How to Hire Software Developers:
A Complete Guide

Software developers are in high demand, with the pressure to engage and retain the best talent rising for businesses. Thus, the process of finding and recruiting qualified and talented programmers for your team becomes increasingly challenging. If you need assistance and guidance on this matter, read this guide to learn the ropes of quick and efficient hiring.

This article covers the best practices for hiring software developers in-house and through outsourcing. It is sure to help you master the art of candidate screening, selection, and management.

So, You Need a Software Developer? Think about These Issues First

As soon as you realize that you need a developer for the team, you need to do some preparatory brainstorming to define the task in more concrete terms. What task will you set for your software engineer recruiter? What specific criteria and qualifications should the candidate match? You can narrow the scope of recruitment efforts by focusing on the following aspects.

• Type of developer’s specialization and skills. Do you need a full-stack coder or a front-end developer for iOS mobile apps? Should your developer be able to work with AI models? Clarity about the tech stack is important and the initial stage.
• Budget for the new hire. You need to balance your expectations and your financial capacity. Make sure you factor in all the costs associated with getting a new employee on board, not only their official salary. The figure becomes way higher if you include software and hardware, the cost of recruiter services, onboarding, and the full scope of benefits and taxes.
• Work model. Do you want your new developer to work in your office? Are you fine with a hybrid work model? Will you agree to hire a remote software developer in another state or country? These aspects also require thorough analysis because of the lack of properly skilled coders in many locations.
• Prioritized soft skills. As you access the global talent pool and have pretty much flexibility in developer selection, you need to clarify your soft skill set expectations as well. The developer’s technical knowledge and expertise are only part of their qualifications, as even the most talented programmers often turn out to be poor team workers or fans of conflict.

The Hiring Process Step-by-Step

Now, let’s follow the process of recruitment software development step by step. What phases separate you from a target employee?

#1 A Killer Job Description

Writing a good job description and posting it on the right platforms to improve its visibility is your initial investment in a productive tech talent search. Include all mandatory tech skill requirements and separate them from optional, desirable skills so that you don’t limit access to the vacancy to potentially interesting and relevant candidates. Be transparent about work terms, salary, and benefits to avoid ambiguity that pushes many candidates back. Offer several contact channels to simplify the application process and lay out all application steps and requirements to get the full data from each contender.

Don’t over-rely on passive talent search because many truly capable software developers don’t scan the Web for lucrative job offers. They often have a steady workload from their clients and have to be reached out directly. So, if you fail to find the right talent amid the vacancy responses, hire a professional recruiter who will find and contact relevantly skilled experts on their own.

#2 Thorough Candidate Screening

Now that you have a set of software developer candidates for the job, it’s time to test them all to choose the best. The number of pre-approved resumes may be really high, so it makes sense to engage technology at the initial stage of screening. Use AI algorithms to weed out the candidates with insufficient skills and instruct the model to leave the top 10 resumes on the list. After this is done, you may engage a human recruiter in an in-depth check of the resume, portfolio, and additional documents to move on with the candidate selection.

#3 Job Interview

Interviewing is held with the most appropriate candidates who have passed the initial screening stage. This approach works well for companies that don’t have an extensive HR department and can allocate scarce recruiter resources to candidate search and evaluation. This way, by landing on 5-7 best software developer candidates, you may minimize the waste of time and resources on job interviewing.

Developer interviews are usually held in two stages – a technical and a personal interview. The first interview is meant to test the developer’s practical skills; it often includes a technical test that has to be completed in real-time. Some additional questions and problem-solving tasks may be given to the candidate to see how they apply algorithmic thinking and what programming methods they use in a variety of real-world situations.

Once the technical test is over and the candidate proves to have the required tech stack and knowledge, the recruiter holds a personal interview to assess their soft skills. It is also a great opportunity to discuss the candidate’s prior employment history, find out why they left their previous employers, and let them ask questions about the job position.

#4 Job Offer and Onboarding

A talented developer who excels at all the previous stages receives a job offer from you. At this point, you need to develop a well-articulated, detailed contract that lays out all work terms, obligations of parties, and legal aspects of your working relationship. After signing the contract, you should integrate the new employee into their new workplace by connecting them with a supervisor, explaining the business culture and norms in your company, and giving them the full set of communication channels.

How to Evaluate Candidates Before Hiring? Comprehensive Checklist

Are you new to recruiting and not sure about how to hire developers? Here is a handy checklist for evaluating the best candidates before making the job offer.

Tech Stack and Proficiency

The most important aspect for your consideration is the set of technical skills and knowledge your software developer should possess. This point refers to mastery of concrete programming languages (e.g., Python, Java, or C#) and technologies (e.g., AI, blockchain, data science, etc.). You should make it clear whether you’re targeting a full-stack programmer or you need a specialist for front-end/back-end tasks only. Their ability to develop mobile apps, knowledge of particular databases, and testing and debugging competencies should also be taken into account when composing the job description.

Problem-Solving Skills

Another vital dimension of a new hire’s evaluation is their algorithmic thinking ability and problem-solving skills. Code doesn’t always work as it should, so your hired software developer should be able to analyze the situation critically and solve complex problems based on their thorough understanding of data structures and algorithms. The simplest way to check these competencies is to give your candidate a live coding test or expose them to a whiteboard challenge (a design test for visualization of the design process on a whiteboard).

