What do we mean when discussing scaling strategies for remote software development? Team scalability means establishing a process to increase revenue without raising your expenses.
If you find new ways to grow by 25% in revenue with your current team or hire only one more candidate, that’s how you scale your team.
For example, rising 25% in revenue by hiring three new employees doesn’t mean employing an effective scaling strategy.
So, how can remote software development services help you scale and grow your business?
5 Reasons for Hiring a Remote Software Developer
- Lower employment costs
- Maintain a competitive advantage
- Fill gaps for project continuity
- Eliminate geographical barriers
- Hire instantly
Let's dig into each reason more deeply to understand the hows and whys you would want to hire a software developer at all, but also someone who can work fully remotely.
1. Lower employment costs
What do lower employment costs mean? IT staff augmentation in software development can help you contain your costs. But the result you get always depends on how you do it.
Hiring where the living costs are more affordable doesn’t mean accessing cheap labor and having everything done. The IT industry is highly competitive, and demand increases every day.
So, rather than lower salaries, hiring remote developers allows you to offer more competitive contracts and benefits to attract better talent and improve quality outcomes.
2. Maintain a competitive advantage
The digital market and IT industry change constantly. And it’s essential to stand out from competitors to attract new customers and increase your revenue.
Hiring remote software developers can support your team in maintaining a competitive advantage in your niche. You can target specific skills instead of doing work for your limited local recruitment options.
For example, no one with an e-Commerce business can get away without an excellent user experience. You can target your job description by listing your business needs and how the new hire will collaborate with the current team.
So, you can hire the candidate that fits your needs and focus on the features you need to improve to stand out from your competitors.
3. Fill gaps for project continuity
Hiring remote candidates with specific skill sets has another benefit. Sometimes, when developing software, you need an additional hire to support side tasks of development projects, like maintaining databases or handling consumer requests.
Opting for freelancers is a good solution, but it can harm your team flow if the person has another past compared to your existing team.
So, hiring a remote developer allows you to offer a set number of hours or specific tasks. Remote developers as a scaling strategy is a more practical option for two main reasons.
First, it allows your current team to adjust the existing team flow based on their needs and quickly achieve better performance.
Second, it will support you and your team in establishing effective collaboration strategies to guarantee continuity to your project and speed up the onboarding process for future hires.
4. Eliminate geographical barriers
During the first wave of lockdowns, most businesses had to switch to distributed and virtual arrangements to cope with COVID restrictions.
Remote hiring offers the flexibility of bringing highly skilled developers into your team. If you're looking for expertise in a specific area, like python for data science, hiring remotely allows you access to top talents who can handle complex tasks in areas such as data analysis or the development and implementation of data-driven solutions. Skills that were once hard to come by locally are now at your fingertips.
After the pandemic, many digital implementations, like online stores or distributed customer service centers, are still in place because they improve businesses’ market capacity.
Employing remote software developers allows you to compete in the market differently.
For example, you can hire remote software developers based on different timezones to ensure 24/7 customer service and software maintenance, targeting your resources based on your needs.
Or expand your talent pool by optimizing the hiring budget and recruiting candidates with specific skill sets accessing world-class candidates.
Remote hiring eliminates geographical barriers because it opens new opportunities that allow you to find solutions to contain your budget and hire talented candidates.
5. Hire instantly
Whether you need a new hire working in a different timezone or specific skills for urgent implementation of your software, remote recruitment is an effective scaling strategy to hire a talented candidate quickly.
Unlike local hiring, remote recruitment allows you to expand the talent pool and fulfill the requirements of your software development project - especially with the support of remote recruitment agencies. Just be sure to identify the best candidate by assigning a carefully structured test task.
For instance, if you're looking for a Python developer skilled in web automation or data scraping, you could assess their abilities by having them write a Python screen capture script that automates the process of taking website screenshots. This practical evaluation helps ensure that you quickly find the right candidate with the exact skills required for your project.
Remote Freelance Developers Vs. In-house Developers
Remote hiring is an effective solution to scale your business if you do it right. Boosting an organization’s productivity and building a remote team requires more than talented team members. It requires time.
As a team manager or business owner, you must make your team members work together and find ways to optimize their individual skills to get the best result.
Let’s see why scaling your team with in-house remote development is a more effective way to ensure continuity in your business.
In-House Developers |
Freelance Developers |
|
Team flow |
After the onboarding process, the new hire will be fully integrated with an existing team flow, ensuring better productivity |
If freelancers have more clients, it can challenge the collaboration process impacting your productivity |
Quality |
Learning your company standards, in-house developers can ensure a high-quality delivery |
Working on an individual basis, a freelance might miss details and impact the delivery time |
Time |
Working only for your company, in-house developers can organize their delivery time based on your needs |
On the contrary, with freelancers, you might adjust your project to their delivery time |
Company Costs |
In the long run, in-house developers will reduce your budget, improving productivity and quality delivery |
If you change collaboration partners or pay for hours, freelancing can negatively impact budget and business continuity |
-
Team flow
Hiring in-house developers is one of the most effective strategies to ensure continuity in your workflow.
Freelancers usually work on their paste and deal with different clients, making it harder for your team to find a productive workflow in the long run.
With an in-house developer, you can build a more collaborative team and set the bases for future hires.
-
Quality
In-house developers can ensure better quality for deliverables. After onboarding, your new hire will know your company’s standard, workflow, and delivery time.
Unlike freelancers, you can teach in-house developers your company methods and ensure quality and standard deliveries for your business.
-
Time
Similarly, an in-house team can ensure a fixed delivery time, reducing and optimizing your budget over time.
Freelancers often work for more clients at once, and sometimes you have to adjust your company flows to their schedule.
Hiring in-house developers will help you speed up your development processes, focusing on improving user experience and services over time.
- Company costs
Finally, in-house developers mean having a new team member. And it’s something you cannot underestimate. A team member does work for you, not for money.
Of course, we all work to pay bills. But it’s nice to work for someone you like and a project you enjoy - especially with a convenient and competitive contract and benefit systems.
Someone who believes in your work will be more committed than someone hired temporarily. In the long run, an in-house team will improve your company services based on their experiences, settling the ground to scale your business growth with a compact team.
Grow and Scale Business with Remote Developers
To conclude, hiring remote software developers is just one of the many small business tips we share, and it's an effective scaling strategy to boot. You can effectively manage your flow and meet deadlines while ensuring talented addition to your team.
Remote recruitment's downside is that you need effective hiring strategies to vet candidates and interview them to spot the best one for your team.
So, make sure you have suitable hiring systems and professional support in place, and get ready to find a talented software developer to scale your company!
Author Bio
Sharon Koifman is the founder and CEO of DistantJob. This Montreal-based company provides remote worker staffing and best practices-based advisory services for companies seeking to improve and expand their remote work operations.