Pandemic or not, nothing has made app development take the foot off the pedal. If anything, there were 218 billion mobile app downloads in 2020, which is a 7 percent increase from 2019. Having said that, a mobile app is only good as the app development team behind it!
I did a survey to figure out the most common app development challenges entrepreneurs face today. And 37.5% of the participants chose setting up the right development team to be their #1 challenge. So, how to hire remote developers for your app?
In this article, I’ll be laying out all the options you have for setting up your app development team (in the current market), along with their pros & cons. Let’s begin!
Inhouse
Here, you hire a team that works in your office premises, available to you 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Seems pretty convenient at first glance, right? Let’s understand its ramifications, and assess whether it’s for you or not.
When Should You Go Inhouse?
- Your work culture is too specific and is evident throughout everything you do and everyone you work with.
- Having an in-house staff is a key competency of your business.
- You are a large organization with a strong employer brand, and would rather have another division.
- When your operations involve highly confidential information or trade secrets that could damage your business if made public.
What it Takes
It includes 3 key phases – planning, recruitment, and employee selection.
Planning is where you decide how many team members you need, and what kind of development requirements you have, based on which you decide what skill sets these new developers need (yes, it does require extensive research).
Recruitment is an entirely different story where you have to reach out to all the potential candidates through job postings, advertisements, job referrals, college campus recruitment, etc. Then come the interviews and other methods of assessment, and background checks.
Employee selection is pretty self-explanatory. It’s the evaluation process where you finalize what developers would best fit your needs, apart from their capabilities. That takes development tests and one last interview, hopefully after which you find the right mobile app development team.
Recruitment and Selection Process
Let’s give you an overview of what the hiring process looks like:-
Step #1: Job Applications
There are various ways to get people to apply to your job posting. You can list on your website, advertise on platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed, even post on your social media, etc. You can track them and once you’ve received the applications, time to conduct a talent assessment test.
Step #2: Application Tracking
Many companies use Application Tracking Systems, an automated way to process their job applications and manage the hiring process. Oftentimes, there are talent assessment tests before job interviews.
Step #3: Job Interview
Here, the candidate may be interviewed one or several times depending on how precise your selection process is. With a developer, capability checking tests. Then, there are background and reference checks as part of the recruitment process.
Step #4: Hiring Paperwork
After you’ve finally found the ideal app development team, there comes tons of paperwork, and not just for the employee-to-be, but for you as well. From tax declaration forms, and company-specific paperwork, you’ll have to do it all.
Pros of Hiring an Inhouse Team
Cultural Fit
If someone has to be physically available on your office premises, it’s very likely that they’re coming in from somewhere locally. This means that there won’t be any cultural shocks. This helps the app development team to integrate & communicate better; therefore, adding more value to your company.
On-site Availability
Even though we live in a seamless virtual environment, if there’s any chance of a gap or inconsistency in understanding, then it ends up being slightly lower compared to when explaining it virtually.
Cons of Hiring an Inhouse Team
High Cost
Is the slim advantage of in-house hiring over augmenting your app development team really worth it? Because the costs are way more than you think.
For instance, the average cost of an experienced in-house developer in the US is $103,009. Besides this, you’re also paying for infrastructure, then there are salaries, employee benefits, training costs, and other overheads all of which can be eliminated if you just hire offshore developers.
Lack of Talent
Unless you’re willing to pay some $9k-10k per month for a developer with an exceptional caliber, you shouldn’t even think of hiring someone in-house.
Even the starting salary of an app developer is $7k/month, as opposed to an offshore developer, which you can get for at most $3,500/month with years of expertise to show for.
Lower Retention Rate
Design and Development are fields with high employee turnover rates. In fact, it’s an understatement. The software industry reported one the highest employee turnover rates (21.7%) of any other industry in 2019.
With all the luring offers out there, imagine having to train a new developer all over again, just to lose them to some higher paying company.
Freelancers
Hiring individuals who can independently carry out the app development process calls for many considerations. You can find these individuals on websites like Freelancer, Upwork, Fiverr, etc.
Hiring freelancers is appealing when you’re highly risk-averse. You feel that by spending less money, you’ll be taking less risk. but what you don’t understand is that the probability of you losing that money rather increases.
