Strategic Tactics for Recruiting Skilled Software Engineers
Software plays an integral part in our lives, most businesses have a technical side that requires software development but recruiting qualified, driven, and passionate software engineers is not an easy task.
A number of companies are looking to hire skilled engineers, but proper tactics are needed to find the right technical candidates you need for your project. At Ellipsis Digital, we have spent time growing our technical networks and finding innovative ways to source credible software engineers for our clients. Here are some key recommendations to keep in mind when you want to recruit software engineers for a software development project.
Be Clear with Your Objectives
Don’t rush in recruiting software engineers, take time to understand your needs and objectives, and prepare a plan to find a software engineer or a team of engineers with the qualities you need to fulfill your objectives.
Ask yourself key questions such as, “what is the problem you need to solve? You need to hire engineers depending on the problem you want to solve. Also, are you developing a web app? A mobile app? A database? There are many areas of expertise among software engineers; engineers come in all shapes and sizes of diverse technical skills.
It is important that your job description relates to the needs that you have in order to qualify and filter out candidates upfront.
Don’t Just Rely on Job Boards
The search process can be very tough if you do not have software development experience yourself. When you post on standard job boards, you typically end up with a lot of incompetent prospects and a large number of applications to go through. But don’t worry, there are great engineers out there, and with the right tactics, you will find the one(s) that are great for your project.
The best way to find skilled engineers is to go where they hang out, join them, and show a genuine interest in their work. Any energetic software engineering community is an excellent place to meet skilled engineers who might be interested in new projects.
Conduct Skills-based Tests
Never hire a software engineer without a test project. It can be easy to hire the first engineer that looks good to you so you can get started but, we would advise you to wait to extend the offer till you see what they can do.
It’s easy to know candidate aptitudes through an interview, but it’s no substitute for a real skills assessment. In addition to covering the languages, tools, and frameworks your candidate already knows, be prepared to put their knowledge to the test.
Make sure that you investigate how the aspirant organizes their work, manages their time, communicates, takes the initiative, and deals with challenges when they encounter them.
Start Through Your Network Recommendations
Most engineers know other great engineers, who also know other great engineers, and so forth.
If one of your current employees can attest to the skill level of one of their connections, it will be quick and easy to double-check and then get them on board.
Employee recommendation plays a major role as the candidates recommended by your existing employees’ have legitimate eligibility, and they are able to perform their best to fulfill the demand of your business.
Contact their references
Finding the right candidate goes beyond what’s on their CVs, resume and what occurs in an interview, the best way to validate a candidate’s abilities and their experience is through references.
To find out their experiences and achievements, software engineering candidates should provide references from the job they had before, no matter what it was. For freelancers, ask for their most recent clients.
However, remember that almost all of the references they give you are going to be from people that the candidate would love for you to call.
Finishing up, hiring the right software engineers is challenging, but with patience, determination, and a little bit of testing, you can find an engineer who has all the right skills for your project.
Hiring Software Engineers?
For more information on hiring remote working software engineers and how Ellipsis Digital services fit into your digital strategy, contact us for consultation.
We help businesses and organizations find the right software engineers for their objectives and projects.
Written by Bernard Mwakililo who is an author at Ellipsis Digital. He write tech related topics that explore better ways to use technology to improve businesses.
