Hiring software developers is never easy. You need to hire based on experience, skill set, productivity and personality. And software development is more finicky than hiring someone for sales.

So from Madison, Wisconsin, how do we hire our offshore software developers in Coimbatore, India? Lots and lots of experience.

Here is the typical process:

1. New Project: Client has a software development project (mobile app, website, web app) they want to develop. We help identify the technology they want to use. This could be .Net, PHP, front end technologies, CMS (wordpress) or ecommerce (magento).
2. Skill Set: Once the technology stack is identified then we identify a software developer that has the required technology skill set. This developer is sometimes already in-house or we may have to find a new developer in India to bring on board.
3. Must be picky: We only hire very good developers. In Coimbatore there are six engineering schools. A wealth of talent exists there. But realistically, less than 50% of software developers could be employed in the United States. The rest just do not have the proper skills.
4. New hire: Let’s say we have a new hire. Like any company, we first weed through applications. Typically we want someone with at least 5+ years of experience. On rare occasions we would hire someone straight out of school but that is risky and unusual.
5. Interview Process: The candidates are first interviewed by our HR staff in Coimbatore. This is the first round of screening. If they pass that round, then Sajan (our CEO) does the next interview for our candidates over Skype. Sajan has hired many developers in India. He asks them a series of questions to test their knowledge and experience. We also review their past work. If there is a question of their technical capabilities, then we will have the candidate do code testing.
6. Technical Talent: The technical talent of software developers in India is very high. As we have talked about in previous blog posts, they are very good at taking software requirements and coding them.
7. Trial Period: We have found the best test is a two week trial period. This is where you get to see their capabilities. This is also why we offer a full refund to our clients if the first two weeks are not a positive experience.
8. Project Management: To help evaluate our software developers, and ensure quality projects, we are very hands-on. We never just throw a software developer at a company and hope for the best. That is why disasters happen. If things are not working out for some reason, we want to know immediately so we can take action.

I would like to say that we have a crystal ball and we always hire the perfect developer every time. We do not. But through the years we have refined our process to ensure that most of the time we hire very good developers.