Hiring Programmers and Professionals
The bottom line is - The more time you have for yourself, the more money you can make.
Unlike me, who is a programmer by profession and can’t help but work really really hard to get one product done in a month or two, spend another month on testing and then figuring out the marketing part of it. You can be smarter here and hire programmers like me to work for you for your projects while you talk to JV partners, Promoters, Sponsors and Affiliates and plan your mega launch. Now sure, like I said, I am just so busy working hard that I won’t be available to work on your project so your other alternatives are as follows:
- Hire a Full time Programmer / Web Developer / Web Designer / Graphic Designer
- Hire a Freelance Programmer / Web Developer / Web Designer / Graphic Designer
- Hire a company who already has a fully established team to take care of your work
If you want to keep your investment costs low, you might want to rule off option 3, unless you have the funds, you are short on time and want to get things done. But still your best bet to save funds will be to outsource your work to other countries like India, Pakistan, China or Romania as compared to companies in the US. However, it is important for you to know that hiring a local company is a big plus. Here is how:
- They are approachable
- They work on the same time format as you (makes a difference)
- Communication via phone is cheap and not an additional cost
- You may visit them, have face to face meetings to make sure they are on track
- They speak the same language as you do, unless you are from one of the countries mentioned above.
The reason for more than 80% of outsourcing disasters is bad communication. Both parties have a hard time understanding each other. What can be worse?
But to overcome this situation it is important that you spend your time in picking the right company, talk to them, via email, on the phone, on chats to make sure that they understand your requirements. Once you are confident that you are on the same page, you’re good to go. Countries like India and Pakistan are not native english speakers but most of the professional organizations, companies and individuals speak really good english. It is just about finding the right people.
But if you want to keep your costs low, you must consider option 1 and 2.
Now, depending on the nature of your project, you can make a decision wisely.
If your project is a one time development tool like a software that performs specific tasks, a web site, logo, catalog, business cards, forum / blog / shopping cart implementation, etc, you are better off going through the simple way - Freelancing.
There are several highly experienced programmers who like to freelance. You will be better off, hiring someone for your project, preferably on a fixed price (not open-ended hourly) and get the product designed. Since you wont be paying him / her any money till the product is delivered to you and you are satisfied, your risk is very low. Even if a deal goes bad, all you lose is time (which, in some cases, can be more valuable than money). The chances of such situations are more if you hire a freelancer personally (from the web, word of mouth, etc). So to be safe, it is important for you to work with Freelance Agencies like Rentacoder, Elance etc.
On the contrary, if you have a project that is long term, like a membership application that will need ongoing tweaking, maintainence, support, etc you might find it cheaper to hire a full time programmer. Remember, Contract positions and freelance work is usually more money than a full time salary. So if it fits in your budget, find someone really skilled as per your requirement, interview him/her, make sure you are on the same path, take references from the candidate of his/her previous employer, clients and call them and ask them about his/her performance. Some people just get flattered by the fact that the candidate pulled out a few references for you right away and dont bother calling them. Call them to make sure that their previous employees, clients are happy with their work so you can be happy as well.
Interview atleast 5-10 good candidates to get a feel of the talent available out there. Some job boards let you search for candidates very specifically like by searching for a particular skillset, years of experience, geographical location, expected salary, etc. So it will be a good idea to shortlist around 30 - 40 resumes of candidates that you like. Don’t hesitate using more than one job board, you will find a variation of candidates among various job boards.
I have been a technical recruiter before so my recommendation for good job boards are Monster, Yahoo Hotjobs, Job.com and Dice.
Once you find the programmer to work with you, it is important that you spend lot of time to make them understand what you specifically expect from them as well as the scope of the project.
A lot of people ask me this question: Raakesh, when you work with your clients, or with your programmers, what is the best way to write the product specification sheet. And after doing a lot of research and analysis of what works for me both ways (for my clients, and my programmers), I have drafted some details on writing a successful spec-sheet that will be a winner.
I have written an article on how to write winner spec-sheets, check it out below:
http://www.raakesh.com/blog/articles/hiring-programmers-and-professionals/writing-winner-specification-sheets
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