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Since the pandemic taking its toll on the world, we have witnessed the screeching halt of the world’s finance and economy. Even the most prominent players in the market are doing everything they can to cut down costs.  As in the IT industry, the most exploitable approach is perhaps Offshore Development Center, or we often call it ODC.

The term “Offshore Development Center” may not be that familiar to some businesses. However, this has been adopted in multiple fields of the IT industry and gaining its reputation as a cost-effective, approachable way of IT Outsourcing.

So, if you are taking the first steps toward offshore development, take a tour with us to gain an overview of ODC.

1. What is Offshore Development Center?

Offshore Development Center, short as ODC, is a form of IT Outsourcing that entails the creation of a dedicated off-site team located in another country to work on your software development project. Simply put, you are using software development services of an oversea country. The three main points of an ODC are:

• Scalability
• Dedication
• Integration

For an ODC, the resources included will be the human resources and infrastructure. Although the name says for itself the purpose of this off-site team, which is software development, the ODC can also include administrative and supporting staff, all depending on your requests.

Here is an invaluable guide to software development for business owners, check it out!

 

 

Since it is a “Center”, an ODC is often for large-scale and long-term operations. How you manage it lies upon your resources on a management team. It could be a single project manager working on-site covering all the monitoring, reports and assessment, or it could be a team of tech engineers from your side.

An Offshore Development Center may consist of some to tens of people. They can either work on the same project or on different projects. This varies on how much you want this ODC to cover the information technology aspect of your operation.

 

2. Offshore Development Center vs. IT Outsourcing: Aren’t they the same?

Some might mistake IT Outsourcing with Offshore Development Center. Actually, Offshore Development Center is just a form of IT Outsourcing. While IT Outsourcing pays no regard to location, Offshore Development Center refers explicitly to the offshore operation of the projects.

For an IT Outsourcing project, its core should be the output, while how the outsourcing team produces that output is just a minor factor. The client has no or little control over the project specifics. In contrast, since the ODC acts as a branch of the business, it should follow the company’s guidelines and code of conduct. An ODC can function as a branch or an IT department of one business, dealing with every technical matter of that business.

Thanks to geographical pricing, the gap between labor costs in some countries is higher than in some other countries. Exploiting this trait, many enterprises can now hire talents with the same capabilities at a much lower expense when applying ODC. One extra task for enterprises using this model is to have a project manager supervise the project.

 

 

For anyone who doesn’t know whether ODC or IT outsourcing is suitable for your business purpose, you can consider this:

• IT Outsourcing focuses on the output of the project. Therefore, the cost is a minor factor. As long as the requirements are met, you have no problems in the limited control of you in the team. The personnel of the IT Outsourcing team can change over time. For each IT Outsourcing team, they usually just work on one particular project. For another project, another team or contract is set up.
• Offshore Development Center’s core priority is cost reduction. Plus, the management within the project is stricter, with the client hiring extra personnel solely for management and supervision. ODC can work on multiple projects at the same time.

 

3. What can Offshore Development Center bring to your business?

Yes, IT Outsourcing and Offshore Development Center are two different models, and yes, IT Outsourcing is a more popular choice for businesses. However, Offshore Development does hold some beneficial traits that can contribute to your business:

• Cost reduction
• Close-up management and supervision
• Access to a large talent pool
• Market expansion
• Diverse team of technical engineers
• Continuous maintenance – Avoid knowledge releasing
• Alignment with client’s objectives

Cost reduction

The main reason why one business considers Offshore Development Center is the cost reduction it can offer. As mentioned before, the labor cost and other infrastructure costs vary from country to country. This is geographical pricing. With this glaring gap, many enterprises see the opportunity in which they can have a team with the same capabilities and proficiencies at a much lower cost.

Talking about ODC cost, it includes the initial cost to set up an ODC and the cost for operation. Let’s look at our calculation on running a domestic software team vs. an ODC software team.

 

 

Close-up management and supervision

The fear of loose management and inadequate supervision might be one daunting factor for businesses wanting to apply Offshore Development Center. However, the reality proved the other way round.

Over many years, the management method of Offshore Development Center now works in a functional way, including the stringent procedures and close step-by-step supervision within each project team.

And don’t forget about the increasing number of QA & QC staff working in an ODC. For example, each ODC project will be assigned with at least one QA and 2 QC employees to keep track of the work. In addition, Project Manager will be in charge of the whole operations through daily reports and constant updates.

 

Access to a large talent pool

Besides the leading factor of reduced costs, Offshore Development also holds another great benefit of a large talent resource, both in quantity and quality. When it comes to building the traditional in-house team, the recruitment cost goes through the roof with many trivial spending. Candidates don’t appear out of thin air. Corporations have to spend quite a fortune on ads, training efforts, orientations, etc.

aking advantage of this reality, companies providing ODC services always try to work through an effective recruitment process and training programs to sharpen IT staff’s skills, to to constantly adapt to the market’s demand and bring as much diversity to the project as possible.

 

Market expansion

With Offshore development services, companies now can expand their market in two manners:

• Form a new branch in an oversea market and get closer to their customers – a subsidiary for market expansion.
• Extend service capabilities, enhance customer experiences, reach more markets.

With ODC, as long as you find the right offshore development vendor and agree on the right way to engage with the process, raising business capabilities to expand the market is no longer a significant concern.

 

Continuous maintenance – Avoid knowledge releasing

With an offshore development team, you get a long-term dedicated team to take care of the entire cycle of the project and avoid knowledge releasing – the lack of people well-understanding your product/service for maintenance and upgrade.

The trend now is continuous maintenance performed on a weekly or even daily basis. First, each employees’ work is logged onto the management file, clearly stating what has been done. Then, the QC, QA and PM will take turns to check and verify their work. Finally, if anything goes wrong, the one held responsible will fix the problems. This is the process applied widely in the market and has proven its effectiveness.

