Ultimate Guide to Hiring A Software Development Company

Hiring for Software Development Company
Author: Jyoti Yadav
Posted On February 15, 2021

Recruiting a software development organization can be a merciless cycle, and to be honest, it shouldn't be. Hiring a software development company is not rocket science. The tough part is finding one that is the ideal fit for you, capable of understanding your requirements and delivering them to you.

The objective of employing a (custom) software development company is to find the right team, for the correct kind of project, at the ideal time. However, some unacceptable accomplice is frequently picked for projects dependent on skewed estimates for vague project scopes.

Then, the recruitment cycle itself has various stages, each of them distinct and complicated, presenting an extravagance of pitfalls and potential false steps.

The recruitment process remotely is a tradition now for all the businesses and industries because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This comes with its own set of challenges, which can be new even for experienced professionals.

Also, in order to even have a recruitment process in the first place, you need recruiters, and you need to make sure they’re the right people for the job.

What Should You Consider Before Kicking Off the Recruitment Process?

There is one fundamental question you need to ask yourself before you even start thinking about recruiting:

"Do I need to recruit another developer in the first place?"
This may seem a bit self-evident, but it really isn’t. You’d be surprised how often developers get hired without a well-defined purpose, just to “expand the team.”

Don’t make that mistake. You have to know exactly why another developer is necessary, otherwise you end up wasting their valuable time. In order to establish whether you do need to add a new member to your team, ask yourself something else:

“Who do I need? What kind of skill set do they need to possess?”

This depends on what projects you have in the works. Are they missing something? Are you falling behind schedule? Are there any areas in need of improvement? If so, well, there you have it—that’s where you should allocate more human resources.

The easiest way to learn what is missing or could be improved is to talk to your developers and get feedback directly from them. Your current team is also your best window into diagnosing the possible symptoms of work falling behind schedule, which may include unfinished tickets at the end of a development sprint, low team velocity, or failure to meet deadlines.

Having identified your needs, you can set clear and specific expectations for your developers right from the start:

  • What projects will they be working on?
  • What will their responsibilities be?
  • What role will they serve on the team?

That last question in particular is crucial. Skills are one thing, but sometimes you may require someone to fill a specific role that’s missing from your team. Beyond needing just another software developer—which is a very valid reason in itself—it usually goes one of three ways:

1) You need a specialist
You might be feeling the loss of an expert who fits a specific specialty with their one of a kind skill and ability. A developer experienced with a specific system, for example, Flask or Django. Somebody knowledgeable in React Native, so you can fabricate a cutting-edge mobile application. A machine learning expert, in case you're getting into new innovations. Those are nevertheless a couple of models. As your projects change, so do your personnel needs. Adjust in a like manner.

2) You need a leader
You may have all of your technical requirements met, but still lack a team member with the right personality to lead the others and make sure the work runs smoothly. A Scrum Master is someone you always want to have on your team, but an arguably greater necessity is an individual who is a developer themselves and understands all the ins and outs of both coding and the technical requirements of a particular project.

3) You need a breath of fresh air
You may have assembled a full team of highly skilled professionals, whose only additional need is someone to bring something new to the table. This can benefit the team in all sorts of ways: increased motivation, improved atmosphere, reshuffling of responsibilities, teaching and learning from one another, approaching potential problems from a different angle—you name it.

Once you’ve addressed all of these preliminary concerns, the time is ripe to consider another burning issue with hiring software engineers…

Why Are Developers So Hard to Find?

The greatest problem with recruiting software engineers is rivalry.

The greater the city you're in, the fiercer the battle to hire the best. You may imagine that a bigger market gives a more beneficial stream of developers, yet actually, it's practically difficult to employ great engineers in spots like India or the USA.

Also, if the position you're hiring for is remote, you're seeking that ideal applicant with for all intents and purposes the whole world. Not to paint excessively grim of an image, but rather the two circumstances require a ton of aptitude to explore effectively.

Top ability gets sucked up by the important players in the blink of an eye, leaving you stressing to discover anybody to deal with your project.

