Tips for Hiring a Software Developer at a Startup [10 Best Techniques]

Want to expand your existing business?

Already have a software development idea and need someone who can execute your idea?

If yes, your search ends here.

You need to hire dedicated software developers who perfectly fit your requirements.

Hiring the right candidate could be one of the biggest challenges if not taken measurements properly. As the global population of software developers is about to reach 28.7 million by 2024, you need to put some real effort into finding the right talent for your startup.

Being a top custom software development services provider firm, we have decided to come up with tips for hiring a software developer at a startup.

So bookmark this blog if you want a dedicated software development team for your business.

Through this blog, you will find:

• The best tips for hiring developers
• What you can avoid while hiring developers
• What to look for in a developer

So let’s learn about the tips that help you how to hire software developers who meet your project requirements and goals.

10 Top Tips for Hiring a Software Developer at a Startup

Talented developers are difficult to find as they are in a lot of demand among startups and entrepreneurs. You need to know how to hire software developers and some of the best places to hire software developers that help you find the ideal developer for your software project.

Check the essential tips below.

1. Clarify the Software Development Requirements in the First Place

   To ensure transparency in the hiring process, you need to discuss your business needs with the developers. In fact, you can talk to the developers to ensure they understand your requirements and assure you to deliver the project within the estimated software development timeline and software development cost.

   This will help you find the right developer who perfectly understands your requirements, commits to delivering the best quality, and fits into your budget and timeline.

   If you want to ensure your software requirements get properly define, then use of software requirements template is important. Using a software requirements documentation template helps at this stage. Here is SRS template to help you. Download it for free.

   

   Download

   

2. Track Your Startup Hiring Process

   Being a startup owner, you need to ensure that the hiring process is in line with the startup and you are able to get talented applicants for the open position. In addition, the hiring process should be efficient enough even when you want to scale your business and want more software developers on your team.

   So, go through each level of the hiring process, from defining the responsibilities of the talent acquisition team to the technical recruiters who will validate the skills of the developers. In fact, you also use some of the best HRMS to keep track of what’s going on.

3. Ensure the Developers are Able to Fit Into Your Work Culture

   Every individual has a different mindset and working style. Therefore, while hiring programmers, you must ensure that they have an open mindset and are ready to fit in all the situations to help you save on financial resources and time.

   Even if someone is working remotely, just keep a tap on their working style and find how much they are capable of delivering quality work in the estimated timeline. And simply, if they don’t match your company’s culture, it will get difficult for you both to work things out.

   It is better to discuss the work policies and culture beforehand with the developers so that they are prepared and have a mindset of working in your preferred working environment.

4. Be Clear of Who You Want in Your Team

   Before you jump into finding an ideal software developer for your startup, you should be aware of the type of developer you are looking to hire, whether it could be a full-stack developer, back-end, or front-end developer.

   In fact, you might also want to how to hire offshore developers who have some specialized technical skills, such as AR, VR, AI, IoT, and ML, you need to screen candidates for their soft skills. There are different roles in the software development team. Ensure that the person adds value to your team.

   Also, there is this debate on whether one startup should hire a fresher or an experienced developer to get things done immediately. To be honest, you should not completely judge a candidate based on their experience but also look for their skills and abilities. This way, you will be able to hire a mix of freshers and experienced developers.

   As you hire a mixed team of freshers and experienced developers, there are chances you face difficulty to manage your team. Check these tips on how to manage your software development team. Following the mentioned tips helps you to effectively and efficiently manage your remote software development team for your project development.

5. Test the Developer With a Real-life Technical Problem That You Have Faced

   Actually, this is about something other than giving some coding challenges. Instead, this is the scenario where you need to identify how well they could have managed the same situation if they faced the same problem.

   As you might already have tackled it really well, you know the best possible solution. However, if the developer also managed to give an apt response to the challenge, you should definitely hire them to work on your entire project.

6. Don’t Always Believe in What is Written on the Resumes

   Knowing a candidate apart from what they have written on their resumes is always recommended. In short, you need to discuss key areas that the developer hasn’t mentioned in the resume.

   This is how you will get to know the developer better. In fact, it is also observed several times that the developer fakes some skills and accolades on their resume just to impress the interviewer. But in reality, they might not have any idea of it. Therefore, it can’t be overlooked while hiring developers.

7. Have One More Person With You to Interview the Candidate

   Let’s be honest about the fact that we all become biased sometimes while favouring anyone. But when you are expecting the right talent in a resource-constrained startup environment, you simply can’t hire someone based on favouritism.

   This situation could vary from person to person. Therefore, you just need to be alert and make a wise decision about hiring the right developer only based on their skills and experience. Hence, there is nothing wrong with taking a second opinion from a project manager or a technical person when you hire a developer.

