Top Tips to Hire Best Software Developers in the Industry

How To Hire Best Software Developers

If you are a startup owner or a software development firm looking for how to hire a developer, then you must have realized till now that today’s competition is fierce and not able to hire best developers can harm your business prospects. You cannot afford to build a buggy and poorly developed software if you want to achieve success in the marketplace. Therefore, you should try to build a perfect team of developers to create a disruptive and flawless software solution. In a startup, tech resources already take a big part of your budget, and you have to depend on your IT department to get fruitful and assured results for your organization. In a software development firm, the entire performance of the company depends on the quality of the developers.

In any case, you should look for quality developers to get maximum benefits. We are not saying that you should only hire the rockstar developers. Remember they have a huge cost to the company. Hence hire those who are at least good enough to be able to build quality software and also don’t burn a hole in your pocket due to their high wages. If the developer is good and affordable, then it will give you some room even for the expenses of business development and marketing processes.

Just take a look at this Statista report which is telling about the Programming languages used by software developers worldwide as of 2018. As per this report, JavaScript is the most popular language with 64% developers using it while HTML/CSS and Java is at the second and third position respectively. We all know that JavaScript and most other programming languages are evolving continuously; therefore, you need to hire bright developers who are quick learners too. Otherwise, they will lag behind in the market.

Take this another Statista report which tells about Programming/development tools used by software developers worldwide as of 2018. To use these tools, you should find answers to how to find developers and try to hire developers who are expert, intelligent and creative.

However, here the question is how to hire a software developer who is of the best quality? In this article, we are elaborating on this only so that you can take a wise decision and hire best developers who are expert working in top programming languages using various development tools and are fully capable of developing amazing software solutions.

Remember if you fail to hire the right developers, then it can bring down the morale of your team and some of them may even choose to leave your company. That’s why follow the below given tips which will definitely help you in your software developers’ hiring process. Let’s start.

How to Hire a Software Developer?

· Hire a Software Developer Who is More Smart and Intelligent than You

This is one of the best tips to hire the best developers. Start looking for a software developer who is more smart and intelligent than you. This will help you in building a successful company as it will trigger a process of hiring more and more smarter people into your company which will turn it into a center of highly intellectual developers in next few years. Remember, bright people attract more bright people.

Hence you should focus on hiring exceptionally intelligent software developers during the startup phase, and you will be surprised to see the similar or even better talent coming to your company soon thereafter. This will start a process which will continue for many years. Most of the big software enterprises follow this tip, and after some time, this becomes an automatic process.

· Hire A Developer Who Can Give Solution to a Real Life Technology Problem

Many people in the selection process give more emphasis to the developer’s coding skills. However, it is not the best way to hire developers. Instead, you should give him a real-life technology problem which has occurred within your organization and ask how he will handle and solve such a problem in the least possible time. This will actually give you a better idea about his skills and creativity and how he will work on a project when he joins your company.

Hence by this way you can come to know whether he is the best fit for doing the projects in your company or if his approach to resolve real-life problems is different than what is required in your company.

· Show Flexibility with the Programming Languages and Software Tools

In today’s fast-paced world, new programming languages and software development tools are being launched almost every year. If you are still asking — “How you will sort a list in Java?”, Then it is not the right approach. Instead, you should focus on the algorithms and concepts. Pay attention to how a candidate approaches a problem and how he thinks out of the box to solve a problem.

It has been found that it is easier for a great problem solver to learn a new programming language or development tool than learning the problem-solving skills for a master of any particular language. Hence show flexibility with the knowledge of certain programming languages and software tools and don’t make it a hard and fast rule.

· After You Select a Developer, Let One More Person Interview Him

If you are looking for answers to where to hire programmers and how to do that effectively, then remember finding many developers is easy, but screening them is difficult. Suppose you also know how to select a developer and you follow a proper process to select him but still make sure that you are not the only person in your company to evaluate him or to select him for the software developer role. If you find a developer fit for this role, still ask one more person from your company to interview the developer.