Employing software engineers is particularly dicey for organizations without a grounded, esteemed brand. If you fall under this category, you may find that engineers either don't have any desire to go along with you or will leave you the moment the project gets exhausting for them.

Besides, the market is slanted toward the developers themselves, who can select the organizations that will furnish them with the best advantages and compensation.

All is not lost, though.

While the competition might be savage and high-sway developers ever harder to discover, the task isn't unimaginable. We'll tell you the best way to begin on enrollment and face the numerous difficulties it presents.

How to Start Recruiting Software Developers?

When you begin looking for developers, you need to choose between two courses of action:

  • Hire a headhunting agency
    A potentially effective solution, though a costly one.
    Let's assume you do choose to employ a headhunting agency from either the UK or the US to meet your enrollment needs. Do you realize what amount it will cost you?
    You may pay as much as 25% of the hire’s yearly salary.
    Putting such amounts in recently recruited employees might pay off later on, however the underlying cost will delay the moment you begin seeing a profit for your investment.
    Thankfully, there's another choice.
  • Recruit by yourself

The alternative option in headhunters is to require the recruitment effort upon yourself. It is a huge test, however relying upon the size of your organization, this arrangement may demonstrate more practicality. One of the issues with “insourcing” your software engineer recruitment is that you might not have the privilege skillset onboard to discover great recruits. For instance, your HR office may think that it's hard to distinguish and attract quality candidates.

Another potential snag could be your project managers attempting to handle the task themselves. They might know their approach around software development, however would they say they are equipped enough as recruiters to get the job done?

At Athmin Technologies, we believe wholeheartedly in taking recruitment into your own hands.

Indeed, we trust it so firmly that the difficulties we've referenced above inspired us to compose this blog and share the best practices that, in our collective experience, we would say, lead to important software development recruits.

Having said that, let’s take a closer look at what you can do to give yourself a battling chance in the competitive business of recruiting engineers. There are two approaches: outbound and inbound.

Outbound Methods of Recruitment

Is it conceivable to make a viable cycle for recruiting software engineers that brings important competitors at a reliable pace?

Indeed, it is. Here's the manner by which to get it going.

In this part of the blog, we will examine outbound strategies for recruitment. Utilizing the outbound methodology, your system is to discover suitable possibilities for your software engineering positions and lure them to go after a position at your organization. The thought is to connect and cull ability from the employment market.

This stands in opposition to the inbound methodology, where the engineers discover you and come to you to work at your organization. You can find out about it in the following area.

Outbound enrollment surely is a difficult task, yet there are demonstrated strategies you can use to expand the chances of influencing engineers to your side, going from exemplary LinkedIn messages to more imaginative techniques like workshops and hackathons.

1. Direct search via LinkedIn and other portals

The common method of arriving at potential software development recruits is to send them a message through LinkedIn or a comparative medium. This strategy is basic for an explanation—it's major to your recruitment achievement. For Athmin Technologies, this is as yet the top channel for finding new developers.

The vital distinction among progress and disappointment here is the manner in which you make your first message or your effort. A decent first contact message reflects the best practices found in the best deals messages; it should be fascinating and viable. Ask yourself:

"What can I include in the message to make it impossible to ignore?"

Here are a few convenient effort tips to get you started:

A. Include the compensation range in your message
This is a must since it has become an industry-standard by now.

B. Include the location of your job posting
Remember that most developers aren't hoping to move and you should make your deal much better to get them to do it. Additionally, in case you're searching for somebody who will be working remotely, notice that in the message, too.

C. Tell the candidate about the technologies they’ll be working with
Any bleeding edge technologies you might be utilizing could switch things around in support of yourself and persuade the developer to pick you.

D. End the message with one, crystal-clear call to action
This could be either "email us," "visit our site," or "schedule a call." Again, the subsequent stage should be quite obvious; don't compel the candidate to think.

If there are other aspects of your offer you'd prefer to feature in the outreach, here's one basic standard to follow: pick the advantages that different you from the opposition. Those are your key selling focuses and you should bring up them first. If your company has great employee advantages, add a couple of words about them. If it's an advanced and energizing project, ensure the up-and-comers are made mindful of that.

