4 Essential Offshore Developer Soft Skills

Quick Summary:

In today's competitive job market, it's important to hire not just for technical skills but also for soft skills. This article highlights 4 crucial offshore developer soft skills to look for when hiring an offshore developer: communication, adaptability, problem-solving and collaboration. Hiring for these skills ensures a smooth and productive work environment, leading to successful projects and a satisfied team.

Hiring an offshore developer for your software development project is crucial to a company’s success. But, how can you ensure that you are finding the right person for the position?

While testing a potential hire’s coding ability should be the primary step in assessing fit, the following offshore developer soft skills attributes will be key in finding your perfect developer beyond the technical skills. Working in a team and focusing on several projects with great communication skills help in working efficiently with technical and non-technical clients who are unskippable for seamless offshore software development.

Besides, soft skills like Flexibility, passion, empathy, and honest communication for their work are equally crucial as a candidate's technical knowledge. Also, soft skills are like icing on the cake. They set the best of the candidates apart from the rest.

But, what are ‘Soft Skills’?

Soft skills are usually referred to as personality traits and characteristics of a person’s behavior and attitude. They positively impact productivity and interaction with other team members. Though these skills are not nearly as quantifiable as hard skills like coding knowledge, they are unskippable.

Top 4 Essential Offshore Developer Soft Skills

Now that you are familiar with what soft skill is, here are 4 Offshore Developer Soft Skills that are the most important aspects that constitute an ideal developer.

1. Excellent Communication

It’s often said that it sounds cliche, but excellent communication skill is one of the most important traits to look for when you want to hire developers. Better ideas, more efficient approaches, and optimizing the use of time - all these things happen when team members communicate well with one another. 

Especially a good software developer should be able to communicate with clients to understand and meet their requirements by conveying solutions to challenges by documenting them in simple and easy-to-understand language.

Also, a successful offshore developer must be able to communicate in excellent written and spoken English, have a clear understanding of international business culture, and always be upfront with project requirement commitments.

Method Of Assessment:

You can test this skill during the hiring process by observing how your potential hire interacts with other team members. You can also note their communication skills by giving them a problem statement and asking them to carry out the task or solve a problem. But it’s just as important that the candidate listens well too.

2. Awareness of Processes & Frameworks

Technology is constantly evolving, and new coding languages are emerging every day, with languages, frameworks, and processes also changing. Furthermore, adaptable employees are more determined, resourceful, and analytical, and make excellent leaders. 

So, being able to access the risk without any challenge is one of the key strengths and qualities of a reliable software developer. Besides, as a resilient employee, it’s crucial to have the tools and strategies to preserve and adapt to a new situation. Also, it’s an important skill for a developer as it helps them to recover more quickly and continue to work efficiently.

Method Of Assessment:

The way to access this within an interview is simply by looking for evidence of success across various contexts for which no one tool kit or method has proven successful. You can ask the candidate to talk through some examples of where they have needed to learn and apply a new skill in their earlier roles. An ideal answer would comprise discussions on when the candidate has evaluated a range of technology options and good reasoning for choosing a specific one.  

3. A Quick-Learner

Fast learning skills include a broad set of experiences in different fields. Thus, offshore software engineers must have a diverse skill stack and a drive to update their understanding of upcoming technologies constantly. Programmers need to demonstrate that they can quickly adapt to a new environment, the ability to pick up new technical skills, and the capability to track new industry developments. 

So, an offshore software developer stays up to date with cutting-edge technologies pertinent to a company’s advancement, innovation, and success. 

Method Of Assessment:

Follow the “show, don’t tell” method to evaluate the fast learning abilities of your potential hire:

• Describe how you learned a new skill in a short time. 
• Discuss how you trained your team member in a skill for a project.
• Describe how you switched to a new career and learned new skills and services.

4. Collaborative In Their Approach

The final thing to look for while hiring a developer is how collaborative they are in their approach. This concerns how well they fit in with both an individual and as well as the organizational culture as complete. Effectively managing a remote development team is a balancing act, - and it can be easy to overdo it. 

• Don’t Micromanage 

Instead of micromanaging every detail of their work, you can empower each team member to be self-sufficient. This approach will boost your team’s performance and overall company productivity. 

• Stay Transparent and Honest 

An offshore software developer must adhere to complete transparency and honesty about the work and provide regular insights into how their time is spent while billing clients' work hours.

Along with collaborating on ideas and deliverables, they should take constructive feedback to ensure seamless development. Also, the coder should be a perfect blend of follower and leader in measure of accountability.  

Method Of Assessment:

What you should look for:

• Does the candidate manage their time efficiently to produce a working solution, or do they spend too much time on one aspect?
• Have they completely grown through the problem and possible approaches, or do they just drive straight into a solution?
• Do they work effectively with other team members, or do they fly solo?  

How to evaluate? 

Ask them the following questions: 

• How would they mediate between two colleagues who had very different ideas about how to approach a new network?
• What do they think makes a good team? How much interaction would they need with coworkers in order to work successfully?
• Ask them about a time when they had to deal with a team member who constantly opposed their ideas. 

Finally

If you are going to hire an offshore software developer, you need to allow them to show what they can do. After all, finding the right software developers is not tricky if you know what abilities and soft skills to look for while hiring developers. 

However, the job may seem complex. But working with a trusted offshore development company like Your Team In India proves to be the right decision coming down to the most efficient and cost-effective way to hire software developers. The experts at YTII provide you with a clear idea of an ongoing strategic roadmap ensuring everyone has goals aligned with the team and company. 

Once goals are defined, and action plans are put in place, we ensure employees have the right tools to achieve success. Besides, we develop a robust and detailed recruitment process to ensure you can hire the right resources that meet your business needs. 

If this sounds like you, contact us now! 

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