Questions to Ask When Hiring a Remote Staff Augmentation Company

The hiring process, at face-value seems straightforward and non-mutable. You try to gauge a candidate’s (or contractor’s) skills, history, and ability to fit into your company. But, the moment you go remote, a number of new variables are added that may throw the erstwhile relatively simple equation out of whack.

Issues here range from cultural differences to task-related expectations and many more. When looking to hire a remote staff augmentation company, your first challenge, therefore, is to lay out your line of inquiry so that both parties have a good understanding of each other’s expectations.

Here are some questions we recommend you ask a remote staff augmentation company before onboarding them. We’ve broken the questions into three categories - history, hiring practices, and management methods.

Understanding a Remote Staff Augmentation Company History

● Was there a specific challenge that motivated your founders to establish the company? If so, can you elaborate?

● How many projects have you worked on so far? Which one was the most challenging?

● What’s the success rate of your previous projects?

● How many team members did you start out with? How many do you have now?

● Historically, which languages and platforms have you used the most?

● Could you show us examples of your recent projects? Can we talk to a current or previous client of yours?

Remote Hiring Practices

● Do you hire locally, globally or both?

● Which technologies do you specialize in?

● How do you vett developers from other countries?

● How do you test your developers? Do you use questions and formats your candidates cannot find answers to online? If so, can you give us some examples?

● Do you attempt to identify if your candidates understand the complete scope of a project or only the fragment they were responsible for?

● How do you account for time-zone differences?

● How do you cross-check your candidate’s references?

● Do you screen your candidates for cultural fit?

Staff Augmentation Management Practices

● Do you assign teams to projects, or can we select software developers we want to work with?

● What criteria do you have for adding developers to a project?

● How do you establish communication channels between all team members, especially those who are located in different regions?

● How do you scope out a project?

● How are responsibilities distributed between everyone involved?

● Do you have cross-functional teams?

● Do you use a remote project management tool/software for managing your work? If so, which one(s)?

● We have our own tech stack consisting of X,Y,Z tools. Do you have experience in working with them?

● Will we need to provide all the training when hiring a remote staff augmentation company or will they?

● How are change requests handled? Is there a limit to the number of change requests we can issue within the agreed budget?

● How do you manage intra and inter-team conflict?

● Do you use different internal and external deadlines? If so, can you tell us how much difference you maintain between them?

● What happens if a developer falls sick or becomes unavailable? Do you have developers on stand-by in case of a drop-out?

Let Us Help You Put Together Your Best Team Yet!

If you’re looking to hire a top staff augmentation company, then look no further. At Muoro, we vet our developers thoroughly for every aspect that will affect the projects we work on. Our proprietary Engineer-as-a-Service model uses advanced AI-enabled screening technologies coupled with decades worth of combined management and hiring experience.

We also have a free 2-week trial period so that you can see how we work first-hand. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.