Nonetheless, ensure that the content of your outreach is all killer and no filler. The reason for this message is to impress the candidate, not advise them regarding all the details. That comes later.

2. Recruitment through sharing knowledge: conferences, workshops, and hackathons

A less clear, yet regardless viable, recruitment methodology is sharing your association's tech information at gatherings, workshops, and hackathons.

It's a mutually beneficial situation: you give the event attendants a chance to educate themselves, while simultaneously picking up an opportunity to enlarge your network and open new individuals to your organization.

Summary
Outbound techniques for recruitment are an intricate subject, and a similarly thorough inside gander at the inbound methodology awaits you in the following segment of the blog.

Inbound Methods of Recruitment

Once you have a sound system of inbound recruitment opportunities in place, the engineers should come to you and ask to join your team.

Here are the few Inbound Methods of recruitment you will find at Athmin Technologies.

1. Job postings on job portals

Job postings can be as successful as could be expected, even for engineer positions—if you put in the effort to set them up effectively.

Miscellaneous elements impact the productivity of your job posting, especially when you’re focusing on developers. We’ve compiled some key guidelines for you:

  • Always include information about the compensation, separate by seniority if possible.
  • List down the technologies the engineer will be working with.
  • Feature the perks and advantages of employment at your organization.
  • Consider separating your requirements into “must-have” and “nice to have” categories.
  • Outline your recruitment process to set clear expectations right from the beginning.
  • Empower the peruser to contact your HR department and pose inquiries in case of doubt.
  • Try not to bypass vital details—just convey reality.
  • Update the job posting dependent on criticism or inquiries during the interview.

When you have the content of your job offer ready, it's an ideal opportunity to post it around the web and hang tight for inbound candidates. In case you're searching for motivation, here's a waitlist of employment entries to post your software engineer openings on:

  • Naukri,
  • Times Job,
  • Upwork,
  • Indeed,
  • Monster,
  • LinkedIn Jobs,
  • AngelList,
  • Dice,
  • Glassdoor.

2. The Careers page on your website
You should have a career page on your website. So that if someone joins your organization, they can easily apply for a job through the career page.

Posting job offers on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter
You're investing a considerable amount of time and energy building a following on social media channels, for example, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. It's completely sensible that you utilize that following not only to attract new clients, but also recruited employees, including software developers.

Ad campaigns
The ultimate approach to consider for your inbound recruitment are paid campaigns using Facebook and Adwords. You will need to set on one side a budget for such operations, of course, but a well-profiled campaign can be very effective.

Five Fundamental Dos and Don’ts of Recruiting

Too much to do
Try not to make recruiting superfluously hard on your candidates. On the off chance that it's too arduous, a nuisance, or has an excessive number of steps, you will deter them from doing their absolute best before you even recruit them. If you make your cycle easy, your candidates will thank you for it.

Wasting time
If you value your applicants’ time, you value them as people—now, that is a good start to any relationship. This goes both ways, too; their time is precious, but so is yours. Don’t take too long. Be efficient, plan ahead, make the process as swift as possible.

Homework
Candidates loathe being compelled to experience a lot of futile, inconsequential movements on the grounds that. If there's one thing individuals totally can't stand, it's getting bogged down in bureaucracy. Ask just as much as you truly need from them, and they will joyfully oblige. Also, it bodes inadequately for your future cooperation if you swamp them with million activities from the get-go simultaneously.

Vagueness
Be straightforward, not obscure. Keeping your candidates in obscurity isn't helping you or them. Provide them with an entire set of information from the get-go, be forthright about your assumptions, and deal in specifics only.

Poor feedback
"Poor" doesn't signify "negative," as you may already know. Positive or negative, it's the quality of your feedback that is important. Give it generally, give it well, and give it quickly—or not in any manner. Point out explicit reasons that prompted a definitive choice to sign an agreement or not.

Six Stages of the Recruitment Process

Job offers
First of all: you need to make it realized that you're searching for new developers. At this stage, two strategies for recruitment apply—outbound and inbound.

