Recruiting, Hiring, and Working with Contractors

Not every member of the Planet Argon engineering team is a full-time employee. We work with a number of talented independent contractors to solve specific problems and fill specific talent gaps that exist on our full-time team, such as deployment issues and expert-level Rails experience.

The following are important considerations and processes we follow when recruiting and engaging with a contractor.

Considerations

There are a number of considerations to make when recruiting a contractor. The following are the main questions we need to ask ourselves when vetting contractor candidates to join the Planet Argon engineering team:

1. What value will they add to our projects and our team?

Independent contractors are brought in to solve specific problems that our full-time engineering team lacks the skills, experience, or time to solve. When searching for a contractor, make sure you know specifically what role they are meant to fill or problem they are meant to solve. Focusing on this specific value will make the entire recruitment process easier, from writing the job description to deciding on the right contractor.

2. What is their experience and skill level?

When hiring a contractor, we tend to look for highly-skilled, narrowly-focused developers. Since most contractors don’t contribute a full 40 hours/week, and bill for every hour they do spend working for us, we need to make sure they have the technical expertise and focus to achieve the goal we’re hiring them to achieve. Lower-skilled developers and generalists can be great additions to Planet Argon; however, we tend to hire them on as full-time employees so we can grow their skills as a full-time member of the team.

Additionally, since contractors are not treated as employees and thus receive less internal support and oversight, we need to ensure that contractors are self-sufficient and experienced enough to complete their tasks and achieve their goals without too much direction. This is especially true for near/offshore developers, who might only have a few hours of overlap in their schedule and Planet Argon’s hours of operation.

3. What is their preferred availability?

Although contractors are free to make their own schedules and work when best suits them, it’s important for team cohesion and ease of communication for there to be at least 2-3 hours of overlap with our standard work hours (~9:00 AM EST - 5:00 PM PST).

Some contractors that don’t fall within these time limits will offer to work late nights, overnight, or early mornings in order to overlap with our team. While this is flattering, it’s best to avoid these types of arrangements for contracts longer than a few weeks as those work schedules can be hard to maintain and quality of work can slip.

4. Where are they located?

Location is another important factor to consider when recruiting a contractor. Besides differences in time zones, there are cultural and operational considerations we must address too. Observed national holidays, ease of payment, and general communication style are all things to consider when determining if the contractor will suit the role and fulfill our clients’ needs well.

None of these should be automatically disqualifying – in fact, having a variety of cultural perspectives on our team makes the company stronger! However, it may require more effort by our main point of contact to ensure we are managing their work and time expectations in a culturally competent way.

5. What is their cost to us?

Finally, the contractor’s rate is an important factor to consider when making your decision. We don’t hire contractors in order to pinch every last penny and rake in huge profits. However, we do aim to keep our contractor costs lower than that of our full-time employees. If a contractor’s rate is so high that they’re comparable to a FTE of the same skill level, it often makes more sense to fill that role with an employee.

Differences Between Contractors and Full-Time Employees

Contractors can become members of the engineering team in spirit – suggesting improvements to processes, pairing with other devs on project issues, etc. However, there are some clear and necessary distinctions that we make to separate contractors from full-time employees. These include:

1. Internal meetings are always optional

Contractors generally only attend meetings that are related to their work, such as stand-ups and client meetings. These are billable meetings and are charged to the client as such.

Internal meetings, such as Meet the Week, ETM, and Culture Club events, are not considered related to project work and are therefore not required of the contractor nor billable. Contractors can choose to participate in any of these types of meetings, but they are not included in event costs (no packages, etc.), unless they pay for their involvement themselves (e.g. holiday gift exchange).

Contractors will often have standing check-in meetings with the SEM as well. These are meant to allow the contractor a chance to discuss any issues they are having with their work, members of the team, or the clients. Contractors can bill these meetings to us.

2. Contractors don’t receive standard employee benefits

This is pretty straightforward – contractors are not entitled to benefits offered by Planet Argon to full-time employees. They are paid on an hourly or monthly basis and not as part of Planet Argon payroll. They are also responsible for their own taxes.

3. Contractor uses their own equipment

Contractors are expected to use their own equipment to complete the work they are being paid to perform. Planet Argon may pay for account seats in tools we commonly use as a company, but we do not pay for nor reimburse tools or equipment that the contractor uses generally to complete their work for us or other clients.

As an example, we might pay for a seat on our Atlassian account so the contractor can have access to our Jira and Confluence spaces, but we would not pay for the contractor’s IDE.

4. Contractor can set their own schedule and update their availability

Although we will agree on general availability during initial negotiations, an independent contractor always has the right to complete their work when and where they want. We appreciate that our contractors often work with some overlap with the typical Planet Argon working hours, but that is not required in order to fulfill their contract. There may be client-facing meetings during the work day that we’d like them to attend, but those specifics are agreed upon during the negotiation stage.

5. Contractors are brought on for a specific purpose

As mentioned above, we engage with contractors for specific reasons. These reasons are often one of the following two: they have specific technical skills that our team lacks, such as site reliability/devops; or, they have a deep understanding of Rails and we need a highly skilled Rails developer to support a specific project.

6. Limited length of engagement (typically 6 or 12 months)

All Planet Argon contractors are brought on for a specific set of time, agreed upon during the negotiation phase. This is determined by the duration of the project for which we need them, the long-term availability and interest of the contractor, and the resourcing needs of the company.

