Here’s How to Hire App Developer for a Brighter Future of Your Company

Gone are the days when you could consider only a resume to hire someone for your company. Resumes are required, but they do not demonstrate the true potential and behind the curtain scenes.

Hence, you need a new and different approach to hire new people. Especially when you want to hire app developers, never stick to one thing. To hire the best mobile app developers, always take a comprehensive view of the candidate.

This includes their personality, expertise, technical knowledge, experience, and ability to adapt, among a few other things. Because hiring someone for your organization is not easy. It takes time and money, so better not waste it on hiring less qualified people.

This guide will specifically focus on app developers. You can use the suggestions and methods listed below to hire mobile app developers. If you are following the one-size-fits-all approach, then stop doing so.

Before understanding the entire process, let’s find out the topmost qualities of an app developer. This will help you prepare better for hiring and on-boarding the right people.

Must Read: How Much Does It Cost to Develop an App in 2021? Let’s Calculate the App Cost

How to Distinguish Talented Developers from Others?

Look for these four things while hiring talented developers;

• Social Networking
• Technical Prowess
• Management Skills
• Intuitiveness

Our entire guide on how to hire app developers will be focussed on helping you measure the candidates against these four qualities. There is no one-point strategy to identify these skills in the candidate.

You need the best mobile app developers in your company for the same reason you need good sports persons to represent your country and the best chef in the kitchen of your favorite restaurant. In a competitive industry like application development, mistakes can cost you dearly.

While you are vetting resumes or conducting interviews, keep a note of these red flags. If you come across any of them, you might want to move on to the next resume or candidate. 

• Loner Coders: As the term suggests, loner coders are not a great addition to your team. They might be great at coding, but when it comes to working with the team, it is not their cup of tea.These are mostly self-taught coders, who might have done the groundwork, but do not have any experience in working together with other people. The lack of experience does not qualify them to work in a team.

• Writes Spaghetti Code: Spaghetti is messy, no matter how good it tastes. Similarly, messy code is challenging to understand and unreadable, which causes issues if the same code is shared with another developer.Keep an eye on the candidate’s coding while taking their practical test. It will save you and other developers in the team from a lot of headaches in the future.

• Does Not Take Responsibility: Accepting mistakes is a trait of the person who wants to learn and grow. While taking the interview, one of your questions must be “What mistakes did you commit in your previous company and how did you manage to rectify that?” If the answer is something like, “I don’t make mistakes” that is your red flag of an arrogant developer.And you don’t want people who won’t accept their flaws to be on your team, right? Every bad programmer who thinks (especially they have a lack of experience) that their code is perfect and the other team members must have messed it up.

It will be easier to identify these traits of a developer while conducting interviews. But your company’s HR managers or recruiters might know a thing or two about how to verify the authenticity of the person from the resume. If not, here is the process you must follow to hire best mobile app developers.

Easy Steps to Hire App Developers

The easiest way to hire app developers is when they approach you with a will to work for you. For that, your company needs to be one of the best in the industry and you may have create a welcoming culture.

If not for this, you can start preparing to hire good mobile app developers. Rest assured that if you want the best developers, you need to work for it.

• Understand Your Requirements

  Why do you need a new app developer on your team? Do you have more projects to deliver? Do you need to add more diversity to the team? Do you want to bring an expert developer to guide other developers?

  The more you understand about your requirements, the better and easier it will be to hire app developers. Because when you know what you want you will find the ideal person for the job because your job description will attract relevant and qualified professionals.

  You need to clarify the type of app developer you want. Do you want a front-end developer or someone who has expertise in back-end development?

  Note the project requirements and write down the qualities of the person who should work on that project.

• Create a Job Description

  Your job description is the initial interface to connect with the candidates. While creating a job description, remember that good developers are looking for great workplaces.

  Besides your company reputation and ratings on platforms like Glassdoor, you can also expect them to assess your company’s professionalism via the job description.

  To create a compelling description, implement these points;

  • Job Title: Never use fancy words to write the job title. Words like Rockstar developer or Out-of-the-Box Thinker are not tempting here. Choose the right words for the right job. If you need a full-stack app developer, write “Full-Stack App Developer.”
  • Be Precise with your Description: Here again, refrain from using fancy and powerful words. The first paragraph should briefly define the job role and responsibilities. Simply put, write what you expect from the developer.
  • Give Details: The next heading will provide all the requirements in detail. Provide the reader with enough information so that they can visualize how a typical day working in your company looks like. This is the heading where you will want to give bullets on every responsibility and job task.
  • Technical Requirements: Mention the hard skills you expect from your developer. Mention the programming languages they will need to use and have experience with. Write down the frameworks, database technology, server, networking requirements, cloud requirements, understanding of the required technological concepts.
  • Sell the Job / Benefits: In this section, write down the benefits provided by your company to the developer. Not just salary, talk about other benefits like insurance, 401K, holidays, paid vacations, leaves, training provided, allowances, etc.

  One of the contentious issues here is about mentioning the number of experience years required for the job. Some might say that it is discriminatory against the ones who do not hold the experience of the said number of years.

  But that is more relevant for non-technical jobs. When it comes to technical professions, the years of experience are relevant as individuals learn and evolve with their skillset. For instance, if a candidate starts learning Python, it will take at least 4 to 5 years to call oneself a Python expert.

  So, you cannot ignore the fact that experience counts and more so in technical professions. As long as you can justify the required years of experience, mentioning the same is relevant.