To recap, at the very least outbound recruitment implies you discover the developers, while inbound recruitment implies the engineers discover you.

Collecting CVs
Once your job offer is out, individuals will (ideally) begin handing their applications over. If your posting is sufficiently appealing and you advance the opening appropriately, you ought to expect critical traffic with numerous applicants battling for the job.

Screening
At this stage, you screen your candidates, which means you go over their CVs and LinkedIn profiles, and choose whether you need to proceed onward to the following phase of the recruitment cycle with them.

Screening is profitable on the grounds that it confirms whether a candidate checks the entirety of the most significant boxes for the job of a software engineer, for example,

  • Technical skills,
  • Professional background,
  • Salary expectations,
  • Knowledge of English,
  • Willingness to work on a B2B basis (if your company uses this business model with developers).

If a candidate doesn’t meet those basic requirements, you can securely turn them down as of now at this stage. It saves you, your HR recruiters, and your IT recruiters valuable time later on.

The HR interview
The main reason for the HR interview is to get rid of the candidates who are unmistakably not ideal for the job. They may have checked all the cases at the CV-level, but actually sitting down with a person face-to-face and hearing them answer your recruiters’ particular inquiries is something different completely.

The technical interview
To employ engineers, having experts with specialized expertise lead this phase of the recruitment process is an absolute necessity.

Feedback
No matter what, the time has come to settle on the choice of whether you recruit a candidate or turn them down.

How Does the Recruitment Process Change When It’s Carried Out Remotely?

Most of the tips we've offered so far apply if you're recruiting on-site or not. Nonetheless, when the recruitment cycle happens remotely, it presents an entirely different set of difficulties you should know about. Here's a glance at what you should remember.

The challenges of the remote process
It may be obvious, but it needs to be said: it’s harder to get to know a person if you don’t meet them face to face.

If all of your discussions are done through a screen, it's interesting to have a hunch about somebody. That, however, even the most mainstream procedures for perusing an individual are in danger of failing.

It's not only recruiters for whom the remote meeting is more precarious—candidates can confront more troubles thusly, as well. Job interviews are unpleasant. There are numerous viewpoints the applicants don't have any command over. They don't know whether the recruiters will be decent, what questions they will ask for, and so on

The more touchpoints(modes of contact), the better
Before the pandemic constrained a large portion of us to work distantly, screening was the part of the recruitment cycle that sometimes got discarded—either because there were no conspicuous major issues that should have been tended to straight away or something that should have been explained had just been done before the HR interview with (like the length of the notification period in the past work or something confounding in the CV.)

In any case, when the whole cycle happens remotely, screening needs to occur. That is on the grounds that the more touchpoints (and methods of reach) you have with a candidate, the better.

  • Send the candidate more emails
  • Initiate the conversation with the candidate

The benefits of the remote process
So are there any advantages of going remote with your recruitment endeavors? Certainly.

First of all, it's significantly simpler to set up a meeting with a candidate during an available time when it's remote. An interviewee that is now utilized at another organization essentially needs to take a break from work for an hour or two, join the online meeting, and that's all there is to it.

Moreover, in some cases, the cycle requires a manager to meet with the interviewee, particularly when the role they're interviewing for is more explicit, similar to a Machine Learning Engineer. Managers' time is restricted and generally limited to office time, so a remote meeting can be better for everybody included.

In most cases, though, if candidates can perform the task on their PCs, simply ask them to share the screen in Google Meet. Along these lines, the candidates use the tool and the system they know, so there is no additional stress element related to using a new one.

The second benefit of such a solution is that the technical recruiter can see what tools the candidates use and how well they use them.

Is switching to a remote process a revolution?
Long story short: no, it's definitely not. The progressions you will see will be unpretentious. They will generally worry about ensuring everybody knows all they require.

To summarize, here are three things to focus on:

  • Share as much data as possible with others engaged with the cycle on your side.
  • Make sure the candidates understand what’s happening every step of the way. Reach out to them as much as you can.
  • Improve your cycles and make them more straightforward. You'll profit by that whether you perform them remotely or in person.

