Support Ukraine: where you can hire the best Ukrainian talent

The war has been raging in Ukraine for over a year now. Many people discovered our country just because of it. Not the reason we Ukrainians wanted, but nothing we can do about it anyway.

But for many others, Ukraine has already been there. Either as a popular touristic destination or a place to work and study. But many businesses or services worked and continue working with Ukrainian talent: designers, developers, marketers, and other digital specialists.

Why should you hire Ukrainians?

Ukraine has been a popular destination to outsource development for years now. Ukrainian developers are well known for their professionalism and dedication, clean code, and out-of-box thinking. Ukrainian developers probably understand how to work with any tech stack.

In recent years Ukrainian designers also got some traction. Their works get recognized by Behance, Dribbble, and other platforms; some of the most popular services use UI UX designs made by Ukrainians. As the developers, Ukrainian designers are known for their attention to detail and appreciation of good design.

The price is another factor. While Ukrainians are well-known for the quality of their work, the prices for their services are not so high as in many other countries. While not cheap, Ukrainian IT specialists offer an excellent quality-price ratio for their work.

Ukraine is a beautiful country. I took this photo on my trip to the Carpathians last summer

Where can you hire Ukrainians?

If you’re looking to hire Ukrainian talent, multiple platforms offer a plethora of Ukrainian digital specialists.

For freelancers, you can check out Upwork and Fiverr. There are plenty of Ukrainians of different skills and price ranges out there. Before hiring someone, check their portfolio and reviews.

If your needs are more complex than a freelancer can handle, you have multiple options. You can hire an agency or studio or find an outsourcing agency to find the best talent for your requirements and budget. Either option is acceptable and depends on what you need. Let’s check the most common use cases.

Project Work

If you are looking for someone to do a project for you, an agency might be the best option. Depending on the complexity, tech stack, and type of the project, you might need to pick from design- or development-focused agencies. Many Ukrainian agencies offer full-cycle development and can take care of the entire project from start to finish.

How to choose the best digital agency from Ukraine?

For starters, you can use these lists from Clutch. Clutch offers lists based on the services an agency provides. Before selecting a partner, you can create shortlists or even request a free consultation with a Clutch employee who will help you pick the best service provider for your project.

While looking at the agency profile at Clutch, consider the following:

• Reviews. Clutch is all about reviews. The review process on Clutch is strict and requires verification, so you can trust what you see.
• Portfolio items. Usually, an agency page has a couple of portfolio items. They give a basic understanding of what the agency is capable of. Still, I would recommend visiting the agency’s website or social media channels for a more in-depth view of a project.
• Awards. They have some value, but there are many talented agencies without a single award.

The other way is to get a recommendation from someone who worked with a team from Ukraine. You’d be surprised how many projects Ukrainians did, so if you know someone who can introduce you to a team from Ukraine, consider doing so.

Expanding an existing team

If you want to expand your team with professional designers or developers, but it’s either too difficult or too expensive in your local market, you might hire Ukrainian talent remotely.

Many businesses promote either fully remote or a hybrid working schedule, so hiring someone on remote wouldn’t be a problem. We as a company have been fully remote starting from day one, even in pre-COVID times, and we built our processes around that.

The only complication might be hiring because you need recruiters specializing in the Ukrainian market. Don’t fret, though, as many services and agencies can match you with the best professionals from any country, and more than often, Ukraine has one of the best representations there.

One such service is Make it in Ukraine (MIU). From its name, you might be able to guess that the platform specializes in helping businesses worldwide find & hire top Ukrainian IT talent. Aside from IT recruitment, MIU is focused on talent market analytics.

In addition, the MIU team provides education via their guides and studies for different groups:

– talent — how to get the dream job and grow professionally;

– business founders and hiring managers — how to search, nurture, and manage teams most effectively, how to keep their companies growing, and much more.

Another excellent service that I recommend is YouTeam. They focus more on developers. YouTeam has specific criteria and they don’t approve everyone — only handpicked agencies can work with them so that you can be confident in the developers you find on the platform.

Other than hiring Ukrainians you can support our nation by buying goods made in Ukraine. You’ll be impressed with how many brands and companies are out there.

Hiring a dedicated team

Hiring a dedicated design or development (or even hybrid) team is similar to hiring a single outstaff member. A dedicated team model has many benefits. One of them is that usually, the people you’re hiring have been working together for quite some time. So they won’t spend time adapting to each other. The other huge benefit is that you don’t need to organize the operational processes and only integrate a newly acquired team into your workflow.

Here’s an article about how we worked as a dedicated design team for Invisibly

Where can you hire a dedicated team from Ukraine? Many agencies and services above offer such a service. For example, we at Merge Development can gather a dedicated team of any kind for you in one week.

By hiring Ukrainians, you will not only help those who might’ve lost their jobs recently and support those in need during these challenging times but also get qualified employees and fantastic services for a fair price.

We are a small nation, but we are proud of who we are and how we approach every job we get.