We all know that hiring the right developer is a lot of hard work; you have to identify your requirements, find the right candidate, then integrate them into your team smoothly. Studies reveal that almost 24% percent of employers admit that they face considerable difficulties when searching for tech candidates. What’s worse, over 50% of businesses hire tech employees who don’t meet their top job requirements.
While this process isn’t a simple one, there is nothing like the energy that a talented and motivated employee can bring to your organization. The result is not only a tech project finished on time but an exciting new addition to your company that will make a lasting impact.
Read on to find out how intuitive tech managers attract and hire stellar developers.
Figure out the type of problems you are trying to solve, the challenges your candidate will face, and the outcomes you want to achieve. From there, let the nature of the work and the goals of the position determine the strengths, innate traits, and foundational knowledge that a candidate needs to possess. For example, if you are looking to hire the right software developer, the key skills to look for are mathematical aptitude, problem-solving, knowledge of programming languages such as Java and Python, accuracy and attention to detail, etc. While you may be an expert, it is always wise to bring more technical expertise and resources into recruiting. You can put your developer team in a room together and talk to them about how you can hire people like them. They can help you with the correct terminologies that are must-have and nice-to-have.
It is of utmost importance for the hiring manager, the development team, and the leadership team to be on the same page about who they are looking to hire, what will be the employee’s responsibilities, what primary technical skills are required, and how the person’s success in the role will be gauged. By having a clear understanding of expectations early on in the process, hiring managers can make sure candidates can perform the tasks efficiently which will be required as part of the role.
The goal in the sourcing stage is to attract as many talented developers as possible. Piquing interest is key and a simple and gender-fluid job description will definitely help you.
There are different resources that you can use to while hiring the right developers:
Also read: 5 Tips to source tech talent without your local staffing agency’s help
Pre-employment or take-home coding tests are an absolute necessity for evaluating the skills of a developer. However, tossing them at a busy developer in the early stages will drive them away. Hence, before you give them a test of any sort, start with a face-to-face or telephonic discussion about prior work experience and technical projects that they have worked on. This allows both the employer and employee to assess the chemistry and fit, learn from each other, and decide if moving forward with a coding test or additional interviews makes sense.
Each employer should be asking open-ended, thought-provoking questions to begin a dialogue with the interviewee. Some examples include:
You can also discuss the work style and practices of the potential candidate. If your candidate is someone who works remotely, you should ask questions about how they’ve been successfully working in a remote environment and the challenges they faced while collaborating with centralized teams. It is important to remember that while some developers like to mentor, others need mentoring and some prefer working alone. These questions are designed to help you evaluate whether the candidate is the right fit, whether he/she will be able to enhance the working style of the team they may join, and what may be the areas of change.
Yay! You have finally found a great developer you’d like to hire. However, before you roll the offer letter, go with a trial first. You could give them a small project that’s complicated enough to test their problem-solving and role-specific skills and simple enough to be finished in a short time without a considerable cost. Hire the developer only if the code is right, is delivered on time, and you are satisfied with the communication and way of working. Last but not least, define expectations straight from the beginning.
There you have it; our 6-step guide to hiring the right developer. Any tips you’d like to share from your personal experience in hiring a dev? We would love to entertain a conversation. Drop a short excerpt from your experience in the comments below.
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