Tips to Hire Good Developers for Your Startup

How to Organize Quality Developer Hire

Before starting the hiring process, make sure that you have a detailed plan, understand your needs, and what you intend to achieve by recruiting a new person. Thus, you need to answer the following questions:

• What is your project, its budget, and its deadline?
• What software development services do you need?
• What are your requirements for a developer (experience, technologies, skills)?

This checklist will help you to prepare for an interview with a potential software developer and understand clearly the peculiarities of your search.

Why Hiring Dedicated Software Developers Is a Dilemma?

Currently, the search for tech talent is a growing issue, especially if this should be developers. However, I will explain why this situation is natural. And why you need to adjust to it by having your techniques to reach dedicated CRM software developers.

First, the demand for top techies is on the rise because of the dynamics in the market. Second, attracting and hiring software developers is inherently difficult because a company that employs them should be unique and stand out from the crowd. Third, the competition in the market is so intense that it is a must to use marketing tools to reach talents. Fourth, with the development of software, there is the requirement for new and unique skills that developers should possess to match a company’s desired skills and experience. Thus, the techniques described below may make your developer hire more fruitful.

Don’t Focus on the Lack of Experience

Companies are always looking for experienced developers, especially when they work on something repetitive. However, you need a new hire to tackle new tasks in the start-up world. Do you believe that having experience is an advantage? I will challenge your belief as software developers with extensive experience can be very opinionated and stubborn when it comes to optimizing a process or method as they already know how to write code. Thus, maybe, a good idea is to employ novices and teach them from scratch. Why not? You can train a new employee according to your company’s needs.

Have at Least One More Face-to-Face Interview with the Candidate

There is a joke that an IT engineer is a person who converts coffee into code. Thus, do not complain about the lack of time and baggage of responsibilities, find time for one more interview with an applicant to distort doubts and make a final decision. Meeting candidates is a must, especially in a resource-constrained environment to hire a skillful software developer. Do not hear excuses about the end of the day or business. Whatever you need is to pull the trigger on the hire and find someone who can digitize your business needs. Let’s move further with other techniques.

Test Them with a Real-Life Technology Problem

Giving a software developer a code challenge is like placing a fish in water. Therefore, you need to require more than mere technical skills. You should hire a person who can work on a fundamental issue typical for startups who can fit the type of projects that you have and who possesses problem-solving skills. Trends in IT engineers get stale faster than fashion in Paris. Therefore, it is significant to understand whether a candidate has an innovative spirit and creativity. Let’s shift our attention from problem-solving skills to technical expertise.

Hire a Software Developer with Technical Expertise

You should not initiate your startup from a technical failure, and it will be inevitable if you employ a candidate without technical expertise. Thus, inferior architecture implementation, poor technology choices, substandard code, and meaning are the points that challenge a software development hire.

Would you like to be one step ahead of your competitors? You just need to study a candidate’s portfolio in-depth to validate a developer's knowledge and skills. Furthermore, it is not less crucial to benchmark your candidate by asking them to present a tech rationale on the infrastructure, architecture, and technologies they recommend for a specific project.

Make Sure that a Developer’s Values Align with a Company’s Ones

Sharing similar values plays a crucial role in establishing an emotional bond and trustful relationship between a startup and a candidate. For this reason, make sure that you have similar values and feel you can trust this person. If an applicant cannot communicate, you will fail to understand whether this candidate can articulate technical information. Consider that you need to align with a potential developer on such aspects as company roadmap, product, salary, and corporate culture. It’s vital to see that you are on the same page and pursuing the same goals.

Look in the Right Places

Hiring a software developer at a startup requires detailed research and continued search in the right places where you can find the best talent. You can reach experienced and highly skilled developers in a lot of places:

• Online/Offline Events. These are tech events, hackathons, and conferences, where software developers network and discuss the latest trends in the industry.
• Stack Overflow
• GitHub
• LinkedIn
• Upwork
• Upstack

Online forums, communities, and groups are great places where you can find many good developers for your startup. Members of these online platforms publish their projects which you can check to understand whether they respond to your search criteria.

Conclusion

All in all, startup hiring is not an easy task, and you probably won’t get it on the first try. You may make mistakes, but it will be a basic experience to make hiring technical talent easy for you. If you don’t want to go through the hassle of hiring software developers for your startup, reach us, and share your hiring needs, and we’ll assist.