How to Hire a Software Developer

Nov 29 2008

_Note: This is part of a series on hiring software developers.  See articles tagged with interview for the series._

We just finished a round of recruiting at our company, and I’m somewhat happy it’s over.  Hiring software developers, or any other type of employee, is never an easy task.  How do you know you’re picking the right person? How do you know if they’re qualified? How do you know they’ll deliver as well as they interview?  These are all questions we ask ourselves as we’re harassed by recruiters, rummage over resumes, and get our interview questions ready.  However, I’ve learned a great deal during this last round of recruiting, and am happy to say it’s no longer a painful process.

Here’s the one liner: If you go into the hiring process without a strategy, like most things, you’re doomed to fail.  It’s important to get your strategy down before you even post the job ad.  You need a clear pipeline from start to finish, so you can manage the process easily.  Plus, hiring somebody who’s part of a team should never be a one person job.  That doesn’t mean give the bad parts (like phone screenings) to other people.  That means getting your team involved- and allowing them to give critical feedback on a candidate.  It’s easy to do that if you have a strategy that allows clear benchmarks when comparing candidates.

We break our hiring pipeline into three major parts:

1. The Phone Interview
2. The In House Interview
3. The Follow Up Interview

I’ll dig into each part in later posts, but it’s important to note it all starts with getting resumes in the first place-  and that requires a solid ad.  You’re not only announcing the job position, but you’re selling yourself to the world.  The ad, as well as resumes, will be the subject of our next post.

Stay tuned!