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Hiring Software Engineers

Writer's picture: Violet MaileViolet Maile

he job listing is where the software engineering hiring process begins, so investing time and energy into writing a great job description is a worthwhile investment. The above listed list definitely helps with finding software engineers, however, posting your jobs to top job boards will not be enough by itself. It is best to avoid making-up job titles or unconventional ones such as Rockstar software engineer or Unicorn app developer.

It may be tempting to hire software developers who are perfect, brilliant, capable candidates, even if they are terrible fits for the specific context in which you need them. Deciding whether to hire independent software engineers or to use outsourcing agencies can be tricky. At this point, it should be clear that a software engineer that you employ is going to have to be able to work in a team. It is a given that outsourcing software engineers have no vested interests in your project, or at least, not in the things that they are hired for. While a baseline level of participation and interest in the world of software development should be expected from your HR department, your HR department does not have the expertise needed to verify your candidates particular skills. For hiring developers, having professionals with technical expertise lead this phase of your hiring process is a necessity. Essential Technical Skills -- Essential technical skills -- includes an understanding of the core programming languages that the developer should know day one in order to perform well at his or her job.

On a certain level, this makes sense, as a software engineers technical skills will determine the quality of work that they are capable of producing. Regardless, you are going to want to hire software developers that already possess a fair amount of these kinds of soft skills. In fixed-function software development jobs, Relatives may be something some training at the workplace can enhance, but budgets generally will not cover that kind of stuff for freelance software developers.

A great software developer needs to possess first-rate coding skills, laser-like attention to the project at hand, and that sprinkle of originality that allows them to come up with elegant solutions to complex problems. No candidate is a jack-of-all-trades, so be sure the skills you would like to have are not conveyed as a must-have in your job description. The primary goal of an interview with an HR department is to eliminate candidates who are obviously wrong for the job. If you do make a hire - let the candidates know why, what they did well, what they could do better. The insights that your recruiter can provide to the candidate about his or her performance in your recruitment process are invaluable, especially if you are not hiring. That said, you and your company would benefit by giving similarly in-depth, in-depth feedback to candidates that you eventually do hire, too. If the candidate you reject has had a good hiring experience with your company, and has received useful feedback from your recruiter, chances are that he or she will feel motivated to work on his or her skills, and try out applying to work for your company again when he or she is better. You will also want to encourage your current employees to recommend candidates to you for any open positions.

Exit interviews are your chance to obtain as much candid, valuable feedback as possible, while giving a software developer reassurance that any criticisms he or she gives are not going to come back to bite him or her later. Exit interviews may be one of the best ways to find out what software developer hiring pitfalls are dogging you and your team most. Show Make sure that the software developers you are hiring understand that you expect them to immerse themselves as they would have had this been no-trial-time, but also that you are looking to leverage a paid trial period so both of you understand as much as you can about whether or not they are going to end up being a good fit. If the candidate has intrigued you in an initial interview, offer them to take on a test or challenge so that you can see their software development skills in action. If the interviewer has zero programming skills, you may want to check a developers skills by asking the candidate to explain a complicated concept to a layperson. Recruiters at Robert Half can help you quickly find high-skill candidates, and they will assist in initial interviews, job descriptions, setting a proper salary range, and much more. You can hire worldwide, and thanks to Smashing Jobs tight focus, you are bound to land the right talent. To determine what roles you would like to recruit for, consider what kind of software you are building, and what complementary skills your dev team needs. If you can, also ask someone else to look at a software developers code for those tasks -- because these are easy tasks, it should not put undue pressure on your team, but it will give valuable insight into any gaps between what a software developer is doing and what you expect. Writing a thoughtful job posting that hits all the right notes, sorting through the piles of resumes the ad is likely to generate, reviewing candidates, and calling references all take weeks. Being crude or unwelcoming does no one any favors, and only has negative consequences later, regardless if a candidate gets the job or not. Get double-blind, double-checked reviews, by software engineers -- full-stack, backend, mobile, frontend, data, ML -- and managers who are currently working in big tech, high-growth startups, and places with a robust engineering culture.

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