Five Qualities Your Recruiters Need to Recruit Great Software Developers

Professional
You know what they say about first impressions, right?

Your recruiters are the primary purpose of contact among you and your candidates. They represent your whole organization and speak to everything your brand stands for. For the individuals you turn down, your recruiters will be the extent of their experience in your organization.

That is the reason it is totally essential that you pick individuals doing your recruiting extremely, cautiously. How your candidates see them is the way your applicants will see you.

Regardless of anything else, this implies that your recruiters should be totally proficient. "All around educated" is somewhat of an odd take on the cold, hard truth; they definitely should know the rudiments of all that there is to think about your organization. Any inquiry an interviewee may have, they should be prepared to reply. Readiness is fundamental.

Organized
Think of the organization as the “technical side” of being professional.

Punctuality is one of the large segments here. If your recruiters are late for a scheduled appointment, or scarcely make it finally, it projects a relative shadow of helpless time on the board of your organization. They should be there early, trusting that the interviewee will come, with all that generally set up.

Empathetic
Empathy is generally one of the most awesome characteristics an individual can have. It can likewise be very helpful in the working environment, particularly if it's somebody working intimately with others, or whose occupation expects them to continually meet new individuals. Like, say, a recruiter.

Recruiters benefit from being empathetic in a variety of ways, however never more so than when an interviewee is an especially helpless fit for the work. Respectfully turning somebody down can once in a while be a gigantic challenge, and that is when empathy is required the most.

Respectful
Similarly to professionalism and organization, an equal might be drawn between empathy and respect—with inconspicuous differentiations.

Let's assume a job interview turns out badly. Out of the blue, the candidate is appallingly underqualified. There is actually zero possibility of your recruiters altering their perspectives on that person.

The appropriate response is to tranquilly, but decisively, turn them down—and afterward offer help.

Involved
Your recruiters should be involved with the software engineering community.

Soft Skills vs. Hard Skills

How about we start with the nuts and bolts: what are they?

Soft skills are a slack collection of personality traits identifying with how you behave around others. It's an umbrella term gathering a wide exhibit of attributes, including hard working attitude, innovative reasoning, decent behaviors, individual propensities, and so forth—all alluding to the relationships with one's partners in this specific circumstance.

Hard skills, on the other hand, are quantifiable, obtained capacities that require explicit information and preparing to play out specific assignments. They should be learned and can be obviously characterized, making them basically the conventional prerequisites your applicant needs to meet to get recruited.

Why Are Soft Skills Essential in Your Developers?

The following aspects to understand why soft skills are essential in your developers:

Communication
Communication skills make up a major, enormous part of soft skills, and all things considered. An uncommunicative engineer is an uncooperative engineer. If they're exorbitantly shy or withdrawn, they won't be a solid match for a climate that depends on collaboration and critical thinking.

Retention
When new talents join your group, you need to train them to an extent. It's a venture—once in a while huge, however consistently keen and vital.

People are the most important asset, so the thought is to pull in or form experts and keep them working for you.

Synergy
We as a whole know the saying, "The entire is more noteworthy than the amount of its parts." The equivalent is valid for your development group.

Each person in the group assumes a job in making it what it is. A solid and amicable workplace is a delicate environment, handily upset by a solitary engineer who is an especially helpless fit.

Feedback
Teamwork accompanies struggle; it's unavoidable. Various individuals have different opinions, and the work environment is the place where they conflict regularly. To dodge pressure and friction, your developers should be open to feedback, in any case, nothing will complete.

Respect
To finish it all off, we have a profoundly tricky, yet important quality: respect. Respect for one’s superiors, but even more so for their subordinates.

Five Reasons to Turn Down a Candidate

There are various reasons why you wouldn't want to hire certain engineers.

  • Lack of soft skills
  • Excessive financial expectations
  • Insufficient work experience
  • Inadequate knowledge of the English language
  • Unwillingness to sign a B2B contract

Final Thoughts

The writing is on the wall: all you require to think about employing software developers.

In case you're understanding this, you ought to acknowledge full well why giving additional consideration to each part of the recruitment cycle will deliver profits for your organization over the long haul.