Differences in the Recruitment Process

Our process for recruiting and hiring a contractor is different than the one we use when hiring a FTE. The process is generally shorter and does not involve the same number or type of interviews that we do with FTE candidates.

The following are some of the main differences between the two processes and best practices for recruiting a contractor:

Like a FTE position, we post the job in Workable and share on various job boards and social media accounts; however, it’s important to note in the job title as well as description that this is a remote, contract-based position. It’s also important to include non-negotiable contract specifics, such as length of engagement, time-zone or location requirements, language requirements, and compensation ranges.
In order to more quickly source and hire near/offshore developers, we will sometimes engage with a recruitment agency that specializes in placements from those areas. We’ve worked with one such agency, Handle, to find contract developers in Brazil since 2022. There are plenty of other agencies similar to Handle, and the current hiring manager or SEM should have a list of these existing contacts and companies.
Unlike FTE positions, we don’t have a three-interview process for hiring contractors. At minimum, the SEM or hiring manager will have a 30 minute chat with the contractor to discuss their experience, our project needs, and contract specifics.
- For Rails contractors, we may also include a separate 30-minute technical discussion or coding exercise with Robby or another senior Rails developer to get a better understanding of the contractor’s skill level. We often compensate the contractor for their time during these exercises.
- For non-Rails contractors, the hiring manager or engineering manager will need to research technical interview questions related to the language or framework we can ask the contractor during the second, more technical interview. Ideally, someone from our team or contractor network has experience in this language or framework and can either review these questions beforehand and give feedback or join the interview and ask the questions themselves. The latter approach gives the domain-knowledgeable team member a chance to ask follow-up questions in the interview and give their feedback on the interviewee’s responses.
It’s important to keep up good relations with contractors that we don’t end up choosing for the engagement. Having a varied and active network of contractors that have already shown interest in our company and that we’ve already vetted makes it easier to fill project needs in the future. For all the contractors that we don’t choose for a specific role or project, the hiring manager or SEM should email them and kindly explain the reasons as well as let them know we would like to keep up communication and possibly reach out in the future should another opportunity arise.
For Non-US-Based Contractors In Workable, make sure to change the location of the job posting to the country from which you’d like to receive candidates. Setting this to the United States or leaving it blank will target US-based job boards primarily and greatly reduce the number of nearshore applicants you receive.

Hiring and Onboarding

Once we’ve chosen a contractor and have negotiated the terms of the engagement, it’s time to bring them onboard. The following are the basic steps we take before starting a relationship with a contractor:

Prepare the contract using the Planet Argon template in Google Drive. This must include the contractor’s hourly or monthly rate, the length of the engagement, the details of the work being asked of the contractor during the engagement, and any agreed upon billable hours floor or ceiling.
We make sure to explicitly list in the contract the types of services and meetings we will allow the contractor to bill to Planet Argon that are not directly billable to a client, such as check-in meetings or tool research spikes.
After the contract has been signed by us and the contractor, the engineering manager creates an Asana checklist using the Contractor Onboarding template.
Finally, the engineering manager will set up the Contractor Onboarding donutbot and Project-Specific donutbot for the contractor. These will help them onboard quickly to our internal processes as well as give them information specific to the project to which they will be contributing.
Paying nearshore contractor invoices may require extra steps than US-based invoices. If we are engaged with the contractor via a US-based agency, like Deel, then we will likely pay that agency directly and they handle the international payment. If we are contracting directly with the engineer, we will need to establish international payment via our bookkeepers before we can pay invoices.

Working with Contractors

We pride ourselves on cultivating strong, long-lasting relationships with contractors. We do this by following these best practices:

Hold monthly check-ins between the engineering manager and the contractor.
Acknowledge work anniversaries.
Submit and process invoices quickly and on a regular cadence.
Assign to long-term projects.
Pass along client feedback on the contractor’s work.
Finally, if a contractor is under-performing or unreliable, address these concerns in a check-in meeting; if they do not show improvement over time, phase them out to avoid negative impact on client relationships and team morale.

Maintaining Contractor Lists

Having ongoing communication with a variety of contractors allows us to scale up our staff temporarily if we bring in a new client or get a new, urgent request from an existing client. We take the following steps to ensure we have a few fall-back contract developers available should we need them:

Maintain a list of current and past contractors, including their contact info, their specializations, past projects we’ve worked with them on, and availability.
Maintain a list of contractors that we’ve spoken with or that have applied to past openings with whom we did not end up working. Include their contact info, specializations, and resume.
Ensure list sorting based on expertise, skill level, rate, and availability
Send friendly check-in emails to potential or past contractors every quarter or bi-annually in order to maintain the conversation channels, confirm their contact info is still accurate, and keep Planet Argon top-of-mind for them.
Maintain relationships with near-shore placement agencies, such as Deel, that can subcontract a developer from their network to fulfill short turnaround or immediate needs on projects.

General Interest Applications

We keep an evergreen job posting up in Workable to capture contact information of nearshore engineers interested in developing a long-term contract relationship with Planet Argon. This network of nearshore contract engineers allows us to respond quickly to client requests and new projects without needing to resource, vet, and onboard engineers from scratch.

Our current posted General Interest Application listings:

General Interest Application: Contract Ruby on Rails Engineer (Brazil)

Conclusion

Engaging with contractors has allowed Planet Argon to expand the type and quality of services we can offer to our clients. It also adds broader cultural and industry perspectives to our team and provides FTEs more opportunities to learn and grow in their roles.

If you have questions about recruiting, hiring, onboarding, or working with contractors, please reach out to the current engineering manager.