How to Hire Software Developer in 2021: Complete Guide

Despite the total crisis caused by the pandemic, some spheres continue to grow and prosper. These spheres have one thing in common ‒ they allow businesses to shift online. As a result, it’s getting harder to find and hire a great software developer these days. If you are to start a software development project and wonder how to hire software developers, keep on reading, because, in this article, we’ll going to find out:

• Why it’s hard to hire great remote developers in 2021
• Aspects to check when hiring a website developer
• How to hire software developers who are a perfect march for your project.

Let’s begin with the difficulties that 2021 holds if you’re looking for a superstar developer for your project.

Why it’s hard to hire great remote developers in 2021

According to CNBC, the profession of a web developer is going to be in extreme demand over the next five years. Career Group Companies agrees with this statement adding user experience and user interface designers to the list of the most sought-after specialists in 2021.

The spike in demand was also noticed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Bureau calculated the projected percent change in employment from 2019 to 2029. While the average growth rate for all professions is about four percent, the predicted growth rate for software developers is expected to be more than 20 percent.

How can it be? Why are these professionals so popular and so hard to get? As we said at the beginning of this article, the global all-round shift of all businesses to the online dimension caused a critical deficiency of software developers and other close occupations like designers, software quality engineers, project managers, business analysts, and others. Businesses that want to live now have to transfer all their services online. Therefore, they need software products to represent themselves online.

So what now? Do I have to wait in a queue when a developer wants to get my order? Don’t panic. There are a lot of high-quality software engineers and software development companies in the world you can reach for if you choose outsourcing.

Outsourcing type of cooperation implies a customer to partner with a third-party vendor that will deliver some services to the client. The outsourcing development team can locate nearby or in another country. The main trick here is that a client doesn't need to hire staff in-house but cooperates with it remotely.

Want to know more about the pros and cons of outsourcing IT support services? Read our blog post with a detailed review of the topic.

If cooperation with a developer who isn’t located in the same city is okay for you, let’s take a look at the aspects you need to check when thinking about how to hire a website developer.

Aspects to check when hiring a website developer

When opening a job board website, it’s quite challenging to believe that there’s a shortage of software developers. The high demand and competitive salaries made this occupation extremely popular, especially for countries where developers get salaries twice as large as other workers, or even more. As a result, we have a flood of young developers with little or no experience. Don't get us wrong, a lot of developers are good for business, but it's difficult to find the perfect match with such a variety. More than that, young specialists tend to exaggerate their experience in order to get better projects. So, how to sort the wheat from the chaff? Here are the aspects you need to pay close attention to when looking for a developer.

Check the expertise

This aspect is one of the main ones that are almost always exaggerated in the developers’ profile. No one wants a newbie to deal with their projects, especially if it’s connected with healthcare, military, financial, or other serious domains. To get a first order, young developers can lie in their CVs describing unexisting products “they created.” What is worse, some developers can use others’ products as their own, claiming that they developed them.

Not all developers are like this. A lot of young software engineers show their pet projects to prove their knowledge and skills in case they don’t have any commercial experience yet. How to understand that the person is lying about their experience? Here are the things that should put you on the alert:

• A young person claims he or she has a lot of experience.
• A young developer shows an incredible number of projects he/she developed
• A young developer claims that he/she created all those projects alone
• All the projects that a person shows are for different industries
• A developer can’t provide details on a particular product from his/her portfolio.

If you are dealing with a mature developer or development company, they can give you a comprehensive description of each and every product they created. Another significant aspect to pay attention to is the main focus a company chose. Usually, a company or an individual developer prefers to deal with projects in one or several domains. This way, a developer can grow faster and be more valuable for their clients.

Check the workflow

The company or individual freelancer’s workflow is one of the main factors that can make or break your cooperation. If a person doesn’t have a clear understanding of all the data they need from you to start their work, it means the person/company is inexperienced, and you can forget about consistent delivery of your product.

If you want a smooth development process on your project, you need to look for a team or an individual freelancer that has a clear workflow. A clear workflow means that a developer you hire has all the processes and their flow described. This description explains how each process is performed step by step in this team, who is responsible for the process, what input data is needed, and what outputs are going to be delivered.

If a vendor doesn’t have all these descriptions in a written form, you can be sure that there will be misunderstandings during your cooperation.