During the entire cycle of the project, ODC uses every resource they have to complete their tasks. But, even in that case, there might be some time that the results don’t live up to your expectations. This is another reason for the continuous maintenance of your project. With instant maintenance after each step, the time-to-fix and time-to-market are reduced to their minimum.

 

 

Alignment with client’s objectives

For an ODC to function properly, you cannot leave out the position of Business Analysts. With this personnel, the mutual understanding between the ODC and client is more clearly clarified. Transparent requirements, along with advice from an expert in business development, can help you a great deal in finding the best work model to with.

With mutual understanding, ODC can now align with the client’s objectives and make any more adjustments if needed.

 

4. Domains for ODC: electronics, automotive & healthcare

Offshore Development Center is being applied throughout the world. Information Technology is the universal requirement for any business to adapt to the current preferences of society. We’re used to the pervading use of technology in entertainment and utilities, but the market is much bigger than that. Instead of the direct interaction with technology through apps and social media platforms, we now can see the increasing use of technology in multiple industrial and service sectors. The most obvious domains can be counted as:

• Electronics
• Automotive
• Healthcare

 

Electronics and Embedded Software

The “Smart” concept is more popular than ever, with embedded software implementation on every electronic device manufactured. For one electronic device, the modern world’s consumers not only care about the core functions of the device but also have a preference for the “high-tech” feature of the device. For example, an electronic fan is not enough. This fan has to obtain the “smart” feature and be a part of the manufacturer’s ecosystem. We have seen this in the case of Xiaomi. This new player in the technology marketplace of China has manifested the favor of consumers when it comes to electronic devices through its success with Mi home – a new ecosystem of home electronic devices.

 

 

Through this example, we can see the undeniable growth of IT in the electronics manufacturing field. With a large number of devices to put on the market every year, not to mention the updates and upgrades of the embedded software, the demand for electronics embedded software is higher than ever.

On the contrary, the supply of infrastructure and especially human resources within one country for this growth is still very limited. Hence, the electronics manufacturers have to come for IT Outsourcing, or even Offshore Development Center to seek help.

Instead of simple IT Outsourcing, manufacturers often go for Offshore Development Center for better security.

 

Automotive

It is almost like a tradition for the automotive industry to outsource its production (with an outsourcing rate of 80%), and the information technology aspect is no exception.

The widespread usage of digital sources and appliances has influenced how automakers wish to update current models. With customer-centricity, anything that benefits their consumers is designed to apply in the vehicles, such as automated automobiles, AI systems in customer service, and virtual assistants, the manufacturers, the adoption of an ODC can improve the security of the project, which is now bound the legal agreements.

 

Healthcare

From 2020 to 2027, IT Outsourcing in Healthcare and Medical is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11%. The rate for the rise of Offshore Development Center is approximately the same.

With the pandemic taking its toll on the world and the outburst of many other diseases, the medical and healthcare system needs more than what they have now to provide the best services.

Besides the clinical demands for each doctor and health worker, the world needs utilities and other technical advances to deliver conveniences to the health workers and the patients.

Since the technical system often requires highly competent staff, the demand for this is increasing. However, their core business development was never the technology. It is the overall experience of one customer and the treatment process that matter to them. The point is, for the best services, IT is indispensable.

For this reason, healthcare is another eminent domain for IT Outsourcing, especially Offshore Development to grow on.

 

5. ODC Checklist – Three keys to launching your ODC

Got Offshore Development Center in mind? This is just the first step. In fact, the world’s market has witnessed many failed cases, all of which lack the consideration of the following Offshore development center checklist:

• The right country for your offshore software development center
• The suitable team structure for your project and management style
• The right ODC pricing model for your project

The country in which you want to set up the ODC

The top destination for IT Outsourcing or Offshore Development Center used to be in Eastern Asia, with China, Japan and Korea reign as the most popular ones. However, in recent years, the labor cost in these countries has increased to the point that they’re no longer the favored destinations for Offshore Development Center.

Instead, Southern Asia and South-East Asia countries’ Offshore Development Center service is developing at a staggering speed. Standing out in these countries, Vietnam reigns top countries for ODC setup. According to the U.S. News, Vietnam scores 100/100 for Cheap manufacturing costs globally and is the 2nd-lowest operation cost country in Asia. Also, the legal infrastructure of Vietnam for the IT sector is also supportive, with tax reduction/exemption, land rental exemption, and other favored policies.

Apart from the Southern Asia and South-East Asia, companies can consider Australia, Newzealand, The Philippines, Poland, and Argentina for ODC.

 

 

The suitable team structure for your project and management style

Team structure in an Offshore Development team varies according to the client’s requirements. But the major roles include:

• Account Manager: This person is like the focal point of communication between two parties of the client and the ODC. They take in your requirements and deliver them to the project manager and the development team
• Project Manager: This person specializes in managerial skills and technical skills to carry out planning and executing, making sure the client’s requirements are met.
• Developers: They are like worker bees working on different tasks of one project. The installation, testing, and maintenance process may be involved in the work, depending on the client’s requirements.

 

The ODC model for your project

The pricing model of Offshore Development is quite diverse, especially with the ever-changing market of the IT industry. However, there are two most popular models of Offshore Development Center as below.

– Dedicated Offshore Development Center:

Taking from its name, a dedicated offshore development center gives the client the whole fully functioning team. This team can act up as the client’s other subsidiary/branch that specifically works on the development and their IT-related tasks. This model is for large projects with undefined requirements, meaning that the team will work their way out during the work process. The client will pay upon the onboard time of the team.

