How to Find App Developers for Your Business

Are you looking for developers to bring an app idea to life? This post outlines your options and provides an overview of how to find and hire talented app developers.

An app that the market will love requires more than technical skills. It takes creativity, effective communication, and the ability to plan efficiently and work within a team. Finding good app developers would be easy if software development was just a matter of pounding code. Beyond all that, it’s getting harder to find IT talent in the middle of this massive labor shortage, and a recent report by Indeed and Glassdoor suggests the shortage shows no signs of letting up anytime soon.

If you’re hoping to build and launch a successful app, finding talented app developers should be a key component of your strategy. This blog post will cover your options for finding app developers and provide an overview of the hiring process.

Know Your Options: Finding App Developers

There are three strategies for finding and hiring app developers. You can hire in-house app developers as full-time employees, you can hire freelancers, or you can outsource your development to an off-site software development team. Remember that you can also use any combination of these strategies to make your app idea a reality.

Hire In-house App Developers

Hiring in-house developers is the traditional approach to app development. Having your own team of developers can be expensive and time-consuming, but it does have a few advantages. Like all full-time employees, in-house development teams are part of your company and become integral to your culture.

Many start-ups hire a small core of in-house developers to handle the day-to-day tasks while outsourcing various components of the development process. This can make their efforts more flexible and scalable, allowing outsourcing partners to address the overflow of work and those areas where the in-house staff lacks expertise.

Hire Freelance App Developers

Freelance app developers are individual software engineers who work for themselves as a business of one. Companies usually pay higher rates for freelancers than they would for in-house staff. Still, they typically save money because they don’t have to cover benefits, payroll taxes, paid holidays, etc. The companies are also not required to pay freelancers when the workload is light, while payroll is a sunk cost for salaried employees.

Hire App Developers as an Outsourced Team

The third option for finding talented app developers is to work with an outsourcing provider. A comprehensive outsourcing provider can handle every aspect of app development: Project planning, design, coding, and QA Testing. You would typically have a primary point of contact at the development firm who communicates with you regularly. This person would then work with their development team to bring your ideas to life.

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9 Steps to Finding and Hiring App Developers

Hiring app developers may seem daunting, but it becomes more manageable when you break it down into individual action items. The following nine steps will guide you through the process of finding and hiring app development partners.

Step 1: Research Various Hiring Platforms

Websites like Clutch, GoodFirms, and G2 Crowd are excellent places to find talented outsourced software development teams. These platforms allow you to search for development teams with the exact skill set required to build your app. In your search, prioritize companies with impressive reviews from a sufficient number of clients.

Step 2: Examine Each Potential Partner’s Portfolio

What kind of apps have your prospective partners created? Look for someone with experience in the type of app you’re looking to make, and explore what they’ve produced. Are you impressed with the design and functionality of those apps? Do they seem usable, and were their clients happy with the results?

Step 3: Explore Technologies and Programming Languages

Different programming languages allow developers to accomplish different things, and some languages are more efficient than others when achieving specific goals. When meeting with prospective outsourcing partners, ask direct questions to determine their developers’ levels of expertise in the various technologies you might use to build your app. Dig deeply to discover which technologies and programming languages they plan to use and how they plan to use them.

Step 4: Identify Your Prospective Partner’s Development Approach

Different development methodologies work well for various projects. For example, here at Net Solutions, we frequently use an Agile Scrum approach to app development, and we often encourage our clients to start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). That said, you might prefer Waterfall methodology, and it’s essential to know whether a prospective partner is willing to adapt. Most importantly, you must ensure that any outsourcing partner takes a strategic approach to app development. Those who take a haphazard approach seldom produce high-quality results and are rarely efficient.

Step 5: Meet the Team

Having an in-depth conversation with a salesperson is one thing, but meeting the team doing the actual work is essential. This is especially true if you’re working with a team in a country with a different native language than your own. Ensure they’re fluent in whatever language you’re working in because miscommunication can cost you time and money.

Step 6: Verify References

It may be tempting to skip this step, but speaking with past clients will help you assess the level of quality that your prospective partner provides. Ask about their communication skills, any roadblocks they had along the way, the prospective partner’s willingness to accommodate changes, and the final result.

Step 7: Set the Budget

Based on the price quotes you received, determine how much you’re willing and able to spend on development. An MVP is often a good idea for a new app because you can avoid spending money and wasting time developing features the market doesn’t want, and it can be beneficial when launching an app on a tight budget. Ultimately, price shouldn’t be your only consideration, as cutting corners on quality could sink the entire project.

Curious to get a ballpark estimate of how much app development costs? Check out our blog post that covers how much it costs to build an app in 2023.

Step 8: Identify Your Timeline

Experienced app development teams should be able to give you a solid estimate of how long it will take to build the first version of your app. The timeline will be subject to change, especially if you add features or change things as you go, but it’s always good to have an idea of how long things will take. This will inform your budget as well as your go-to-market strategy.

Step 9: Draw up Contracts

Well-written contracts outlining all the services you intend to outsource and all the legal requirements of both parties are essential. Common agreements include:

• Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)
• Master Services Agreement (MSA)
• Services Level Agreement (SLA)
• Statement of Work (SOW)

Be sure to have your attorneys review all contracts before signing anything.

Work with Net Solutions: A Software Development Team with 30+ Years of Experience

Net Solutions’ app developers, designers, and project managers have built software for household names like Xerox, Euro Car Parts, the Harvard Business Review, and countless startups. If you need to hire app developers, we should talk.