Focus of my current blog is to understand what possibly can go wrong in offshore interviews for hiring software engineers and tips to select good resources in your outsourcing partnership. While selecting the right outsourcing vendor, it is just not hiring the right vendor it also involves hiring right software engineer and team, which will actually deliver your solution. In current competition, it is very difficult to find good engineers especially in offshore engagement.
If you are looking for a software engineer via outsourcing engagement, there is a high probability that you end up speaking with someone over a bad VOIP call and who is not listening to your point or neither willing to understand your requirement and just talk. It is well known and understood that every software engineer is not good and can make wonders. There is a lack of talent and it is very imperative that one should spend lot of time before taking offshore interviews for selecting your teams.
There are several key points, which we MUST consider to make sure that we do not end up talking to someone with a defined script by their management and sales and marketing people are coating it with discounts or false commitments. It could be very expensive if you erroneously hire a developer who is not good or relevant to your needs.
All those companies, organisations or individuals who are interviewing software engineers at offshore location should try to minimize the failure rate and hire the best candidate in first time by using by keeping this simple checklist handy, no matter if you are calling candidates via phone or Skype:
1) Interview Strategy: Make sure you are clear on why you are interviewing the candidate and what will be the result of your discussion. It is good if you got:
- an agenda or plan for an interview
- technical details of your requirement
- test to evaluate candidates technical skills
- test to evaluate candidates personality
2) Time Punctuality: Stick to the schedule timeline, do not be late for calling the candidate. It is also advisable if you give some time to candidate to settle down and relax before attacking him with your questions. During discussion, keep an eye on time and try to keep discussion relevant so that you get max out of the duration.
3) Group Interview: Try not to speak with candidate alone. There will be chances that you will miss few questions or areas which other person can catch. After all, it is about team 🙂
Related Article: Challenges faced my HR professionals in IT Industry
4) Interactive: Keep the interview interactive. You should be at listening end and give chance to candidate to speak and connect his/her experience with examples. Try to understand what candidate has to offer and analyse how s/he can be a good fit for your requirement.
5) Make Candidate a King: Give an open invitation to candidate to speak. You will be amazed to see the result of this approach and you will probably understand how good candidate is when they are alone in some situation or how proactively they can think. All you need to do is maintain the focus of the discussion to your objective. You will also save yourself by their well-crafted script.
6) Distraction: While interviewing, you would not like to see candidate distracted by phone, stepping out, taking frequent breaks, or responding to emails while you are interviewing them. It goes same for you as well. Interviewing candidate with being distracted is impolite and radiates a bad impression about you.
7) Intuitive: Never let your gut feeling decide on selecting candidate. Being intuitive is good, but make sure your intuition is not affected by your quality of day at office.
8) Cultural differences: You are doing an offshore interview for hiring a software engineer and it is natural that you will challenges related to cross-cultural communication, different time zones, lack of knowledge of your company’s culture etc. that might lead to misunderstanding or misinterpretation of any point or discussion. Have patience and do not react, just respond.
9) Sell and Sell: It is a common believe between interviewers that only candidates have to sell themselves to the company. There is a high possibility that you end up losing a good candidate if you interview them with this thought. It is an unsaid and mutual agreement that companies are equally required to sell the position for which candidate is being interviewed for.
10) Importance of Notes: It is possible to remember feedback, ratings and facts about candidates if you are interview one or two candidates a day. However, chances are high that you will quickly forget this information if number of interviews goes up and you have not maintained any notes.
Outsourcing specialists at Globality Consulting helps business owners and organisations in expediting their process of shortlisting software engineers through pre-screening the candidates based on the requirement and by coordinating the offshore interviews for successful outsourcing partnership. Get in touch with one of your consultant at hello@globalityconsulting.com for more details.