– Build – Operate – Transfer:

This BOT model can be considered a more advanced price model of Offshore Development Center in general. During the work process, the Offshore team will be responsible for Development (in “Build”) for Implementation (in “Operate). Once the client wants to take over everything, they will sign a contract for further purchase and other legal matters.

This BOT model is also for large projects, and especially for companies wanting to enter the market of hosting countries.

Whether you choose Dedicated Offshore Development Center or Build-Operate-Transfer, there will be a lot of things you have to take into consideration for the best interest of your company.

 

Final Notes

With all of the above information on Offshore Development Center, you can grasp the basic idea of how this works and how it can benefit your business. If you’re swamped with too much knowledge of this, you can learn about our Offshore development services or contact our expert for a free consultation.

 

Contact us at:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lqa/

The riddle of how to nurture, recruit and retain IT talents is the universal problem that HR departments face every day. As in the IT industry, 80% of the candidates are passive candidates, meaning that they’re already occupied. The process of planting the seed of job switching to attracting those candidates to apply to your company is a long and demanding journey. In this journey, for every step of nurturing, recruiting and retaining poses different challenges; fortunately, these can be easily tackled, thanks to the following solutions:

1. Build a strong employer brand
2. Employee referral program
3. Competitive benefit and compensation program (what motives your staff?)
4. Broaden your recruitment sources (institution)
5. Proper investment in HR Campaign
6. Remote Staffing
7. IT Outsourcing

 

1. Build a strong employer brand

72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agreed that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring, and 75% of those who are looking for a job often take employer brand into consideration. Also, 49% of LinkedIn users following official social media accounts of tech firms to watch our for job openings.

Building a strong employer brand is not something that you can do overnight but a long-term investment, both for business development and recruitment attraction. Still, it is important for one to “imprint” a good impression of your brand. These impressions would range from modern workplace, young and dynamic work culture, transparent policies, etc. Especially in the IT industry, candidates have a wider range of choices, hence they always go for the company with outstanding features of flexibility, scalability, etc.

 

 

The real question here is that “How does your employer brand stand out?” The most popular and common channel is social media. By leveraging your image on platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you’ve already highlighted the robust work culture and friendly environment. The choice of what image you want to put on to attract candidates lies in your hands. It could be young and dynamic, or friendly, or professional, it’s up to you.

To deliver the image of your employer brand as an IT recruitment solution, you can go with media sharing, company events, job development opportunities, etc. Through these, potential candidates will first capture the essence of the workplace and then engage more in the activities of your company.

In terms of career development, it’s best that you set up and organize technical events such as host meetups, workshops, and hackathons to revamp competition within the business.

Also read: Top 7 challenges in IT recruitment

 

2. Employee Referral Program

Employee Referral Program has long been an effective IT recruitment strategy exploited by many businesses. In this program, employers encourage their employees to refer qualified candidates with rewards.

 

 

This strategy has proven its effectiveness through multiple analyses indicating that employee-referred staff tends to outperform the nonemployee-referred ones. Alongside these performance-related metrics, an employee referral program also helps businesses hire talents with suitable backgrounds and avoid any unwanted characteristics. Plus, as the information about the job openings is shared through the employees’ network, more candidates can get access to the information at a quicker pace, hence boosting the recruitment process.

With a reasonable reward, an employee referral program is considered a cost-effective way to tap into a large and qualified talent pool of passive job seekers.

 

3. Competitive benefit and compensation program

Each job position in different companies offers different pros and cons, and there is no one-size-fits-all vacancy that can meet all the requirements of the candidates. As a result, you should research the factors that motivate them, in which benefit and compensation are two factors contributing to a successful IT hiring process.

The most common priority recently is the remote working conditions. The candidates also put an emphasis on how they can balance out their work life and personal interests. You can also understand this as they are willing to move out of the suburban areas if they can work remotely.

 

 

Another fraction is the reference for internal development, meaning more training, technical courses and on-job guide, etc.

Concerning the finance factors, although the salary and other financial compensation policies might sound very compelling, the social and mental benefits top at the priority of what tech engineers look for in their jobs.

Due to the shortage of IT talents, tech engineers are spoilt for choices of the company they can work for. To make your business stand out in this very competitive environment, businesses are compelled to produce an impressive benefit and compensation program.

 

4. Use different platforms and sources for acquiring talents

Recruiting is not just about posting to job and waiting for candidates to flock to you. This is never an effective way for you to find the best candidates. Indeed, it requires one to employ multi-platform recruitment to search for as many applications as possible.

As it is shown with the following statistics, although job listing and social business platform is quite popular within recruitment community, more than 71% of the talents come from employee referrals and internal hiring, 65% are from LinkedIn and 56% are from Indeed.

These sources of applications and candidates have proven its success with quite prominent numbers, but the outlook for the IT recruitment process can be even better if you employ some of the following methods:

• Hackathons/coding competitions: By organizing these “playgrounds” for developers/testers, you expose your employer brand to a small society of IT worker community, hence raising the chance of being considered when they have a plan for changing jobs. Through these competitions, you also get access to the personal contact address of the candidates, which can be used for later candidate nurturing.
• IT training institutions: Partnership with universities and colleges with IT majoring can give you early access to a large and dynamic talent pool. This can ensure high-quality candidates thanks to the systematic and intensive training during their tertiary education.
• Certificate providing institutions: organizers for IT certificate provision have contact points of the qualified IT candidates in different fields that can assist the mass recruitment process.

Talent acquisition does not always mean the recruitment from direct sources of candidates who will later on work as in-house staff. Instead, many international tech giants have switched their approach to staff augmentation or third-party recruitment services. With this rather new approach, your company would benefit from a bigger talent pool with candidates specialized and expertise in one particular domain or technology.

