AI technology is clearly changing our world for the better. One survey found that 86% of CEOs believe AI is essential to their offices. Around two-thirds of consumers believe that AI will improve safety with cars.
The global market for AI is over $328 billion and that figure is growing 20% a year. However, it can only keep growing if companies invest in it and hire the best programmers.
Developments in AI depend on companies that are willing to hire the best developers. Are you working on a new app or other project that relies heavily on AI technology? You are going to want to hire the best developers to back your project.
Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. The impact of the pandemic and the resulting talent shortages is beginning to force businesses to rely on outsourcing development services more often than in the past. Lonne Jaffe, Managing Director for Insight Partners, writes that the talent shortage has seriously hindered the development of AI technology. AI may be the future of technology, but only if we can hire great developers.
According to the latest reports, the global market size of IT outsourcing services is valued at $92.5 billion (according to the IT outsourcing industry research by Statista). When you have a startup idea and a clear product vision, hiring a team of dedicated developers is not as much of a challenge these days. In this article, we explore the most common reasons to consider outstaffing, including cost savings, a wider pool of qualified developers, resource optimization, and flexibility.
Challenges to Overcome When Hiring AI Developers Overseas
If you want to help develop new AI tools and apps, then you need to find a way to address the ongoing talent shortage. We will look into the challenges involved when searching for the right offshore outsourcing strategy. Let’s describe the main ones and consider some solutions to minimize them.
Time zones differences
The world is much bigger than the country in which your company is located, which means that the personnel reserve is theoretically much larger. Because the talent pool is larger, if you choose software development from offshore vendors, your business will have access to a much larger number of candidates who boast a wider range of skills and more impressive cases in the portfolio. But working with a partner on the other side of the globe means that your team may work when you are asleep and vice versa. This can cause significant organizational challenges. For example, if you need any clarifications or want to contact your team, you cannot reach them before the start of their working day, which may cause significant delays in the project.
As an outsourcing company, we have encountered issues stemming from time zone differences and can share a few tips on how to handle them. The most important of which is to ensure you use the right tools to schedule meetings/calls, coordinate with other team members, and resolve other management issues. Using efficient time zone management tools can help offshore development services providers manage time zone differences better.
Communication and cultural gaps
In addition to time-zone challenges, you may encounter communication gaps. Of course, most developers today speak at least a little English, but if their proficiency level isn’t up to scratch, you may have severe issues with communication. Even if you do not have communication challenges, there can still exist issues stemming from the a cultural gap. People in different countries have different attitudes towards their work, authority, words, and actions. These peculiarities may interest a tourist, but cultural differences can cause serious inconvenience and conflict when it comes to business. Solving these challenges is not as easy as time zones, but they can be managed if the company hires the right project manager. Additionally, the interview stage is a great place to evaluate the soft skills of potential developers.
Mismatched expectations
Before starting cooperation, you should discuss the main stages of the work and be clear on all details in the contract. Your dedicated developers must understand precisely what you want and find the most effective ways to implement your idea. Business owners often outsource their web application development projects without fully understanding what they’re getting into. If you have only a vague idea of your project, it becomes quite difficult to establish precise requirements for others and near-impossible to assess whether the process is proceeding accordingly. The challenge is to ensure that you, as a customer, have a good understanding of your project needs, can answer all questions, and provide support and direction throughout the work process. The importance of communication between all parties should not be underestimated. Here are a few of the things that the outsourcing company should indicate: accurate profile of the target audience; the main functions of your application; technologies you want to use when developing applications; business goals of the organization; design details and examples of existing applications.
Quality control
Choosing a reliable partner that can create a quality product that fully meets your requirements and expectations is difficult. To address this, it’s important to start by checking the reputation and experience of the outsourcing company. In addition to portfolios, look at third-party sources of information about the company, and check reviews and ratings. Before choosing and starting work, it is necessary to form an image of the company. Checking similar past projects and selecting for companies that have worked in avariety of industries can helps to mitigate a lot of the risk. Careful study of the portfolio will help to understand whether the studio has cases suitable for your request, whether developers have the necessary hard skills, and whether lates tech trends are being utilized. Another good sign is if the company is ready at the initial stage to share detailed information on their assumed approach to the work process, indicate how many people will work on the job, as well as when the developers will start work. These are good indicators of competence, readiness and transparency. Additionally, it is critical to test and control your project during the development process. This way, you’ll ensure that your final product will meet expectations and function adequately. QA should be involved in the development from the outset otherwise, it is likely that many more errors will be encountered in the final product.
Security issues
One of the most dangerous and common challenges associated with outsourcing is around security. Offshoring introduces higher security risks compared to in-house hiring. Working with dedicated developers often involves the transfer of confidential data and can result in data leaking to hackers or scammers. However, the following recommendations could potentially work to address this challenge. Firstly, you should have any partners sign a Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA) and ensure they are using reliable security protocols. Additionally, it is wise to avoid cheap companies and hire freelancers with no track record or reputation to uphold. As a result, you risk getting poor quality or complete failure of your project with no security guarantees.
Manage Developers Effectively When Creating New AI Apps
Creating great AI applications requires great developers. Hiring dedicated developers as an effective way of approaching AI software development has become a growing trend across many industries. The most essential benefits of offshore development include reduced costs, more qualified developers, optimization of resources, and flexibility. However, businesses that work with offshore talent need to be ready to overcome challenges and issues by hiring dedicated developers, such as time zone differences, communication, and cultural gaps, mismatched expectations, quality control, and security issues. To overcome such challenges, the company should conduct a qualitative investigation into its outsourcing partner, conduct interviews with developers, and use appropriate management tools.
