number of complications and challenges that can arise from a logistical and legal standpoint. For starters, it can be tough to coordinate the schedules of everyone involved in the hiring process when they're in different time zones. There can also be language barriers to overcome, which can make communication difficult. Additionally, there may be different legal requirements that need to be met when hiring someone from another country. For example, you may need to obtain a work visa for them. All of these factors can make the process of remote hiring quite challenging.

The pandemic changed our perception about remote work

COVID forced the world to learn and adapt to async work. Founders and investors realised one thing. It is possible to build a successful company remotely. As the world increasingly moves toward a remote workforce, more and more companies are looking to hire employees who can work from home. While there are many advantages to this arrangement, there are also some caveats that still make remote hiring a challenge for many enterprises, and especially startups for whom time is of the essence.

What are the challenges of hiring remote developers?

The vetting process is harder

When recruiting developers remotely, the vetting process is harder because you can't meet them in person and get to know them. You have to rely on their online presence, which may not be accurate. You also can't ask for referrals from people they know. All of these factors make it difficult to find the right candidate.

The best way to vet developers remotely is to look at their online presence and see if they are active in the community. If they are, that's a good sign. You can also check out their code on GitHub and see if they have any interesting projects. Finally, you can ask them to do a short coding test to see if they're actually competent.

Within a business that's attempting to add tech new hires to the team, other current staff members may have to take part in screening job candidates. A direct result is that the timescape of the work process is usually violated.

Async work adaptability

Asynchronous communication is when people are not working at the same time or in the same place. It is important to be able to communicate effectively when working asynchronously so that everyone is on the same page. There are a lot of international developers who don't know how to work asynchronously. This can be a problem when working remotely because it can lead to miscommunication and frustration.

Hence, soft skills become highly important when it comes to async work cultures. Soft skills adaptability, communication skills, empathy, and resilience become highly important to get adjusted into an async work culture which can be challenging in the beginning.

Finding a good cultural fit

The difficulty in recruiting people of color and technology experts underscores the fact that it's important to remain diligent about creating diversity in the workplace. According to Mercer, tech employers are highly likely to be as concerned about the effects workforce transformation may have on their personnel diversity needs.

It's tough to find great developers, and hire them faster than your competitors

Companies thrive on gaining the best talent in order to succeed. Intense competition is what you can expect among those companies, especially when there's a shortage of talented individuals. Companies like Amazon and Microsoft throw their heavyweight weight into the recruitment battle, and newer entrants struggle since they have difficulty efficiently finding qualified options.

Remote hiring is hard, but worth it.

So, how do you make it easy for your company?

Making remote hiring easy for your company starts with your online presence. Companies with strong branding and values tend to increase their online presence with time. This helps them spread brand awareness internationally and makes it easier for them to network and increase inbound applications.

However, it only solves the challenge of finding great talent. Vetting them for async adaptability, and technical proficiency, and getting them to join your company remain challenges that need to be fixed in different ways.

If you're looking to hire international tech talent, we can help you out. We've helped more than 50 startups scale their tech teams with our pool of pre-vetted senior developers. Hiring from Pesto is as simple as shortlisting your favorite candidates, scheduling an interview call with them, and sending them an offer letter. We take care of everything from payroll management to health insurance to helping you with onboarding.

Interested? We're currently offering the first 4 interviews for free. Sign up here.

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