5. Proper investment in HR Campaign

As talent shortage becoming an alarming problem in the IT industry with 69% of companies globally report talent shortages, tech enterprises now place heavy emphasis on Human Resources and IT Recruitment. HR department now holds greater responsibilities and priorities amid the pandemic, requiring decision-makers to take more measures to improve recruitment campaigns. As the competition among tech companies gets more and more serious, it is urgent to employ a proper investment in HR campaigns to stand out in the market.

 

Here are some critical channels to improve HR campaign’s performance:

– Signing Bonus. This can be the leveraging factor that can boost the recruitment process. One-month salary bonus or even more is exactly what one might expect to receive from their employers. This is not only a welcoming gift for the staff but also a promoting point for the company’s image.

– Advertising on multiple recruitment platforms. With a reasonable budget allocation, HR leaders can arrange ads to attract more candidates. Each recruitment platform has its pros and cons, which requires decision makers to do their research and try them out before sticking to any particular platform.

– Linkedin Talent Premium. With this all-encompassing hiring platform for talent professionals, a recruiter can find, connect with, and manage the people you want to be on your team. With a small cost, you can work efficiently and get access to a large talent pool with tech engineers from all over the world.

– Recruitment landing page. A well-designed recruitment landing page is crucial in creating a good impression towards IT talents. With subsequent information about opening jobs, plus nice content and picture layouts, the candidate can sense the professionalism of your business.

6. Remote Staffing

Remote staffing is an trending solution for IT recruitment. For some enterprises, the burden for IT recruitment takes up too much of their resources, not to mention the following additional cost of onboard employees. One way to approach these issues is to implement remote staffing and hybrid work.

With remote staffing, every operation and activity is executed on online platforms, which can eventually save up operational and infrastructure costs.

For the recruitment process, remote staffing can refer to the online operation of the recruitment team. Every step of the process is done virtually with a variety of platforms, including LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

7. IT Outsourcing

IT Outsourcing is a service that has long been on the market with a relatively steady growth rate. As in the IT Services Outsourcing Market Size, Industry Report, 2020-2027 of Grand View Research, the global IT services outsourcing market is projected to grow at USD 520.74 billion in 2019. The annual growth rate (CAGR) from the phase from 2020 to 2027 is expected to be 7.7%.

IT Outsourcing is not a new approach in IT recruitment. In fact, its development over the years has proven its capability to thrive as an independent sector.
With IT Outsourcing, you can:

• Cut back costs by approximately 50%
• Halt employee turnover
• Hire experienced experts from BPO
• Have a low rate of burnout

The burden of IT recruitment can’t be solved overnight. Instead, it requires careful observation to decide on the optimal solution for a business to adopt. These 7 above strategies are popular Solutions for IT Recruitment but they are not the one-size-fits-all solution for all companies. One should consider their situations to find the best way out for them.

 

About Lotus QA

Lotus QA, as part of Lotus Group, is an emerging global IT firm specializing in providing the best technology services to the world. We have a comprehensive talent pool of top-notch IT engineers to offer you the most cost-effective HR solutions. We can ramp up a team for you in just 2 to 3 weeks and conduct interviews for you to choose your own team members. We provide a flexible approach for any of your requests.

If you’re looking for the Solutions for IT Recruitment, contact LQA for the 24/7 consultation of the HR market. We can help with this problem in no time.

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

The 4.0 industry continues to play a more significant role in our society, posing many challenges in IT recruitment process. With hundreds of companies in information technology receiving massive investments every year, investments are piling up; hence, there is supposed to be a higher number of IT workers joining the IT industry workforce.

Reality speaks differently. Despite the increasing number of universities and institutes putting Information Technology, Computer Science, etc., the market demands more than that as their flagship development focal point.

In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by the year 2026, the shortage of IT engineers in the US will be more severe than ever, with the number exceeding 1.2M. Currently, 75% of enterprises are struggling with talent shortages or skill gaps in key IT positions. Under this circumstance, the HR department faces some of the biggest challenges in IT recruitment to nurture, recruit and retain talents.

1. Finding the qualified talents
2. Building employer brand for a deeper impression
3. Aligning with hiring managers’ demands/job requirements
4. Recruiting within tight time frames
5. Creating an efficient recruiting process
6. Nurturing inactive candidates
7. Maintaining a low turnover rate

You might concern: Talent management fundamentals – attract, attain and develop talents.

1. Finding the qualified talents

With high demand and low supply, finding qualified candidates for software development, software testing jobs has been always among the most recognizable challenges in IT recruitment. The IT industry is booming with its implementation in many aspects of our daily lives, leading to the unprecedented requirement for IT job openings to be filled. This year alone, the world has witnessed the spiking number reaching 7 million of job positions in the IT industry.

As opposed to this enormous number, the slugging market of IT talents cannot meet the requirements of IT firms, both in quantity and quality. The current number of candidates with qualifications and certificates to work in IT and computer science can only meet 50% of the market demands.

 

 

When it comes to IT recruitment, more often than not, one might expect it to be easy-money work, with literally little professional work to be done. “All they have to do is sit there, post the job description and arrange the interview!”

Well, that’s just part of what they do, and it’s like the tip of the iceberg – all the struggling and hard work is before that. Perhaps the biggest challenge in IT recruitment is how to find qualified candidates to go further into other rounds of interview.

The major problem in finding qualified talents is the technical and professional knowledge over the field, and the minor ones are requisite soft skills, experience and formal education.

To tackle this challenge to the core, there are some measures to carry out, including:

• Broaden your circle of candidates (for multiple education backgrounds)
• Look into candidates’ experience and their products/modules.

Finding qualified candidates is just the first step in a very demanding recruiting process, not to mention how to retain talents in the future. The actions that need to be done here lie not only in the recruiter’s hand but also in the hand of the IT department to attract talents effectively.

