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India has an impressively large pool of software developers increasingly known for being young, talented, and ambitious. Given many companies’ need for developers and the attraction of paying less for offshore talent, more businesses are looking to hire Indian developers.

This can be a great resource for teams, especially for those having trouble finding the development talent they need. That said, the task of finding and hiring the right Indian developer can be daunting. The process generally takes around four to five months and is one that is constantly fluid and changing. To help ensure you’re prepared to take on this process, here are some tips on how to hire Indian developers.

Be Patient

The first rule is patience and avoiding the temptation to quickly hire someone that appears to have the skill sets you need. Instead, you want to take the time to make sure they’re a good fit for your team, going through all the same processes that you use for local talent.

For example, it’s important to spend time thinking through exactly what type of work you need. Does it involve projects that need lots of collaboration? If so, consider time zone challenges, ensuring that you look for developers that are willing to work during the times you need them.

Ultimately, there are also a number of quality and cultural issues to consider.  Because of this, it’s important to be patient and to take the time to make sure you’re finding the right developer that will be a good fit for your team and your business’s needs.

Spend Time Crafting the Job Description

Another important step is spending time writing a thorough job description. This is key when hiring offshore talent, as it's the first interaction with the talent pool that you’ll have. To attract the best applicants, you want to set the right tone from the start with clear expectations about exactly what your needs are.

This means including specifics, like:

• Educational requirements
• Years of experience needed
• Specific skill sets required
• Daily responsibilities
• Expectations for weekly hours needed and specific work times needed

While this is important for all jobs, the job description is particularly important when hiring developers that are not local. This means it’s worth it to spend some extra time on this to help the hiring process go as smoothly as possible.

Have an Effective Interview Process

Once you find a few good applicants, it’s important to have an effective and objective way to evaluate them. For developers, it’s always important to administer a coding test. This is one of the best ways to predict how well they’ll perform, giving you a good overview of their skills and workstyle.

In your assessment, make sure to include real-world scenarios and time limits. Additionally, before administering tests to applicants, have an established rubric to objectively evaluate all applicants on the same scale.

Another key part of the interview process should be a video interview. Doing both a live coding session and some questions and answers is helpful. Video calls can be a challenge when dealing with language barriers and different time zones, but it’s important to make sure that you’re able to effectively communicate with your applicants.

Have Clear Expectations About Costs

There are often rumors circulating about how much businesses can save by taking advantage of offshore talent. While there certainly are opportunities to save money, it’s important to be realistic about how much money you’ll need to pay for a quality developer.

For example, while you might hear that you can hire Indian developers for 1/10 of the cost of local developers; however, it’s more reasonable to expect to pay around a third or half of what you’d pay local talent.

Also, as you think through costs, it’s important to consider the standard 30% pay increase that Indian employees expect. In other words, generally, when an Indian employee leaves a job, they expect a 30% pay increase from the new employer. Notably, this is a minimum expectation. Depending on the job and employee’s skill level, this is sometimes an expectation of as much as 50% pay increase.

The takeaway here is that it’s important to have reasonable expectations about what you’ll have to pay, and it’s important to do your research before you begin the search process.

Be Prepared to Wait

While most employees in the United States traditionally give 2-weeks’ notice, many Indian employees are required to give 60-90 days’ notice. This means that even once you find and hire your talent, it could be two to three months before they start.

Besides anticipating this wait, employers also need to understand another key point about the Indian hiring culture: during this notice period, it’s common for employees to shop around for better jobs. This can make it particularly difficult to hire Indian employees, as there’s a risk that while you’re waiting for them to start, they’ll accept another job. Here are some ways to deal with this:

• Stay in regular contact with developers you’ve hired and try to keep them invested in your business
• Try to buy out their notice period from their current employer
• Use a headhunter or other tools to hire developers towards the end of their notice period

Let Us Do All of the Hard Work

While there are certainly plenty of talented developers in India, hiring them can be a long and difficult process. This is especially true for businesses that are not used to dealing with the nuances that come with hiring Indian employees.

At UpStack, we’ve done all of the vetting work to create a global pool of developers that are ready to start working. It’s an easy, fast, and reliable way to grow your development team. Contact us to learn more or to start hiring developers today.

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