8. Don’t Underestimate Communication Skills

   Even though you are going to hire a developer who will be responsible for writing codes for your software project, you shouldn’t ignore this skill. As the developers also need to understand your requirements in order to deliver the expected results, excellent communication skills are a must.

   While interviewing the developers, you can ensure that they are able to understand your requirements and have a brief understanding of their job responsibilities. Also, check how efficiently they are able to grasp your questions and are able to answer them.

9. Design a Relevant Set of Questions for the Developers

   Sample tests are very much part of the screening process to find the ideal developer for the startup. Therefore, you need to ensure that you design sample tests relevant enough to identify a developer’s skill set.

   Design a sample test where you pick some questions that are close to or related to your product or business. Doing this will give you a clear picture of how a candidate approaches and solves the technical challenge.

10. Decide on a Budget Before You Hire a Tech Talent

    Having a startup business, budgeting is really important at each step of the way, even when we talk about hiring a talented developer. Though developers are in high demand, startups still have high ground by being more creative when it comes to hiring a software development team.

    So, on a limited budget, a startup needs to focus on hiring the best talent. You can also compare the salary of developers based on different geographical locations and hire them to work remotely.

    If you are unaware of the cost associated while hiring software developers, you can refer to our detailed blog post on how much does it cost to hire software developers?

After discussing the startup hiring tips, let’s check what you need to look for in a developer. Of course, there are various qualities a developer possesses. Therefore, define which skill is most useful for you in the next section.

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6 Things to Check Before Hiring a Software Developer

There might be several skills a developer could possess. However, you need to look for only those skills which are relevant to your software project. Let’s explore more in this section.

1. The attitude to solve complex technical challenges and the ability to handle the pressure of a deadline.
2. Good communication skills to ensure the developers are able to understand your requirements and deliver the same results you have asked for.
3. Ensure the software developers can fit into your work culture and are open to working on even difficult projects.
4. Check for technical knowledge and skills and find out their level of expertise in using any specific programming language, technology, framework, or database.
5. You should hire someone who has at least a few years of experience so that they can add more value to your startup.
6. Look for someone who writes great code, desires to learn new things, and has the ability to scale your business at double speed.

Apart from looking at the skills, there might be some challenges that occur while hiring developers for a project. You need to learn about them beforehand so that you can avoid them while hiring developers. So let’s dive in.

5 Things to Avoid While Hiring Software Developers

Here are a few things that you need to avoid while hiring software developers to ensure you get the best talent onboard.

1. Opting for cheaper options and hiring someone who is less experienced and has fewer skill sets.
2. Restricting local options is not always a good option, as you might need to hire developers from different locations as well.
3. Never hire a developer without an interview process as you will not be able to know their skills, technical as well as communication skills.
4. Not going through their portfolios and background to check with working style and technical abilities.
5. Not considering signing NDAs and other privacy policies while working with the software developers.

In case you are considering hiring software developers for a limited period or a short project, then Space-O Canada can help. In fact, we have helped more than 300 businesses to build software solutions within the estimated budget and timeline. Let’s check how Space-O can help you, too, in building software and earning great revenue out of it.

How Space-O Helps Businesses With Hiring Software Developers?

Space-O is one of the leading software development companies in Canada, so one of the advantages of offshore software development with us is that you get a talent pool of software developers. We offer a flexible hiring model that perfectly suits a startup’s business needs. Whether you are looking to hire developers full-time or on an hourly basis, we fulfill all your demands.

In fact, we allow you to take a one-on-one interview with our software developers so that you form a software development team structure that fits your requirements.

Apart from this, you get various software development services with us, such as custom software development, enterprise software development, software MVP development, and software migration and upgradation.

Space-O is known for offering:

• NDA for data protection
• On-time project delivery
• Quality work from experienced software developers
• Flexible hiring model
• Regular work updates

Apart from this, we are known for designing and developing several top software solutions for startups worldwide. Some of the top solutions we have built for the clients are AZ Stretch, Disposable Camera App, and meat processing and packaging software. Click here to learn more about our work experience in different industries and check our portfolios.

Still looking for more answers on hiring software developers for your project? Then check the next section, where we have answered a few FAQs to help you solve your doubts.

Ready to Hire Software Developers?

We hope this blog has helped you learn some of the best strategies to find and hire the right developer for your project. Implementing these strategies into your hiring process will eventually lead to shortlisting the best developers who would also fit into your budget.

You can also get in touch with Space-O if you want to hire the best talent without doing all this tiresome work. As we offer a flexible hiring model, our developers will perfectly fit your requirements. In addition, our developers are well-versed with the latest technologies and trends and have years of experience building software solutions within an estimated timeline.