Nearsure, a Nortal company

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the Director of QA Engineering at LeagueApps. LeagueApps is the leading youth sports management platform that provides organizations with the technology and professional development they need to operate, engage, and win while also having a positive impact on kids and communities.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Nearsure?

We were looking for specific subject matter experts in software quality testing and software development that we couldn't find in the U.S.

SOLUTION

How did you select this agency and what were the deciding factors?

Nearsure was selected among others because of its client-driven culture, flexibility in accommodating our requests, ability to find people with unique skills, and human resources working during the same business hours as the majority of our company.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We hired through Nearsure 3 QA engineers and 4 software engineers. And we are interviewing more candidates for more open roles.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

We first shared the job descriptions with the account manager and the hiring managers. Then had a virtual meeting to go over the most important factors of what we are looking for. Then we received resumes of potential candidates. The hiring manager would select potential candidates and request the interview schedule.

Depending on the role some candidates would have to take an online or home technical challenge. Then the candidates would go through a series of interviews until the decision is made to proceed with the best candidates.

During the entire process, Nearsure hiring team would put a lot of effort in scheduling candidates and soliciting feedback to deliver what we need.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the engagement that demonstrate progress or success?

With SDETs we went from 0 to 93% automation coverage in web apps via Cypress and 69% automation coverage in Mobile iOS and Android native apps via Appium. Our branded apps are updated very efficiently with high-quality results.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Nearsure contractors are treated as our equals and embedded with teams. They are part of stand-ups, 1on1s, and all team and organizational meetings.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their diverse inclusive culture and female CEO is impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

They should train their candidates to ask more questions during interviews.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of a SaaS company. We work in the public health sector in disease control and surveillance. We help customers with everything from patient intake, investigation, and contact tracing to data modernization and reporting to state and federal organizations. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Nearsure?

We were looking for a way to expand our development team, but it was difficult to find qualified developers in our area — they were often snatched up by huge companies. As a result, we looked into offshore resources and found Nearsure. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve had a discussion with Nearsure about our goals. We’ve explained our needs and expectations, so the team knows about our long-term growth plans. Based on the parameters we’ve set, they hire developers for us. 

Primarily, we need backend developers. They find such resources based on the tech stack we tell them. Apart from developers, we’ve also hired QA specialists and frontend resources through them. 

Once the resources are set up, we onboard them into our team and train them. Since the resources are mostly senior-level developers, we don’t have to do a lot of training. We simply have to get them up to speed on our tasks. 

What is the team composition?

We currently have a little over two dozen developers working full-time. Around 90% of them are backend developers while the rest is split evenly between QA specialists and frontend resources. 

How did you come to work with Nearsure?

We spoke to a few offshore providers and found Nearsure during our early interviews. They were the most responsive and clearest in terms of how things worked on their side. Their pricing was fair, and I got the sense that their service would be good based on our early interactions. I didn’t feel that with the other teams, so we hired Nearsure. 

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve invested around $1.2 million in this partnership. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Nearsure in December 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Nearsure always brings in top-quality developers, and their process is smooth and easy. They’ve learned the type of people we want in terms of personality. 

Moreover, most of the people we hire from them are with us for the long term. Some resources don’t work out for whatever reason, but most of them tend to stay. In other words, our turnover is relatively low, and that’s mainly because Nearsure has a good screening process. 

How did Nearsure perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is excellent. We primarily use Jira to manage the development team. To communicate, we use Zoom and Slack. The other tools we use include RingCentral and Nutshell. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Nearsure is highly responsive, and they’re clear about what they can do for us and how they’ll do it. From the beginning, they’ve shown us that they want to work with us. I can’t compare them with other companies because they’re the only team we’ve used — we’re loyal to them, and they’ve been so good to us. They’re a great partner. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. They do exactly what they say they’ll do and deliver when they say they’ll deliver. I can’t criticize anything about them. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Always do your homework. I highly recommend Nearsure. I’ve gotten to know a number of people from the company, and they’re as wonderful as they’re good at what they do. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the VP of Engineering in charge of one of the main verticals of the company. Our company is mainly focused on providing parking services for cities, parking operators and venues in many areas.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Nearsure, and what were your goals?

The main goal of the project was to rebuild and rearchitect a legacy application that has been around for a little more than 13 years. The legacy application started to show its age and having quite a bit of performance issues. With that, we decided to select new technologies and very a cutting edge language that will allow us to scale and have another 13 years plus with this new software.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

The contact with Nearsure was done by a reference from a new employee in the company. The main deciding factors were their ability to find very high-quality personnel in Central and South America that had most of the base skills we were looking for while showing their interest in working with cutting edge technology to create solutions.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The scope of the project was to rearchitect the legacy MVC application into a new micro-service architecture using event streaming, gRPC and GraphQL as the base for communication. The project was divided into three major phases:

• The core shared functionality
• Critical Base Services
• Core Functional Areas

Along these phases, the team has been able to deliver the shared functionality on time and have been ahead now delivering some parts of the critical base services. During some of these deliveries, using event streaming with Kafka, GraphQL with Gloo and working with Golang have been items that the teams had to learn and understand in a short period of time.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

I currently have six software engineers and a UI/UX designer. The engineers are all in a senior software engineer role, while the designer is a product design consultant.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The team has been able to ramp-up on the unfamiliar technologies, which was one of the deliverables of main concern and has been successfully completed. The parts of the software that have been delivered are focus on items that will be the base for the other components of the application and to-date those have been done successfully as well.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We have a very structured management style that allows the team to spend time trying different and new ways to solve problems while focusing on the goals for the different sections to deliver on time. We heavily use Slack as our main tool for communication while still using email for some communication and Atlassian tools to maintain work organization and documentation.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The best part of the company is its flexibility to accommodate requirements to find personnel and the diligence to find outstanding people.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Our current interaction with the Nearsure team is solid, and they have done an amazing job. I think at this time, I wouldn't change anything.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are an ed tech startup in NYC focused on mnemonics. I'm one of two cofounders, and I lead the tech team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Nearsure?

