We all know this pain when you need to hire an external contractor to do the project and you are not sure where to start. In this article, we will discuss everything related to IT outsourcing and how to hire contractors for your business, including (but not limited to):
- When you absolutely need to outsource your development part
- What outsourcing locations would work best for you
- Where the best IT providers could be found
- How do you pick up the very best of them (the ones that will help you to bring actual results that make an impact)
Specifically, we’ll be referring to Data Engineering and NLP projects, just for a mere reference, because this is where our biggest expertise lies, but obviously, this advice would work for any other development areas – and for all business domains.
Let’s start with the basics, and that is
- When you absolutely NEED to outsource your development part
Now this one is a tricky question, because it obviously depends on your situation. When you’re on a tight deadline, say, startup business in the launching stage and you want to make it FAST, then probably you should do everything in-house till you’re ready to optimize your expenses and outsource part of your development.
However, if your business is a steady one, a well-set company that has met with certain development needs, and you understand that it would be both cost-effective and wise to hire someone from the outside to do the project without having to hire full-time employees, then outsourcing is definitely your thing.
- What outsourcing locations would work best for you
Now, you realized that you absolutely need to find a reliable outsourcing provider who can do the job well. The first question is: should you hire your local contractors or look for someone abroad?
Then again, it depends on the country you are in. For developed countries, like the USA, Australia, Canada, some European countries, you should first check out your legal restrictions and the rate range of your local providers. For some countries, hiring someone off-board is extremely pricey, and also, you sign a fully-pledged contractor agreement that puts you in a dependent situation. Contractors in your country might be heavily protected by law, so in case any misunderstandings happen, the law would not be on your side.
However, for some countries, hiring locally is a natural way out. This relates to countries that are known to be “world’s development hubs”. For example, if you live in Ukraine, any Eastern European country, India, Philippines, it’s natural that you might want to hire someone locally, because that’s where the main world’s development centres are located anyways, and the costs would ALREADY be effective in terms of budget.
That said, if you are from developed countries, and you realize that it will be more cost-effective to hire international contractors, the question is: what locations you should turn to?
To that end, you should consider WHERE your outsourcing provider should be located. And if their location time zone correlates with yours. Say, if you are from Australia, most convenient outsourcing locations would be Philippines, India, or Singapore.
If you’re from Western Europe, the most convenient locations would be Eastern European countries, with only 1 hour difference.
If you’re from the Untied States or Canada, then maybe you should look into Brazilian market, or, if you’re on the Eastern Coast, European locations would do as well.
Of course, location and time zone should NOT be your only measure of appropriacy. You should also be sure that the project will be done professionally, with high-quality code behind it, and with a deep understanding of your business requirements and your industry.
Before we continue, if you have any project development needs, make sure to shoot us with a question, and we will take it from there!
- Where the best IT providers could be found
So, let’s say you defined your preferred development hub. Where you should turn to, to actually FIND a contractor and start a conversation?..
There are highly overheated places like Upwork, where you can still find experienced teams to bring your project to life. However, bear in mind there’s Upwork commission, so it might not be the best place for long-term projects.
You can also find teams and personal contacts of outsourcing business owners on LinkedIn (and LinkedIn professional Groups), Clutch.io, Xing, Toptal, Guru, Cofounders.com, Slack communities and Quora Spaces – btw, check out IT People Space on Quora, which is covered by Mellivora team – and Telegram chats.
However, one of the most popular and most effective sources of finding the right contractor is by recommendations. And to that end, if you can’t get personal recommendations from people you already worked with successfully, or people you trust, try Telegram groups, Quora spaces, and Slack communities.
- How do you pick up the very best of outsourcing providers that will be a perfect fit for YOUR project (the ones that will help you to bring results that make an impact)
This is where you have to turn your attention to niches and specialization of the team you are going to hire. Which means, checking out:
- Their tech stack that they typically work with (and boast being experts in) – whether it correlates with your project requirements?..
- Their previous experience in similar projects (say, how many Big Data projects they’ve done OR what particular NLP issues they previously solved). Bear in mind, that both, say, data engineering and NLP can imply a lot of things. And whilst the potential provider might be experts in rule-based approaches in NLP, they might not have previously used ML techniques, and so on. So you should check out if they 100% relate to your requirements.
- Very important: check their previous recommendations. Their past clients might have a lot to say and you will receive first-hand information about the team.
- Their accessibility for the project. Many outsourcing providers are either overwhelmed with current workload and whilst they will take on your project, they might not deliver on time, OR they might not have the required resources at this exact moment, and they will need time to find better-suited developers for your project, so make sure to clear this point beforehand.
- Also, you should understand and speak about the business model they operate in, beforehand. Say, they might want to operate on a prepaid basis, which is fair, BUT then you will have to go through their contractor agreement closely. And of course you should solve all the operations issues, like, data security, signing NDAs, etc.
I strongly urge you to have an interviewing process before you hire your software development partner, because this way you will understand whether the people behind the profiles are adequate, and whether their skills level and (very important here!) – communication level are appropriate and acceptable for you to work with.
That said, you are always welcome to contact the Mellivora team via email: contact@mellivorasoft.com and share your pain with us. If this is out of our expertise, we might recommend you someone we trust, and if it’s anything about data engineering, NLP or ML-related techniques, we would be happy to help.
See you soon!
Mellivora Software helps SME and Enterprise businesses build custom IT solutions for a bunch of specific industries. Our core expertise is focused around: Big Data (data engineering, DWH, ETL), DevOps and AWS technologies, NLP technologies, Data Science/Machine Learning.