Hire in Latin America: Mistakes to Avoid

Here's the hard truth. Sometimes what might make the hiring process longer is your company. No one doubts that external factors can make finding tech talent hard, but in our experience, the mix of both can make a 2-week process take months!

When you hire developers for your startup, you want the process to run as smoothly as possible. And why wouldn't you? Unsuccessful hires can take out a lot of your time and budget. 

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Searching without tech knowledge

Chances are that if you open LinkedIn looking for a software developer, you will get infinite search results. Programmer skills are particular to the task they are trying to complete, and not being well-versed in them is one of the main reasons you can't find the right candidate for your team on time.

Not having experience with tech roles will most likely make you struggle. Not being familiar with tech skills is one of the easiest ways to lose time, so many things can go wrong when hiring without tech knowledge. You can't narrow your search this way, and your HR department will get thousands of submissions that will take ages. 

You must ensure your startup has a tech ally to help you understand what you mean to create and what skills are missing on your team. 

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Searching for unicorns

High expectations are another reason you may take longer than expected to hire a software developer, and it guarantees a frustrating and long road ahead.

You might have in mind a perfect profile, a candidate with seniority, multiple tech languages, excellent soft skills, and a specific location that will ensure affordability. You may want to go after a candidate with those specifications, but trust us, it's a waste of everyone's time.

To make the hiring process run smoothly, you might need to make some compromises if you intend to find a good match in a reasonable amount of time. We've seen it go south time-wise, with startups not able to recognize talent in front of their eyes due to impossible expectations.

Define your must-haves and nice-to-haves and be willing to compromise. Being too picky during the hiring process narrows your search to too few results.

So try to have an open mindset. You need to be looking for a candidate who will fit your startup's environment and culture. That's worth looking into; in the long run, soft skills and personality traits will be a better win for your startup and its team than a unicorn candidate (if they are available or affordable).

The talent race is a fast one

Sometimes you must put yourself in the developer's shoes to make a timely hire without delays. We've all experienced applying for a job and going through excessive assessments, and for developers, this is incredibly annoying.

We are trying to say that sometimes startups make developers wait too long before giving them a confirmation for onboarding. Sometimes, candidates have to wait months, which bores them and leads them to try finding a job elsewhere. It would help if you tried to be proactive during the hiring process's interviews and assessments of candidates to ensure you keep their interest.

Don't forget the fierce competition. If you take too long, candidates might lose interest and perceive working for your company may be difficult and move to the next one.

Besides, if you organize reasonable and timely testing of candidates' skills, you will get a happy and productive team member. Developers like to feel appreciated and achieve economic security promptly. 

Open up your search

Maybe you've hired developers before, but for some reason, it seems to be taking longer than expected this time around. Startups are having to compete more and more to find and hire a developer. 

You shouldn't limit your search. Consider hiring from other destinations other than the U.S. to make your hire timely. The problem with focusing only on the U.S. to hire software talent is that you are putting yourself in a competitive race that is very hard to win. 

That is why more and more startups are looking at LatAm to access undiscovered talent and deal less with the annoying competition for software developers. 

Download our How to Find and Hire Developers in LATAM [Free Guide]

TL;DR

To optimize your hiring process, we recommend looking inward and assessing areas for improvement to ensure a swift and successful outcome when hiring a developer.

• Tech Knowledge is essential to make the right hire.
•  Don't look for the perfect candidate; look for the perfect match.
• Shorten the hiring process, and don't exceed the number of interviews and assessments.
•  Don't look for candidates exclusively in the U.S.

Untapped talent, affordability, and timely results are closer than you think; you have to be willing to broaden your search.