Experience and Track Record

The developer’s track record in their industry is also a rich source of data about their competencies and match for your job. Thus, you should go through their portfolio and open code resources on GitHub to see what they did, in which projects they participated, and what contributions they made.

Cultural Fit

Every company is a unique cultural ecosystem with its own rules, norms, and traditions. The new software developer should exhibit an ability to integrate into it, which is best checked by assessing their communication skills, adaptability, and openness to team collaboration. The recruiter may tackle this aspect of candidate evaluation by asking behavioral questions, such as their methods of solving challenges or handling conflict in the past.

Preferred Work Model

If your vacancy offers a certain degree of flexibility in work model selection, you need to evaluate the new hire’s preferences at an early stage of their consideration. For instance, you may favor in-house or hybrid employment, though you’re still open to remote work possibilities. The candidate may be, on the contrary, ready only for a remote job, which may cause problems in the future. So, you should discuss these perspectives before making the final decision about the job offer.

Salary Expectations & Your Budget

The financial aspect is one of the most important in the hiring process. While you might have voiced your salary offer in the vacancy, any candidate is naturally interested in learning about benefits, bonuses, potential pay rises, performance rewards, and other advancements they may count for in the future.

You should be honest with the candidate at this stage, as financial stagnation or a lack of promised rewards may cause the new hire to resign. The safest way to go with salary estimates is to scan the market and ensure that your offer matches the market average (ideally, it should offer something on top of that average package).

When Should You Consider Software Development Outsourcing?

Not all businesses can find the needed software engineer or developer locally. Neither can all businesses afford to relocate the properly skilled and talented staff from other states and countries to the place of their operations. Other reasons to hire remote developers are:

• A lack of specialized skills and expertise. Your business may need a developer with a narrow specialization, such as a rare programming language or advanced AI programming.
• Cost reduction goals. Local developers may have too high salary expectations, which are beyond your business budget.
• Time pressure for closing the vacancy. Companies that target quick scaling or experience a seasonal overload of an in-house team can benefit from fast and flexible software development outsourcing.
• Short-term, project-based tasks. There is no need to invest time and money into hiring a local expert full-time if you need a software developer for a short period or small, occasional assignments.
• Access to a global talent pool. Employers may wish to go beyond the tech expertise available in their location to find engineers and developers with a rare tech stack or unique experience.
• A strain on internal human resources. Businesses may experience occasional overload on their core team, thus wishing to distribute the burden across in-house and remote teams.

In any of these cases, a decision to outsource software development can help address your contingent business needs. It is also usually more affordable, thus giving you flexibility, breadth of choice, and vital cost savings.

Best Practices for Your Software Development Team’s Retention

So, you’re probably better informed about how to hire software developers by now. Yet, hiring is not the end of your challenge – from now on, you need to take proper care of keeping your staff loyal, committed, and willing to work for you.

• Always double-check that your package of compensation and benefits is in line with the market average.
• Offer profit-sharing incentives for top performers and allocate performance-based bonuses to those who go the extra mile for your business’s success.
• Cover training and professional development courses for staff to simplify their career progression in your company.
• Nurture a participatory culture that allows developers to partake in vital business decisions and cultivate a sense of ownership among staff.
• Take real care of the staff’s work-life balance and flexibility to avoid their burnout and loss of motivation.
• Cultivate strong leaders in the team to help capable employees grow.
• Foster an open, participatory culture and a conducive work environment.
• Reward achievements and contributions with monetary and non-monetary rewards.
• Listen and react to employee feedback to ensure continuous improvement.

If you have an outsourced software developer team, you may also apply the following retention strategies specifically suited to a remote workforce.

• Good communication and investment in long-term relationships are essential. To guarantee that everyone is on track, keep the outsourced team in the loop and conduct regular discussions of expectations and project deliverables. Find an optimal set of collaboration and project management tools that work well for all team members and contribute to effective communication. Appreciate and reward the remote team’s input.
• Work flexibility across time zones. Flexible work hours for staff in different time zones are your vital contribution to preserving the work-life balance for outsourced developers.
• Job stability and long-term engagement. While in-house employees value long-term career growth prospects, remote staff can benefit from predictable contract extensions, which give them job stability and security.
• Growth and learning opportunities. Remote developers should also have access to the company’s knowledge base, educational materials, and documentation. This way, you offer independent contractors and freelancers a vital professional development opportunity and skill upgrading to perform more complicated tasks and projects for you.
• Recognition and incentives equal to those of an in-house team. Introduce performance-based bonuses and guaranteed contract extensions for high performers. Notice and reward the team’s achievements to show that the outsourced team is as valuable for your business as the in-house team is.

Let GEOR Become Your Expert Software Engineer Recruiter

Are you looking for talented and qualified software developers? GEOR can connect you with vetted experts in a specific tech stack. We have a database of 40,000+ IT professionals from over 100 countries, giving our clients the freedom and flexibility of selection. By working with our experienced recruiters, you can quickly hire the needed expert without experiencing project interruptions or delays.