 

2. Building employer brand for better competition

In the eyes of the HR department, perhaps employer brand or branding is the marketing department’s job, not theirs. However, when discussing employer brand here, we want to emphasize the brand’s workplace, work benefits, insurance, etc., which can impress and attract candidates.

We know branding is not the one-size-fits-all formula for a higher incentive of IT talent acquisition, but it still holds an imperative role in hiring and retaining talents.

With an upmarket image of how the brand interacts and engages in the workplace, one business might benefit significantly with a higher impression and the privilege in the competition when recruiting.

Additionally, when comparing one business to another, people often judge based on the reviews and the images of these companies on online platforms. Basically, the one with a better employer brand image will reap this advantage.

 

 

Although the brand image is the primary responsibility of the marketing team, the best way to handle this would be the collaboration within two departments. The marketing team has the digital tools and the tactics to deliver the message.

In contrast, the human resources team has professional knowledge of producing the key features that can attract IT candidates. Together, these can promote the image of a friendly yet professional workplace for the company’s staff, which is the thing that most of the IT candidates are looking for.

This direction can be pivoted based on the goals and objectives of the business, as long as it can be the “Candidate Magnet.”

Because there are currently more tech jobs available than IT job seekers, companies find themselves in the position of having to compete for the top candidates. No longer does an applicant have to take the first job they find—they now have the luxury of choosing the company offering the most appealing job. Fortunately, you can do a few things to position yourself among the most attractive companies to work for.

 

3. Aligning with tech team’s requirements

Another challenge posed during the recruitment process is the inconsistencies in how the tech team and the talent acquisition team process things.

There are circumstances in which the hiring staff and the tech leader are not on the same page regarding the hiring targets.

 

 

For recruiters, their goals are to fill in the missing positions quickly, as long as the technical requirements are met. On the other hand, tech leaders also pay much attention to a perfect fit for the job, both technical and ethical. This qualified candidate has to be a team player or an out-of-the-box thinker (this depends).

For this case, both departments have to work together to develop a parameter, a checklist of developer interview questions or a metric of must-have characteristics. Based on this, the most necessary information is wireframed to “paint the picture” of the most suitable candidates, hence boosting the recruitment process.

*Also read:

Complete checklist of interview questions for developers

7 Strategies to overcome your burden of IT recruitment

 

4. Recruiting within tight time frames –  Challenges in IT recruitment

Highly qualified candidates are of scarcity, and you must be quick enough to get a hold of these candidates. Unfortunately, more than half of the job seekers nowadays are impatient, meaning that they are willing to give up on a job if they have to wait too long for any response, even if this is their ideal job.

This situation leads to many big organizations, even with major brand names and ideal workplaces, cannot hire the best candidates.

 

 

More often than not, when a candidate sees a job advertisement, the first impression would be on the time from job opening to hire. If it’s too long, the candidate will lose interest because they will have to wait for a quite long time to be in the first round of interview if they apply. On the other hand, if it’s too short, one may hesitate with the excuse of “being unprepared.”

The fundamental answer to this problem is how you keep the candidates updated on the process so that they have a feeling of being carefully attended to. The odds of candidates dropping out of the interview is now lower than before.

 

5. Creating an efficient recruiting process

The recruitment process is often deemed the trivial feature of the HR department, despite the fact that this process is crucial for one organization to find the right fit within a fixed time frame.

However, in the case of the IT industry, the role of human resources department, especially the talent recruitment division, has gradually gained its credit, under the circumstance of talent shortage in recent years.

With a comprehensive recruitment process in hand, qualified candidates, no matter they choose to go with the job offer or not, can help you form the enriched talent pool full of professionals and experts in this tight job market.

 

 

This well-crafted talent pool acts as a tool that can minimize the time involved in the recruitment process.

The perspective of a comprehensive recruitment process varies within industries and even companies, but the most crucial features remain:

• Clarification of job requirements from tech managers
• Well-devised Job Descriptions
• Talent Search on multiple channels
• Screening and shortlisting
• Interviewing
• Evaluation of Employment
• Job Offering

By creating an efficient recruiting process following these steps, you not only facilitate a consistent application of recruitment to ensure stability in staff proficiency but also streamline the staff culture in accordance with your visions.

 

6. Nurturing inactive candidates – Challenges in IT recruitment

More than 50% of the IT candidates on the market now are passive candidates, meaning that they have already worked in another company or project. Although they are not in demand of finding a new job, and nurturing these candidates may not be in effect immediately, the long-term impact can be the key player when they want to switch jobs.

Instead of talking them into joining your companies for a week or more, you can build a connection or even a new relationship when you put your effort into candidate nurturing.

The act of nurturing inactive candidates is not only for those candidates to join your force. Instead, once the foundation is built, you can get connected to their colleagues’ circle, which will, in turn, grant your more opportunities to connect to other potential candidates.

 

 

 

7. Maintaining a low turnover rate

The situation of a high turnover rate is not uncommon, especially in the ever-changing market of Information Technology. Turnover is the act of replacing an employee with a new employee.

The case of high turnover rate is not always bad for one business, but for the HR department, a high turnover rate can be a contributing factor to the failure of the business operations.

 

 

With high turnover rate means the high number of employees leaving a business, this can lead to many problems, namely:

• Dragging amount of time spent on filling open positions, which is very much time-consuming
• Adverse effects on the business core operations as the critical positions are left empty for a long time.
• Tremendous stress on the employees’ morale and productivity when watching their former coworkers leave the company.
• A massive amount of costs are spent on recruitment and training of new employees.

To tackle the high turnover rate regarding human resources, one must confide in recruitment process experts to develop a detailed plan on how to retain talents, including the solutions for high incentives, great work benefits, and transparent career path, etc.

