There’s a smarter way to hire software developers
Posted by InterVenture on January 13, 2021“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.”
These wise words came from Red Adair, an American oil well firefighter and an innovator in a dangerous profession of extinguishing and capping oil well blowouts.
While hiring amateur software developers will not lead to a life-threatening hazardous event of devastating proportions, it could leave a significant negative impact on your business. In fact, Adair’s message is universal for all industries.
Technical knowledge, access to a relevant community, strong intuition, solid organizational skills, and a good capability to assess character: these are just some of the things that recruiters need to have in order to attract and hire software developers who are truly talented.
In general, recruitment techniques can be proactive (when you build talent pools) or reactive (when you start the recruitment process the moment there is a business need for a new hire).
At InterVenture, we developed a unique way of helping companies successfully hire software developers. Read more about this approach upon which we built our entire work philosophy.
Hiring software developers is challenging for more than one reason
When you’re looking to hire software developers, you are facing a multilayered challenge. In our experience, this challenge can be broken down into three parts:
- Accessing the right network and/or attracting the right people through your job ad
- Offering enough incentive to motivate the candidates to participate in the selection process
- Evaluating software developers from different angles (technical skills, soft skills, cultural fit, etc.)
Once you finally hire a software developer, these challenges are replaced with new ones that are directly tied to engagement and retention. But let’s focus on explaining the above-mentioned ones first. In the table below, we explained the essence of each challenge.
| Challenge | What’s it about |
| Accessing the right network and attracting talent through job ads | Talent may be hiding in plain sight. Still, it takes time to recognize it. Getting referrals through personal networks and mapping out relevant tech communities helps you narrow your search. On the other hand, software development job ads might be ill-positioned and based on transactional thinking, which leads to an insufficient number of candidates applying and/or unqualified potential hires sending their CVs over. |
| Offering enough incentive to engage candidates (particularly passive job seekers with proven expertise) | Looking at the software development job market, the demand exceeds the supply. Because of this, qualified developers are in a favorable position as they can freely choose their employers or the projects they’d like to work on. |
| Evaluating software developers | From language knowledge assessments and technical screening to testing professionalism, integrity, work ethics, and problem-solving skills – there is quite a lot to cover. Cultural fit screenings also play an important part. |
With this nice overview of the main issues, it’s a lot easier to come up with a systematic approach to hiring and improve your recruitment process long-term.
Continue reading to discover two important lessons of the many we at InterVenture mastered. Learning them enabled us to build cross-border engineering communities, successfully recruit and manage talent.
1) Hire software developers based on what they can do, not just what they achieved so far
A completely reasonable step in the recruitment process implies checking previous projects, as well as searching for proof of added value in terms of business growth, innovation, cost optimization, etc. Strong candidates might even be open source contributors, so checking their GitHub or SourceForge profiles is recommended.
However, the tricky part here is to see beyond the quality of work that has been done. So, how does one assess the candidate’s potential? In recent years, the recruitment industry has gravitated towards a credential-agnostic approach that argues that attitude, talent, and potential are more important than CVs.
When you think about this from an unconventional perspective, you can even find positive arguments for people who do have some experience, but are not specialists nor do they have perfect credentials. Without many finished projects based on a technology that is right up your alley, they can bring a fresh and original perspective to the table. Their vision is not clouded with previous methodologies, which can be a good way to make room for innovation.
At InterVenture, we believe experience is important for projects that require seniority, but so is testing the candidate’s ability to think outside the box. Creativity and problem solving are of great importance. Here are some of the ways candidates can be tested:
- Introduce timed algorithm testing (although there are some solid arguments against this type of testing, it’s merely to assess the candidate’s creativity, coding style, and knowledge of computer science fundamentals)
- Organize live coding sessions to assess the candidate’s level of knowledge in their primary programming stack
- Set up 2-week test projects to analyze the candidate’s attitude, collaboration style, integrity, professionalism, and more
- Give the candidate a technical problem or a challenge unconstrained by a specific language
Here, we face the Goldilocks dilemma: how much testing is not too much and not too little? How do you get it just right, so that you gather all the necessary information, but avoid disrespecting the candidate’s time? The answer is not a silver bullet: a lot of tech recruiting experience is required.
2) Hire software developers who share the same fundamental values as you
We said it once and we’ll say it again: competitive salary is not enough to engage A-players in software development. The winning combination implies a mix of shared purpose and values, as well as cultural proximity.
According to one recent research from 2018, the most difficult thing to evaluate during the selection process of a tech candidate is their technical skills. This has a lot to do with the lack of 1) the technical knowledge of the HR department and 2) the proper methodologies for testing and verifying skills.
Can you guess what was the second biggest challenge for companies according to the research? Figuring out whether or not the candidate is a cultural fit.
When you think about it, prioritizing cultural fitness makes sense because you can teach skills but you cannot teach someone values. Meta-analyses that investigated many relationships such as the one between a person and its job position and a person and its superiors, found that avoiding cultural mismatch can lead to higher employee satisfaction and better retention rates.
There are some misconceptions about hiring for culture fit that we learned about thanks to our partners. Read the most common ones below:
| Misconception | Why it’s not true |
| Cultural fit undermines diversity | Cultural fit means that the candidate’s attitudes, values, and beliefs are in line with the core values of your company. It doesn’t mean you’ll hire a developer who will agree with everything you say or that you’ll automatically merge various individual experiences and perspectives into a collective one. |
| Cultural fit will jeopardize our ability to innovate | As Walter Lippmann cleverly noted – “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” However, being a cultural fit doesn’t mean all team members would have the same opinion about everything. Rather it’s that they all have an agreement about how to discuss and vote on ideas, how to communicate and collaborate effectively, and more. Cultural fit doesn’t hinder your innovation; it helps you innovate faster. |
| Cultural fit implies the danger of unconscious bias of the person responsible for hiring | This is only partly a misconception. For instance, a recruiter who is not particularly experienced might favor candidates who had a similar education as them or share the same interests outside of work. Alas, this is not hiring for a cultural fit, but merely because of a personal positive impression. |
Hire software developers within 8 weeks with InterVenture
Here’s one question for you: why would you hire B-class software developers locally when you can hire A-class talent for the same budget remotely and enjoy additional benefits?
Companies that are determined to increase their market share and make an impact should think about long-term growth and don’t let borders stop them from doing so. This implies finding the right people for their team regardless of the location and building meaningful partnerships – not resorting to traditional IT outsourcing.
As you may know, in traditional tech recruitment, senior roles take approximately 35% longer to fill compared to the average roles. This process can last from several months to a year. This is why the mere idea of a bad hire gives managers the chills.
Here’s how we at InterVenture tackled this issue.
Because of our management team’s rich blend of experience in digital spaces in Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and the US, along with the process we’ve established – we managed to decrease time to hire to 6-8 weeks for entire remote teams and around 2-3 weeks to get you in touch with the most suitable RTM™ team. We perceive each new partnership as an opportunity for mutual growth.
Our turnover rates are still significantly lower compared to hiring engineers in-house or in other tech hubs around the globe. This is because we continue nurturing our ever-growing engineering community, we invest a lot in talent management, L&D programs, culture, benefits, and more. You can count on full support from our side – from sourcing and screening talents to handling all the HR workload and success management.
Learn more about The Own Team Model™ and Ready Team Model™ and we can help you hire the best talent out there.
Contact InterVenture for more information or book a free consultation. We’re always happy to hear from you.