Check the culture and language

If the aspect with a language is relatively clear (a developer can’t understand exactly what you need them to develop if they don't have a decent level of English), then the cultural aspect may be unclear. Let us explain. The thing is, culture influences a person's work of style more than you can imagine. The way you’ll be communicating is predefined by the person’s breeding and cultural rules around this person.

For instance, Asian people live in a culture where older people are very respected. This fact influences how Asian workers communicate with their older colleagues. It’s not common to disagree if you are younger or express your opinion if it’s opposed to the one stated by a person older than you.

To ensure fruitful and frictionless cooperation, it’s better to find a team of an individual software engineer who shares the same value as you and is bred in a relatively similar cultural environment.

Now that you know what aspects to think through when starting your search, we can proceed to the main question of this post ‒ how to hire a web developer for your project.

How to hire software developers

To hire a great website developer, you should clearly understand what person you really need for your project. Then you need to make sure that the person/team has a flawless reputation. After that, you can ask your friends or business partners to recommend someone to you and then prepare yourself for an in-person meeting. More about that below.

Make a job profile

Like marketers create an ideal customer profile when they want to understand how to target and market a product or a service, the same way, you need to come up with a job profile for your ideal candidate. You can’t find a person that matches your projects’ requirements unless you write them all down and prioritize them.

When you know what technology your candidate should master (if it actually matters for you and you have your preferences), you need to understand what seniority level the person/company should have. The usual gradation divides all professionals into junior, middle, and senior developers. The level of seniority determines not only the depth of knowledge and years of experience but also the responsibility level. Here is the general description of these levels.

• Junior developers are people with no experience to two years. They have knowledge of their main technology, as well as general computer technology basics. These developers learn fast. They can make a lot of mistakes, usually can come up with only one solution to a particular problem. Such specialists should be mentored and guided. The person can’t solely be responsible for a project.
• Middle developer is a person with 2 ‒ 5 years of experience. They can take responsibility for a project but may need a consultation from another, more experienced specialist. These workers have great knowledge of their main technology, can additionally know and use some other programming languages. Middle developers can mentor newbies, take responsibility for a project, make valuable suggestions that concern technologies, and don't need a lot of supervision.
• Senior developers have 6 ‒ 10 years of commercial experience. They excel at more than one technology. Usually. these specialists don’t spend a lot of time on writing code they make more important decisions that concern both the technology and business sides of a product. Senior developers are the strategists with a comprehensive understanding of your business and future product and who create a roadmap for software product development.

Check the reputation

Reputation is everything in our digital age. Both software development companies and freelancer individuals value their reputation and do their best to leave their clients satisfied. Clients rate their vendors on such popular review platforms as Clutch or GoodFirms, creating or destroying developers' reputations.

If you want to know what clients think about your potential vendor, check their profiles on similar review sites to find unbiased opinions about them.

Ask to recommend you someone

If you have people in your network who ordered software development before, ask them to recommend a team/developer to you. Even if your friends can’t recommend anyone to you, because of their negative experience, you can still find out what aspects you need to pay attention to, what difficulties your friend faced during the cooperation, what to do or not to do when hiring a developer for your project.

Do your homework before an interview

It’s not only a developer who has to prepare before an interview. You should do it as well. You can find numerous versions of question lists to apply during the interview, yet, we don’t recommend you to use them. The templated questions, like “who you want to be in 10 years”, or “what are your strengths and weaknesses” may not be significant for your job position. Here are some tips for you to prepare for a job interview with a potential employee:

• Decide on where you can or can’t validate the technical skills and knowledge of a candidate. This is one of the most important steps you need to take before an interview. If you understand that your knowledge isn’t enough, invite a person you can trust or hire a company that can help you with that. This aspect may be less relevant if you’re looking for a junior specialist. However, if you’re hiring a middle or a senior developer, their technical interview should be performed by a person with approximately similar seniority level.
• Check the soft skills of a person. If a candidate has little experience and knowledge but is great with his/her soft skills, you can turn a blind eye to it. Nevertheless, if a person is great at his/her skills but can’t communicate openly or is arrogant, you can be sure that such a worker will cause more harm to your project than good.
• Make sure you can cooperate efficiently. When working with outsourcing teams, you need to be sure that the time zone difference allows you to have overlapping hours for live communication.

Wrapping up

Despite the shortage of high-quality specialists and the inability to have them in your office, organizations across the globe continue working on their software products, so should you!

If you need help with your software product, don’t hesitate and contact us. Our professional team of developers is ready to help you in no time!