We hired Nearsure to revamp our website infrastructure and to develop new website features. Through them, we hired one senior front-end and another senior back-end developer to help refactor and rearchitect our existing codebase. Additionally, Nearsure's developers have helped us work on some internal tools. All work was done in modern libraries -- javascript, react, node, nextjs, nestjs, docker, etc.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to redesign our website's infrastructure in a few months before moving onto other projects. We had an MVP of our website up, and we needed to bring our codebase up to production quality.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I talked to numerous similar near-shore development companies and ended up selecting Nearsure due to price and candidate quality. They were able to start showing me high-quality candidates for the job very quickly -- which was a huge reason why I selected them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They designed and redeveloped our website's front- and back-ends. They worked in an agile, iterative process -- helping us shape project goals and hit project deadlines. Nearsure's developers had a lot of project responsibility -- making important technical design decisions with minimal oversight.

What was the team composition?

1 graphic designer, 1 project lead, 1 senior front-end dev, and 1 senior back-end dev. They have also worked with other various stakeholders on our team (e.. marketing).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Their work has been essential to our business, as they helped us quickly and easily build a top-of-the-line website.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We are a small team, and we prefer to work in a gradual, iterative process. We built out features, code, etc quickly and pivot in real-time. This has been effective for our company, which is on the smaller side. Nearsure's team quickly adapted to our work style and integrated seamlessly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The people are the best part of Nearsure. Our account manager attentively takes care of any concerns we have. Moreover, they provided us great developers with whom we work every day.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There is little they could do to improve. We got exactly what we wanted and are happy Nearsure customers.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Director of Software Development for a health and wellness company, responsible for the creation and maintenance of development teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Nearsure?

We engaged Nearsure to help augment our development and QA resources on existing development teams. There was a need to quickly onboard new people to fill critical positions required for on-time delivery to our customers.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were specific to finding people who would fit in culturally with our existing teams, take minimal time ramping up on our tech stack, and have experience working with remote teams.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

The vendor was a known quantity to our CTO. Other vendors were considered through a selection process run by our CTO and VP of Solution Delivery. Nearsure had previously performed well and met our requirement for having people available in preferred time zones.

Describe the project in detail.

Nearsure developers and QA specialists are working as part of existing teams as full members. The projects are in the wellness space and include both web and native mobile apps. The tech stack consists of Java, React, React Native, MySQL, and Node.js as the main elements.

What was the team composition?

Teams on which Nearsure people are currently working consist of 3–5 developers, 1–2 QA specialists, a Scrum master, and a product owner, working from Kanban boards in a scaled agile framework (SAFe).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The Nearsure people have integrated well within our existing teams. The projects they are working on are ongoing, and these contractors are expected to be here on a long-term basis.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

There have been no workflow issues because the Nearsure people are working within existing teams, adhering and contributing to their team's culture and goals.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Nearsure is able to find and deliver quality people to us in a relatively short period of time. We've also been able to retain the same people, which is important from a productivity and cost perspective.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There hasn’t been anything that required any immediate or comprehensive change.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive at an energy & natural resources company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Energy application management and workflow and energy analytics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Nearsure to accomplish?

• Staff Augmentation for frontend engineering
• Staff Augmentation for sr. java engineering
• Staff Augmentation for sr + python engineering

SOLUTION

How did you find Nearsure?

Referral

Why did you select Nearsure over others?

• Great culture fit
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Nearsure were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Additional resources to deliver project and product engineering capacity.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Continued employment of those resources.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

N/A. The teams work on Agile teams, and they communicate daily w/ their peers.

What was your primary form of communication with Nearsure?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They're great to work with.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Nearsure could have done differently?

Not at this time.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Lead Engineering Recruiter for Impel. We''re a company that builds Digital Marketing solutions for the Automobile industry. We work with small, independent dealerships and also large, original manufacturers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Nearsure?

When I took on the responsibilities of Lead Recruiter, we were looking to grow our team significantly throughout the quarter.

SOLUTION

How did you select this agency and what were the deciding factors?

We had experience working with a few contracting firms in the past. But we chose to work most closely with Nearsure because of the consistently high quality of their candidates.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

They provided dozens of Full-Stack candidates that had experience working with Python, Javascript, and AWS cloud services.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

Nearsure would deliver pre-screened candidates that I would meet and then pass interview together with our team Leads.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the engagement that demonstrate progress or success?

With the support of their team, we were able to identify and hire over 4 engineers within a quarter.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I loved the workflow between us and Nearsure. Our account managers were friendly, punctual, and attentive. They were always willing to accommodate our workflow tools and work with us to improve communication.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I was impressed by how well their account managers collaborated with our Engineering team.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No.