• Screen the Resumes

  Do not call every candidate for an interview. Take your time to assess the applications received and scrutinize them to select a handful of people who you forward to the next stage.

  Here are a few signs of great resumes. Good resumes means that the applicants have taken some time to mention their skillset, which shows their seriousness and character. So, follow these tips to screen the resumes. 

  • Easy to Scan/Read: A cluttered resume is not a good sign of the ideal developer. Scan the resume you receive top-down. If the information provided is understandable and organized, move to the next step.
  • Check the Skillset: You have the skills required for the job in the description. Match the requirements you want with the ones mentioned in the resume. This is your most important qualifier. If the candidate has the right skills required for the job, perform the last check.
  • Personality: This is not easy. Guessing a candidate’s personality from a resume is not easy, but it is required here. Generally, people mention their personality in the resume, you can go through that. Besides, you will find links to their social media profile. Check those out and you will get some idea about the kind of person’s personality.

  Another aspect of the screening is asking the candidates for their portfolio. They must provide links to the previous projects completed and their GitHub account projects. This will help you identify the type of projects they have covered and give you a glimpse of the person’s coding abilities.

  The candidates which you feel have the required skills and personality, call them for a formal interview.

• Conduct Interviews

  This is the most authentic way to assess the candidate’s personality and ability to work as a developer in your company. However, conducting interviews (remotely or on-premises) is a time-consuming process, so make sure you call only the most eligible candidates for the same.

  To hire mobile app developers, there will be multiple interview rounds. You can start with a formal interaction round, followed by a technical interview, and take a test before making the decision. 

  • Formal Interview: Take time in this interview to assess the candidate’s soft skills and personality. The fact that we need you to assess the candidate’s soft skills before the hard skills shows the importance of the former.Every mobile app developer you hire must fit in cordially with others and become an integral part of the company as well as its culture. Given the pandemic and safety standards, you can take this interview online.

    Remember the distinction between a good and bad developer mentioned above? Use those points (red flags) here to identify the kind of developer you are facing.

    Ask them questions about their previous company and why they want to change. Add these questions with their failures and accomplishments. Watch the candidate’s tone and expressions while they answer these questions.

    Lastly, pay attention to their communication skills. Good communication is the key to building a great team.

  • Hard Skills Interview: Those who pass the first interview will move to the technical round consisting of a formal interaction with the tech leaders of the company and a test.Do not stick to the book knowledge here. Include industry-based questions along with asking them modern and evolving practices. A candidate who is interested in learning and growing will surely give enthusiastic answers.

    The best way to move forward is to create a customized list of technical questions for every developer. Create a list of questions related to the job. Add the present and forthcoming developments to the list and try to get the candidate’s opinion on the same.

    A good way to conduct this interview is to start with the basic questions and dig deeper as the candidate goes on answering the questions. Pay attention to the person in the hot seat answers.

    If they are honest and straightforward about the answers. Like if they don’t know, expect them to directly say no instead of beating around the bush. Because the person who likes to make stories here may be the one who writes spaghetti code.

    While forming questions, keep more of open-ended questions. This will help you understand the candidate’s perspectives and opinions. Asking opinionated questions is to judge the person’s thinking process.

    The reason being that the tech stacks and way of doing things can change. So, you need people who can easily adapt to the changing requirements with a smile on their face and a good attitude.

    Writing the code for an app or a software is easy, but thinking like a developer is not. So, look for thinkers and innovators, not just coders.

  • Live Coding Test: Now to the part, where you drill the candidate further and ask them to sit in a coding test. For remote interviews, you can ask them to take this test from home.Some companies when they hire app developers give a couple of days to the candidates to take the test. Others take it on the same day, while some skip it altogether.

    Well, don’t skip it. Take the test, no matter, even if you make it for half an hour. The motive is to see the candidate’s performance and how they can handle the pressure.

    Moreover, a live coding test allows you to assess the person’s logic and their ability to explain their work.

    Remote live coding tests can be done via screen sharing. Remember that the motive is not to find the right answer but to find the right solution. You need to keep an eye on how the candidate interacts with the requirements and forming the code, rather than whether they have missed a colon or have not written the right syntax.

• Hiring (Making the Decision)

  As soon as the interview is over, fill out the candidate’s profile or pen down your thoughts on the paper. Plus, save the candidate’s details who have come up for the interview.

  They may not be a good fit for your company today, but they can be one in the future. Once you have your notes, discuss them with the technical and the HR team.

  HR people can be a better judge of personality while the techies will help you assess technical skills. The motive is to find the right balance between soft and hard skills.

  You compromise on either of them, the outcome won’t be as good as you expect. Before hiring a developer, look for a person who can work in your company. Again, technical skills can be furnished, taught, and improved.

  But a person’s personality is ingrained, and you cannot or won’t have the time to change that. Hence, hire a people’s person who is good at coding and has a learning attitude.

Let’s Wrap it Up

To hire mobile app developers, you need to understand a few important things. One, look for a person who has a better personality and can become a part of the team. Lone wolves are not great for the company culture, no matter how good they are at coding stuff.

Second, pay equal attention to the soft and hard skills of the person and find the right balance between the two. Hiring a process and it must be followed through the end to ensure the required results.

Plus, you will need to change the process, without losing the principles and logic attached to it. Since every company has a different culture, history, and journey, find people who can become a part of that journey and not thwart your progress.

Follow our guide on how to hire mobile app developers and you will be good to hire the next lot of app developers easily.