5 Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring Offshore Staff for Startups
Offshore outsourcing is an effective business approach for startups. Hiring offshore staff for your startup allows you to benefit from cost-effective and high-quality results. It is important for a startup to plan a budget and stick to it. Their objective is to attain maximum profit with minimum spending. But each year, the market gets tougher, and the competition gets stronger. To survive in such a setting is not easy. It requires startups to be strategic about their business approach.
Offshoring has been helping big organizations for decades now by reducing their operating costs. With the help of technology, now the startups and small businesses have also started to benefit from this model in the last decade or so. With the right approach and attitude, offshoring can help businesses grow and expand. Unfortunately, startups don’t have the room to make mistakes. The limited budget makes it difficult for them to try again should they falter the first time. A lot of your offshoring success depends on the team you hire. Here we share tips on how to avoid mistakes when hiring offshore staff for your startup.
1. Not assessing skills
It is essential to hire candidates that strengthen your team, whichever role may it be. It is required to look beyond their qualifications and experience to ensure that the offshore employee you hire for your startup can add value to your company. It is necessary to test them yourselves. We understand you might be in a hurry to hire your team and get started, but it is not advised to rush the hiring process. Besides conducting a thorough face-to-face virtual interview, you would benefit from scheduling a skill test of potential candidates. Based on the role you are hiring for and the work you will expect them to do on a daily basis, design a test to evaluate their abilities. This allows you to gauge their skills and determine whether they are competent to perform the job. No matter how accomplished they may appear on paper, test their abilities, and ascertain their skills. Hiring under-skilled employees may impact your startup’s service quality and waste your time.
2. Hiring employees with many skill sets
We have all heard of “jack of all trades and master of none.” While having knowledge about a lot of topics and possessing varied skills isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it can be a shortcoming when hiring an employee. As a startup, you may be tempted to hire an employee who is able to perform many tasks by themselves. Don’t waste your time trying to find such an individual. Instead, it is better to assemble a team with expertise in their respective jobs. Once you know your project’s requirements and the skill sets needed to bring it into existence, hire those particular skill sets individually and form a team of talented individuals. It ensures you have the best set of minds working on each function of your project, which further ensures the high-quality of your product or service. Hiring a generalist employee may affect quality.
3. Picking money over skills
Yes, offshoring is meant to cut down costs. But that doesn’t mean you compromise quality over money. Don’t pick the cheapest quote when hiring employees. Their reduced prices may be a reflection of their qualifications and experience. If you need your startups to have talented and skilled employees, you will have to shell out money to access them. It will be a lot less than hiring locally, so you are still at an advantage. Quality comes with a price. Build a team with employees who have knowledge and experience in their fields and contribute significantly to your startup’s growth. It will be beneficial for you in the long run. In comparison, cheaper hiring may save you money now but will cost your company later down the road.
4. Not working with staffing vendors
Offshoring involves shifting a part of your company’s services overseas to take advantage of global employees. You might think, why not just work with freelancers instead? You can hire freelancers from offshore locations at a reduced price and avoid the hassle of having a full-time offshore employee. They surely cost less than offshore staffing vendors. Though that might be true, there are a lot more things to consider. A freelancer is a contractual service provider who works on their terms. The risks involved in working with freelancers far outweigh the benefits. In comparison, an offshore staffing service provider will assess your startup’s hiring needs and provide vetted and qualified candidates. These candidates, once hired, work exclusively for your company as per your instructions and guidance. You control the outsourced work with offshore staffing. Working with a reliable service provider makes hiring and working with an offshore team far easier.
5. Not monitoring the hiring process
We stated above how staffing vendors can take care of the entire hiring process for your startup. Although they provide candidates for your company with the best of their knowledge and abilities, they still don’t understand your startup and your requirements as well as you do. You don’t need to be involved in the process every second, but it will help your startup find the right candidates if you monitor it from time to time. Keeping an eye on the hiring process will allow you to offer inputs where required and let your vendors know where to change or improve. It ensures that the candidates they provide you possess the right skills and are the right fit for your company.
By avoiding these few mistakes, you can hire an offshore staff for your startup that fits your needs and brings you closer to being an offshoring success. Don’t rush offshore team hiring. Be careful, and be sure.