The riddle of IT recruitment has been there since the beginning of this industry, requiring HR managers and talent acquisition staff to implement different measures for better management of the IT talents.

 

 

On a final note

The challenges in IT recruitment can be easily tackled with appropriate measures and considerable investment. But sometimes, the resources and time spent on recruitment can be too troublesome for the in-house HR department to handle, and this is when you can come to IT outsourcing vendors for help.

Unlike recruitment agencies which will only start recruiting when the requests are in, IT outsourcing companies already have a talent pool of IT engineers of different expertise with different ranges of experience. Whether they will work long-term or short-term, it will all depend on your decisions, and you will not be bound to any definite employment contract. By outsourcing the hiring processes to a vendor, your company can save a lot. No more burdensome employer branding, no more lengthy recruitment process, you can now focus on the core business operations.

However, outsourcing software projects is not without risks. Choosing the wrong vendor, an unmatching model, or unclear goals and processes can lead to poor-quality products, project delays, and unnecessary costs. If you want to avoid outsourcing failures, check out our Ultimate Guide for IT Project Outsourcing in 2023 to get the most valuable benefits from your IT vendors.

About Lotus QA

Lotus QA, as part of Lotus Group, is an emerging global IT firm specializing in providing the best technology services to the world. We have a comprehensive talent pool of top-notch IT engineers to offer you the most cost-effective HR solutions. We can ramp up a team for you in just 2 to 3 weeks and conduct interviews for you to choose your own team members. We provide a flexible approach for any of your requests.

If you’re looking for the solution to this matter, contact LQA for the 24/7 consultation of the HR market. We can help with this problem in no time.

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

 

Under the influence of the remarkable development in the IT industry, enterprises are in need of IT talents more than ever. To have a short-listed candidate is hard enough, let alone to hit spot on with the “knock-out” interview questions, you can apply this checklist for the complete developer interview questions.

This checklist takes things in two different approaches. One is from the technical point of view and the other is from the strategic point of view. While the technical aspect needs reviewing from a technical officer, the strategic one should be in the hand of the CTO.

 

What recruiters should prepare before any interview

Before rushing into any lengthy recruitment process, several things should be put into consideration to create proper IT recruitment strategies:

• The ideal candidate profile: For any job openings on the IT market, besides the developer interview questions, the very first thing to do should be the clarification on what you need for your project. The job description should indicate the programming language needed, frameworks, tools, experience, etc.
• The candidates’ preference: You should also skimming the candidates’ preference in terms of work location, work benefits, salary to see if they can onboard once they’re hired. Some might even reject a job offer if the work location is too far from their residences.
• The shared objectives between the employer and the employee: This is a strategic question that both the recruiter and the candidate need to answer. For the best of both parties, the career path and career development should be clarified so that they can understand each other.

Also read: How to hire Test Automation Engineer

Four developer interview questions to test your candidates’ technical skills

It is never easy to stay ahead of the curve, especially when working in the IT industry. JavaScript, Java, C# and Python are currently the most popular programming languages in this tech world. But besides these, there are plenty more; each is suitable for different purposes and different kinds of applications.

 

Among the IT talents in the industry, each has different skills, and it is such a puzzle for enterprises to find the candidates with the right skill sets for their projects, prompting the biggest challenge for the HR department when recruiting.

To identify the suitable candidates for your projects, you need to explore their experience and potential step by step, and perhaps this guide can help you out.

 

Dive into their portfolios for insights of what they have achieved and their experience in the field.

As there are no one-size-fits-all programmer portfolios, you have to dig deep into what is included in their portfolios to grasp the idea of how your candidates work in their job. In these CVs, they should note out their objectives and expected career goals, as well as their projects in the past. These should cover the foundation knowledge about the candidates, and the recruiter can elaborate from there.

 

You should be well aware that programmer portfolios can come in all shapes and sizes, including a pool of their work’s information. When asking about this, four things should be carefully considered, including:

• An overall introduction of this project with domain information, time frame, team size, target customers.
• The candidate’s responsibilities in this project. The responsibilities can be categorized as front-end, back-end and full-stack.
• The technology stack of the project
• The programming language(s) required

Remember that this kind of information is just to build the get-to-know your candidates, but not the deciding factor for you to know whether you should hire them. Instead, it is recommended that the recruiter test their capabilities directly and look through the actual products of their previous work.

Before the face-to-face interaction, the candidate’s portfolios serve as a basis for understanding and it could help you build the bespoke questions to use during the recruitment process.

 

Take a look at their GitHub account

GitHub is perhaps the most popular “playground” for developers to showcase their work and skills. With open-source projects on GitHub, either developed by the candidates themselves or by others, it also shows their ability to:

• Write comprehensive and easy to understand codes for others to contribute to
• Understand others’ work and maintain code
• Collaborate with others to deliver a better product

 

This process should be done with the help of a tech team or technical senior under the recruiter’s assessment. Regarding the GitHub repository, you should check:

• The number of followers. This number shows the reputation of the candidates and the appreciation they receive from the community.
• Their time on GitHub. This shows their experience in the industry.
• The number of their repositories shows the projects they worked on.

 

Set up a live coding interview

The most direct way to assess a candidate’s ability to think, code and present their approach is through a mini coding test.

These live programming tests can give you the fullest understanding of the candidate’s logical thinking and their tendency to solve a problem. From this, you can figure out their approach, especially when they have to work under pressure.

Some candidates may not agree to take a test, but it also shows their attitude towards challenges once they do. The attitude is another characteristic needed for any forward-thinking employee, which may benefit your company to some extent.

 

Set up a programming test

For an objective and efficient assessment, recruiters should pose the candidates with actual problems and actual bugs (the one they already have known where the glitches are). With practical answers in practical scenarios, the candidates can show their full potential in problem-solving and technical skills. This test should be devised based on the programming language needed in the job and the experience mentioned in their portfolios. This can be considered another layer of authentication for their capabilities.