You have no idea how many times we, as an app development company, hear about our clients getting burned by freelancers. Don’t get me wrong though—if you think it’s something insignificant, you may as well go for a freelance developer.
When Should You Go with Freelancing?
Small Requirements
Let’s say you have a Native Android and you want to make just a few fonts and placement changes, you may as well go with a freelance app developer. But when the requirement is huge, we’re talking about an app development team, and choosing a bunch of strangers on the internet is a shot in the dark.
Low Budget
We understand that you might not want to burn a hole in your pocket, which is why freelance mobile app developers seem like a better option. And you can get them for as low as $500 if you try your luck, but you have to keep really cautious so as to not get duped.
Pros of Hiring Freelance Developers
Lots of Options
Go to Upwork right now and look up “mobile app developer” and you’ll find tons of developers willing to build your mobile app. If you are looking for a dedicated app development team, you may as well hire multiple developers.
Cost-Effectiveness
When you have so many options to choose from, the pricing is bound to be really competitive. From React Native to the most niche frameworks like Xamarin and Swift, you’ll find mobile app developers to design and build your mobile application from scratch at attractive prices.
Cons of Hiring Freelance Developers
Unreliable
Anybody can sign up on platforms like Upwork and can still produce work samples. Even if you have some idea about app development, you may give them a test task and they could still show you something that you aren’t sure they worked on or not.
Lack of Commitment
A freelancer at the end of the day is just an individual. An organization worked hard to get where it is, that’s why it grew and became an “organization” in the first place. Freelancers, unlike an app development company, don’t have a lot at stake.
This usually translates to their lack of commitment, especially when they need something to get done right away.
Security and Law Enforcement
If you’re looking for an app development team, you’re looking for more than one freelancer. Even if one of them isn’t proficient or dedicated enough, the entire coordination between a bunch of strangers will get messed up.
Not to mention, there may be obvious differences in timezone and work compliance issues if the freelance developers you’ve hired are from different countries.
Staff Augmentation
If you’re hearing this term for the first time, Staff Augmentation quite literally means augmenting your staff. As opposed to outsourcing, where you delegate a project to the company, you can pick the exact number of developers you need and can hire them as your own virtual staff.
This virtual staff can work with you on a dedicated basis, just like your in-house employees would. The best part is, even if you already have a team of developers, you can go hybrid and augment the rest of the staff that can serve as an extension to your existing team.
Benefits of Staff Augmentation
Giant Pool of Talent
A staff augmentation company will usually have hundreds of developers and designers that are associated with their company for years. The team has already worked together on hundreds of projects during that time. They are, therefore, in a position to offer you developers who are highly competent and have a synergy of working as a team.
Reduced Costs
When you hire a dedicated app development team from a staff augmentation company (like Resourcifi at least), you’ll end up saving tons of money on your payroll costs. Besides, you don’t have to bear any infrastructure costs, overhead salaries, employee benefits, or training costs.
Meet Deadlines
Staff Augmentation companies have project managers who will manage the entire development process. They will not only make sure that you meet your deadlines but also that there are no gaps or inconsistencies in terms of communication, making sure you get exactly what you want within the given time frame.
Exceptional Execution
A freelancer doesn’t have to coordinate with anyone, which means they don’t have to be punctual, neither do they don’t have an assured point of contact, unlike a staff augmentation company that has put in years of work to build itself with the only intent to grow and generate brand value.
The only way they could’ve thrived all those years was if they were able to execute really well.
Scalability
Had you hired developers in-house or even a freelancer, you would always lack the agility to scale up your team.
With a staff augmentation company, you’re open to a pool of talent readily available to become a part of your remote team. This means you can scale up or scale down immediately.
Over to You!
Every option mentioned above has its pros & cons. But, as a Staff Augmentation Company with a decade of industry experience, we’d recommend getting in touch with us to understand how we can work together to develop your app.
We’re an award-winning Staff Augmentation company. We provide top mobile app developers and UI/UX designers full-time, part-time, and on an hourly basis.
Want to know how much you can save by hiring mobile app developers & designers at Resourcifi? Use this savings calculator to find out now!