Many times it happens that although we don’t know, but we have some biases hence when one more person takes interview of the developer, then the best performer will join your organization. This process will lead to the hiring of a highly talented software developer who will be the best fit for your organization.

· Make Sure the Developer Has Good Communication and Team Working Skills

Many people ignore these kinds of soft skills while they hire a software developer due to presumptions. However, many researches have proved that to become a good software developer, excellent communication skills and team working skills are a must. Don’t forget that today, most of the project works are not done by a single developer. Rather there is a whole team which works on it.

Hence the best developer should be a good team player and should have excellent communication skills. After some years of experience when a developer moves to a higher role like project manager, then these kinds of soft skills become even more important and essential to make them perform their job perfectly.

· Don’t Give Too Much Importance to the Resume

There have been many instances when a developer looked great based on his catchy resume and the skills written in it, but he failed to perform well in the interview process or while doing the actual project work later on after joining the company. Actually, resume writing is also a job these days; hence, some people may create an attractive resume even if they don’t possess such great skills mentioned in the resume.

Hence take a look at all the areas and processes while hiring the software developer and don’t give very high importance to the resume.

· Hire Someone Who is Creative and Has More Ideas

While hiring a software developer, try to find out how much creative the developer is during his testing and interview process rather than how many theoretical questions he answers perfectly. Today, most of the technical questions asked in an interview process can be found on the internet, and even any uncreative candidate can read them in an hour before coming to interview and can answer all questions. However, when it comes to showing creativity and innovativeness, he will falter.

Hence look for a candidate who is more creative and gives more ideas in the interview process. He will always have many useful ideas even after joining your company, and his out of the box thinking will always be helpful for your organization.

· Hire a Developer Who is Passionate About Doing Projects and Has Portfolio to Show

A passionate and enthusiastic software developer always keeps on learning new things and must have worked on many projects. Hence ask the developer about his favourite projects which either he has done himself or while working in a company and ask his personal experience and how he handled these projects. If he is really passionate about his work, he will definitely give you a list of many projects which he has done before, and he will also be able to explain to you in detail about the features of these and how he overcame the challenges and problems while working on them.

Hence if a developer has a portfolio to show you of his work, then it is definitely a big plus for him and makes him a highly deserving candidate. Therefore, always hire a developer who is more passionate and highly motivated regarding his work.

· Make Sure the Software Developer Can Write Clean and Crisp Code

While most companies check the coding skills of the software developer while hiring, but there is a difference between writing any kind of code which looks complex to understand and writing clean and crisp code. Actually writing clean code is a skill and an art which every software developer should possess.

Hence always look for such kind of developer who writes clean code because if the developer writes messy code, then it will be very difficult to collaborate with him and to include him to work in any team no matter how good he is at other required skills.

· Give More Importance to Talent Then Experience

If you find that the software developer is extremely talented and scores very high on all other aspects and parameters of selecting a developer, then don’t give too much importance to his experience. Prior experience can be helpful only when you need a developer to work on something that is repetitive in nature but in the ever-evolving development environment in most of today’s companies, especially in startups, you need a developer who can think out of the box, can handle new problems effectively and who can find out their solutions quickly.

Actually, it has been seen that the more experienced developers tend to become stubborn when it comes to optimizing processes as they already know some way to write code for it and they don’t at all try to think differently and innovatively to resolve the problems in more effective manners.

· Discuss About the Flexibility of Work Options

These days travelling from home to office take lots of commuting time hence most of the large organizations now offer work to home options to most of their developers so that these travelling hours can also be made productive. This kind of flexibility in working hours and working options increases the productivity of the employees considerably, and it also increases the employee satisfaction levels within the organization.

If the developer likes this kind of flexibility, then you will get him to work for you 24*7, make him more satisfied and eventually this will lead to the completion of projects before deadlines all the time.

Conclusion

We have shared with you the top tips to hire software developers who are best and highly talented to work for your company. These tips will work whether you are a startup, a multinational software or web development company or a business who wish to scale up quickly. These tips will help you to recruit a developer who is perfect in all aspects.

Top Tips to Hire Best Software Developers in the Industry was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.