How To Hire A Software Developer

You’re an entrepreneur or a corporate entity and you have decided to hire a software developer, engineer or product manager to work on your project. You may have a checklist or a rough idea of what you need to do in order to hire the best software/ applications engineer. But are you really sure? Wasting money isn’t an option so you have to hire the best software developer with vast knowledge and experience in engineering who will do their job and ensure that the software is working perfectly with no bugs in it. You’ve also either had a bad rep with software developers before or have heard and read stories of individuals who paid developers a lot of money only to end up with a bad product. So where do you start?

Set out a clear and concise job description.

Understand what you want to build then formulate a job description. You may have a vague idea of how the final project will look. However, the most important aspect is whether the software is working or not. Software may look pretty but if it is not working as you had expected then you have wasted your time and money.

Clearly state the requirements. For instance, the languages that they need to know. You are best off consulting someone in the tech industry, preferably a technology officer or business analyst to help you craft the best job description. This ensures that you will clearly communicate the project requirements. Stating a clear and concise job description gives you a mental image of the candidate that you are looking to hire.

Assess developers experience and skill

Programming languages are similar to the languages we speak, each word has a different meaning or pronunciation or spelling depending on the language you’re speaking. This applies to programming languages as well; each language has a different structure and can only be used in specific projects. Some of the popular languages are Java, Ruby on Rails, Python, Javascript.  

Once the applications start pouring in, take a look at the experience.  You need someone who has a broad knowledge and experience of the various languages. Practice makes perfect so you need someone with a bit of experience under their belt.   

Evaluate their project portfolio.

A project portfolio contains the projects that the software developer has worked on in various capacities. This gives you an idea of his/her experience and their level of expertise. Through this, one is able to get a list of to go on. Go the extra mile, conduct due diligence and call up some of the people whose projects the developer has worked on. It sounds like it is too much but it will save you a lot of headaches down the road.  Some of the key things to look out for is, did they meet the objectives that they had? How professional were they? How quick were they in solving various tasks? Trustworthy, did they hand over all the code they had written to the owner upon project completion? How did they handle a non-desirable situation in any of the projects that they worked on?

Check out their GitHub account.

GitHub is the “social network” for developers. GitHub acts as a code repository, that is, developers are able to put up their code for viewing. This may give you an idea of the developer’s interests and strengths. Some projects may have been proprietary and hence may not be available for public viewing but It details some open source projects or side projects of the developer.  It also shows how active the developer is, in terms of working on projects.

Set up an interview.

Once you narrow down your list even further, you can call the successful candidates in for an interview either face to face or through online platforms if the developer is from a different country. You may decide to give them a test that they need to complete in a few hours to test their problem solving skills, agility, and how well they can work under pressure. It is advised to work with a technology officer  to ensure that you pick the best software developer to work on your project.

Based on all the above you should be able to hire talent that is fit for your project/company. What else do you think is important? Find out more about our talent here and make the process of hiring developers’ simple and stress free.