What will a good developer bring to the table?
A good code is readable, easily maintainable, testable, and scalable. Good software developers shall consider all these attributes while writing a code. This will reduce the organization’s effort (and also money) in maintaining the code base, scaling up the operations, or to ramp up a new joiner in the technology.
Homework before starting to hire
Before putting up a job description, you should gather sufficient information on the following
- List down all features of your product/service that needs to be coded
- Identify the competency that is needed for fulfilling your software requirements. For example, should the candidate be familiar with android/iOS platforms, database management, big data, web design?
- What are the different roles that are needed to fulfill your requirement? Do you need an architect, a specialist in a certain technology?
- Decide whether the role is relevant for a short duration or does the software need maintenance for a long duration
- Finalize your budget
- Write a good job description highlighting the good things your startup has to offer
- In the job description, clearly indicate the skillset you are looking for. For example, if your startup deals with web servers, you can mention Node.js or PHP in the description. Likewise, react.js if you are concentrating on user interfaces.
Hiring models for startups
Startups can choose one of the following hiring models after weighing the pros and cons of each
1. A complete in-house development model
In this model, all developers are full-time employees of the startup. The advantage of this system is that the employees will have a higher sense of belongingness and might contribute to the organization in more than one way.
On the flip side, building an in-house team and retaining all the employees for a long time is a tough task. You need to have a good network in order to attract good talents from the industry. You are also responsible for the technical growth of the employees and other financial factors like insurance, vacation time, training costs.
2. Outsourcing model
If the software requirements are small and do not need continuous maintenance, you can hire freelance software developers to fulfill your requirements. However, for large requirements, a single freelance developer is not sufficient. Coordination would be a difficult thing to achieve if you hire more than one freelancer. In this situation, you can outsource the job to organizations that specialize in providing support of this kind.
We, at PaceWisdom have full-fledged teams skilled in various software technologies. This will save you the hassles of finding the right talent, training them, and extracting bug-free work from them. Also, with an experienced team at work, the number of iterations is reduced and so is the time to market.
3. Hybrid model
Here, a part of the work is done by the in house development team while the rest is outsourced. The success of this model depends on the skills of the project manager who has to coordinate the activities between the two teams so that the timelines are not disturbed.
A good way to start
One way to attract qualified developers is to have a prototype of your startup’s product/service. Nothing beats a visual demonstration of your idea. If you know to code, you can write a working code in programming languages meant for rapid prototyping, like Python. Or, you can also hire a freelancer to do it for you. You can find freelance programmers on websites like UpWork, Stack overflow, GitHub Jobs. Once you have a prototype with only the basic features, it becomes easier for you to demonstrate your idea and attract developers who can help you come up with a complete production level code.
How to identify good software developers?
Usually, several cross-questions on the project mentioned on the candidate’s resume bring out the passion in the candidate. If the candidate gives a satisfactory explanation to all the questions you had about his/her previous projects, there’s a higher chance that he/she has given his/her 100% into it.
If you are not a coder yourself, you can use any of the online assessment tools available on websites like HackerRank, Codility, HackerEarth, etc., to rate your developer.
Always make sure that the potential hire gets the vibe of your startup right. This is important when you expand your team onboarding more developers.
Which is the best hiring model in present times?
Remote hiring can be challenging in times when the world is suffering from a pandemic. Even if you are successful in hiring a few developers, onboarding will pose more challenges since continuous face to face interaction between the team members is crucial for a good start.
With the majority of the developer community preferring to work from home, it would be a wiser choice to go in for pre-established teams that have good coordination skills.
Pace wisdom solutions provide a complete outsourcing solution by setting up a skilled and dedicated offshore team to meet your engineering requirements.
