How to choose your best nearshore partner in LATAM.

Now that almost all tech companies have gone remote, it is almost natural to open our window view and take a look at other talent spots in the world. One of the more obvious for the US is definitely Latin America (LATAM) with their most populated and developed countries such as Mexico, Argentina and Brazil.

As we have mentioned in other blog posts, LATAM is experiencing a tech revolution. Its young and prepared population, make it a hot spot for hiring good talent in the same time-zone as the US. Despite regulations in several countries, one of the most popular and safest ways for hiring in the short and long term is through a devhouse partner which act as a hub of talented engineers working together and connected with local tech community. With Simbiosis, you are able to immediately access to a full validated network of partners with their available talent.

Whether or not you have experience hiring in Latin America, there are five important points we need to have in mind when choosing the right engineer and devhouse partner. Let's take a deeper look to each one.

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1. Talent

This is first point and the most obvious, reviewing the engineer's technical profile and his/her experience working in tech projects along their profesional path. But we could go a bit deeper, it is important to know for how long this engineer have been working for the agency, or if this is a new member in the hiring pipeline. This way, we could understand and ask the right questions once we interview this engineer such as availability and experience in other companies.

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2. Tech stack

One of the main benefits of hiring with a devhouse is the expertise and know how of certain technologies and frameworks, they should have well defined processes and expertise of certain technologies such as ReactJS, Laravel, Ruby, etc. And we could take advantage of this. It is important to know what are the main stack technologies of the dev house we are hiring.

Focusing on certain technologies will allow them to have better processes, onboarding and community between other engineers working for the dev house. Also, we need to understand how involved they are with the local tech community, they could be hosting meetups and tech events for that allow them to engage employees and continuously improving coding skills.

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3. Location

A good location allows devhouses to access to local tech talent and be more involved in local tech community. Also, even though we are hiring and working remotely, for some companies is important to feel like we have the possibility to meet in person if needed. This is one of the main benefits of hiring in LATAM. Most cities are pretty accesible and nearby from main cities in the US, I would say a couple of hours by flight (specially in Mexico). Here a couple of examples of tech hub cities in Mexico and how far they are from the US:

• Monterrey (North of Mexico): 2 hours by driving from the border and 1:20 hour by flight from Houston TX.
• Guadalajara: 4 hours by flight from San Francisco and one of the main tech hub cities in Mexico.
• Merida: A recent tech and fast-growing city in Mexico. Just 1:20 hour by flight from Miami.

It's is always good to know where the partner is located and how accessible is to get there and to come to the US.

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4. Culture

Every company has a culture, even if we don't do anything to improve it or modify it for good. Is the partner culture similar to yours? We must ask if our chosen partner is doing something to improve its culture and what the culture want to achieve. Hosting events, community, culture meetings between others could be a good starting point.

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5. Community

Our last point but not the least important, how the partner is involved in the community. Some of our partners choose to host tech meetups in order to be updated with new framework releases and getting more knowledge, and others could prefer the social standpoint, keep in touch with universities and communities with less tech job opportunities to constantly develop and grow new talents through courses and internship programs. No matter what is your preference, is your partner doing something to create community?

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These are the main important points we ask devhouses to join Simbiosis marketplace. Leave us a comment if you think we should consider some other important points.

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