After the candidates have finished their tests, they should be automatically analyzed according to performance metrics. These metrics can be:

• Code Design
• Programming Language competency
• Maintainability
• Solidity

Interview questions to assess the developer candidate’s cultural fit

As for the personal and culture fit aspects, the questions vary depending on specific situations. Here are commonly-asked questions for tech recruiters to refer to:

• Why would you want to work for the company?
• What do you expect from this position?
• Where do you see yourself in 3 – 5 years?
• How do you describe a healthy working environment?
• What management styles motivating you at work the most?

 

Quite a list for developer interview questions, right? If you’re struggling in finding suitable candidates for your company, why don’t you let us help? Contact us for a thorough consultation of IT Talent recruitment.

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

 

Yes, the IT industry is more vigorous than ever, and yes, the outlook for this industry to thrive in the years coming is undeniable. As a result, a talent management program is more important than ever for businesses to attract, attain and develop talents.

While it has come to the universal recognition that the “lifeblood” of this whole sector lies upon the IT talents – the ones that can bring simple code lines into complex systems, the statistics predict quite a “gloomy” future regarding the HR field. By 2026, the US market will see a shortage of 1.2M talents, and it is becoming more and more difficult to fill any IT positions.

 

1. What Your Future Employees Want Most

The world has witnessed a soaring number of job openings with more than 7 million positions to be filled. Yet, enterprises are still struggling to find high-profile candidates for their operations. Plus, qualified candidates now reap the advantages of being favored, hence the enterprises wanting to recruit them have to reconsider how they attract, retain and manage their talents.

It is undeniable that the competition in HR is growing day by day, with the enterprises boost their recruitment campaigns with skyrocketing costs. Besides marketing and branding to bring the most likable image to the candidates, these high-profile talents are seeking:

• Flexibility in their work
• Value over Volume
• Team diversity

 

Flexible options

According to a study regarding the Future of Talent Management, 88% of the knowledge workers say that they would prioritize flexibility in terms of working hours and location when it comes to finding a new job. Soon, IT candidates expect that the recruiters would go for a wider range of searches, even cross-region or cross-border.

 

In contrast to the past, IT workers now have a diverse choice of where they can work, either remotely or onsite. They also put an emphasis on how they can balance out their work life and personal interests. You can also understand this as they are willing to move out of the suburban areas if they can work remotely.

In order to stay close to your most potential candidates, enterprises are advised to build the foundation near them or create the opportunity for them to work remotely. With the advance of technology, online communication is not a challenge anymore.

 

Value over Volume

As the workforce for the IT industry is getting younger and younger, their perspective towards how their productivity is measured. The traditional metrics often focus on the volume of the work they can deliver, and this is now deemed the outdated way of productivity measurement. Instead, today’s employees want to be assessed based on the overall value that they can bring to the enterprises, rather than the same old qualified outputs.

With this “philosophy” implemented in their jobs, they will have more space and trust to do their best. Of course, from the employers’ point of view, they want to go the traditional way to ensure the outputs for the whole system.

For forward-thinking companies that want to have a new approach for talent management, creating a workplace of people-centric experiences will give the employees the freedom to discover and strengthen their creativity.

 

Team diversity

The importance of a company’s culture is gaining its reputation in recent years, and one of the key features is team diversity. According to the survey, 86% of IT employees and 66% of Hr directors indicated that a diverse workforce would be even more critical. This diversity can help the team cope with the ever-demanding requirements of skills and roles.

The diversity we want to mention here is the diversity of background and technical knowledge. A team of members from different backgrounds can work together to create the best values for their company.

 

2. Facts and Figures about IT recruitment you don’t want to miss

We compiled multiple surveys to deliver you an overview of what’s happening in the IT recruitment sector. These surveys involve HR professionals and IT talents. We highlighted the most outstanding features for you to have the overall picture regarding IT talent management:

• Technical priorities
• Competition between hiring companies
• Favored platforms for finding jobs
• Likes and Dislikes

 

Technical priorities

Besides the priorities mentioned above regarding work culture and work location, software developers are still looking for the same things in job opportunities, especially the technical challenges. To the IT talents in the industry, Technical challenges/interesting tasks reign the most important features when it comes to choosing a new job. With the opportunity to be in one-of-the-kind experience, IT talents can find the motivation to work in that job. Trivial and day-to-day functions are the unfavored things.

Of course, salary is another important factor, but it only comes in third place, right after the flexible working hours and balanced lifestyle.

 

From the employers’ point of view, the most in-demand programming languages are JavaScript, Java, C# and Python. As the IT industry is booming, the needs for responsive, interactive websites are higher than ever, and JavaScript, with its object-oriented programming features, has become the most popular language in the industry.

There is a slight difference in what programming languages that candidates are capable of and what languages are favored by HR recruiters. For example, as most of the candidates asked know how to code in C and Bash, only a few of the recruiters want to hire someone with these programming languages.

JavaScript, Java, C# and Python are in the top 4 for both programmers and recruiters.

There are, however, some inconsistencies. For example, although ObjectiveC is one of the top 10 most sought-after languages, only 0.5% of developers said they actually liked the language.

Java and JavaScript receive controversial opinions on whether they are the most loved or hated programming languages. However, most of them agree that PHP is the most dreaded one. For the recruiters, 40% said they were looking for IT talents proficient with PHP.

ObjectiveC is also among the most sought-after programming languages, but the number of IT candidates with this skill is lacking.

 

Competition between hiring companies

The number of technology companies is spiking, with tech positions to be filled reaching the highest number ever. Under this circumstance, the recruiting department of one company faces a big challenge of finding qualified candidates while having to compete with many other businesses.

With human resources as the bloodline of the operation, many enterprises have raised the budget for recruitment, e.g., branding and recruiting platform. On the one hand, this has opened more doors for IT talents to reach more job openings. On the other hand, it makes it more competitive for recruiters to impress candidates. It also requires the enterprise to have a strategic talent management program to attain talents more effectively.

 

Favored platforms for finding jobs

78.3% of the developers said that they would go for LinkedIn for job opportunities. How the platform connects recruiters and candidates makes it easier for them to communicate. Transparency regarding the job descriptions and salary range also plays a key factor for candidates to choose a platform, and LinkedIn seems to have it all.

Despite all that, LinkedIn is not the only platform for recruiters. They can turn to networking events or job listings websites for candidate data. Tech-oriented, niche platforms take up a small percentile of the market, but high-profile candidates are likely to be listed on these platforms.

 

Dislikes

In general, irrelevance is the problem that both recruiters and IT talents face every day. While the candidates indicated that the irrelevance in the job offers and technical questions make them feel uncomfortable with the recruiters, talent recruiters also thought that they are not receiving enough relevant applications and CVs. Most of them are underqualified and not even close to the expected level.

 

Recruitment is never an easy task. If you need help with this, contact us for consultation:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

IT Outsourcing is the answer for cost reduction and domain expertise for some particular industries, which can facilitate consistent application of your requirements.

The benefits of IT outsourcing are pivotal to the development and digital transformation of one business, but to choose a capable IT Outsourcing provider with a strategy and development plan tailored to your requirements is no easy task. You have to follow these steps to find yourself the best-suited vendors:

Define objectives, goals, scope for your IT Outsourcing project

There is no one-size-fits-all approach for business in IT Outsourcing, no matter what sector you’re working in. Even for businesses in the same industry, the approach for IT Outsourcing varies, depending on the scope, objectives and goals of different companies.

To successfully manage the outsourced project, the first and foremost thing to do is to define what your business wants to achieve when outsourcing. A checklist of the project structure, features to develop, functions to be outsourced and evaluation criteria should be made.

Once these are identified, your business can both know the expected outcomes for the outsourced project (for internal evaluation) and the criteria for the project’s effectiveness.

With the detailed specifications of what to be outsourced and whatnot, your business can further devise the agenda and HR allocation for the next step of the outsourcing project. A set of roles and responsibilities within and without your business is also a metric for better management.

For the best outcome, businesses are advised to work with the providers with the same goals or have experience working with the companies in the domain.

Clarify how you want to outsource

The clarification of how you want to outsource should be addressed based on what you want to outsource. The goals of your IT Outsourcing project should also be considered in this step to choose the right IT outsourcing vendor.

There are many engagement models for businesses to work in IT Outsourcing, and you can take a look at the three main ones as follows:

Time & Material 

The Time & Material model only requires general and basic requirements of the project. The IT Outsourcing provider will form a dedicated team just to work on this project. Specifically, this engagement model is perfect if you’re doing a project with complicated or non-predefined requirements. Throughout the process, you might want to add more features for the Outsourcing team to work on, hence generating more costs during the process. This model is designed for long-term projects with frequent updates to be carried out. 

Project-based

The project-based model is the engagement model tailor-made for small and mid-size projects which have solid requirements. Every feature is noted for the outsourcing team to work on. Since the features are unchanged during the process, the budget is fixed. In case of any changes, the whole project will be re-estimated with a new contract. The project-based is usually for short-term projects.

BOT

BOD, or Build, Operate and Transfer, is a popular engagement model, in which the IT Outsourcing Provider carries out all tasks, and the outsourcer’s in charge of giving requirements. After a while, based on the team’s performance, the business will decide whether they want to take over the whole project. 

When outsourcing, businesses should also consider the strategic approach and the transitional approach. With the strategic approach, a long-term relationship in which both parties invest to develop partnership. With transitional one, IT outsourcing is applied for an IT infrastructure upgrade. While the Outsourcing team manages the system, the in-house team takes care of the new technology.

Evaluate the quality of the IT outsourcing provider

Once you’ve decided what you want and how you want things to be done, it’s time to find the right partner for your business. Regarding the quality of the IT outsourcing provider, you should put into mind the following:

• Talent quality of the IT Outsourcing provider: For different IT projects, it requires different skill sets of programming language, management tools, etc. This is the reason why you should identify which skill sets are necessary to find the best-suited service provider.
• Infrastructure quality of the IT Outsourcing provider: The infrastructure includes physical infrastructure, device lab (for software testing service), wi-fi, the internet, etc. 
• Work process: The work process varies for different IT outsourcing providers, but it should comply with the international standard and adapt to the clients’ requirements.

• Data security and confidentiality documentation: Intellectual Property Rights and Patents should be clarified. It would be best to ask about the physical layers of security (with or without biometric scanner and lock), staff confidentiality, legal documentation, etc.
• Experience in the field: It’s not about the general experience. It should be the experience in your domain.
• Language competency for communication is a must for project efficiency.

Set up a team of tech leaders for management

Even your business’s focus is not the technology itself, you should always have an in-house team of 2-3 personnel to manage all IT operations. 

This team takes full responsibility for the project, hence being in charge of the communication with the IT Outsourcing provider. The project’s outcome lies in their hands. To do this, your business should allocate HR for at least a project manager/product owner. He/she will take matters into their hands by writing a handbook of terms, specifications and notes for the whole project. This is the shared documentation/a standard point on which every operation is based upon.

Also, during this project, weekly/monthly reports are issued for those who are involved. The project manager should pay much attention to this. 

With this checklist, you can find the basic information for your business to consider when it comes to choosing an IT Outsourcing provider.

If you don’t know what to start in this, LQA can help you. Contact us for more information:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance