How to Hire Software Developers Like a Pro: ETEAM’s Approach
As per a recent survey, 86% of hiring managers admitted the challenge of finding and recruiting technical talent. In an intensely competitive arena, organizations cannot leave the recruitment of top-tier professionals to chance.
Gain insights directly from an experienced development company on how to expertly recruit, retain, and nurture skilled developers.
Why it can be challenging to hire developers in today’s work environment
The widening gap between supply and demand
The pandemic has ushered in unusual changes in business operations. More companies are embracing digital transformation to remain competitive and relevant. This surge in digital adoption has created an increasing demand for experienced developers who can assist businesses in implementing new technologies and navigating these shifts.
As the demand for skilled developers continues to rise, a widening gap between the demand and the available talent pool has become clear. This gap can be attributed to several factors:
- Staying up-to-date with the latest technologies has become more challenging than in the past. Developers must continually update their skills to remain relevant in the market.
- A disproportionate focus on experienced professionals by companies often results in neglecting the need to invest in the next generation of developers. Over time, this neglect can lead to a shortage of talent.
- Relying on freelance platforms to find and hire the least expensive developers fosters a race to the bottom in terms of compensation. Experienced professionals may feel demotivated due to inadequate pay, exacerbating the skill shortage.
Changes in recruitment strategy to hire remote developers
The pandemic triggered a wave in remote work, bringing some significant changes. While remote work offers substantial benefits, such as access to a global talent pool, it also presents challenges.
Many of these challenges revolve around hiring across diverse cultures and managing the vast volume of online interactions and job postings across numerous platforms.
To effectively address the growing complexity of communication and job posting management, companies are under huge pressure to implement tools and establish a strong and viable strategy for recruiting remote developers.
Lengthy hiring process
The hiring process for developers typically extends beyond that of other roles, often involving one or more technical interviews and coding assessments.
Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to streamline this process. Failing to do so can result in candidates losing interest and accepting other offers.
As per CareerBuilder, 66% of candidates do not wait for more than two weeks for a response before exploring other opportunities.
Job hopping and increased retention costs
Developers are recognized for their tendency to change jobs relatively frequently, often in pursuit of better opportunities or new challenges. While job transitions are common and can pave the way for improved career prospects, excessive and frequent turnover can bring negative effects on team morale, productivity, and work quality.
Consequently, companies are confronted with a growing need to review their benefits, career advancement routes, and workplace culture. This reevaluation is necessary to retain the software developers they recruit.
Finding, hiring, and growing developers. Insights from a development company
Recruiting developers in today’s competitive hiring landscape can indeed be a formidable challenge. However, there are strategies to overcome these obstacles.
Identifying skilled developers is just the initial phase of a multilevel process that should include various elements, including recruitment channels, tools, benefits, employer branding, and more.
Securing the services of top-tier programmers requires a long-term perspective and a comprehensive approach to talent acquisition.
As Kateryna, ETEAM’s HR Manager and People Partner put it:
ETEAM follows a 4-step approach for building a strong dev team:
Step 1. Find
Step 2. Hire
Step 3. Keep
Step 4. Grow
Step 1. Find
Get clear on your requirements
To enhance your job descriptions for developer roles, stay clear of generic language and include job-specific keywords. Tailor your job postings to align with the ideal fit for your project, taking into account factors such as project duration, complexity, required skills, and technology stack.
However, it’s key to maintain an open-minded approach. Skilled recruiters understand the importance of striking a balance between meeting all the criteria in the job description and maintaining realistic expectations.
Crafting an effective job description should be a collaborative effort involving various team members. As a guiding principle, at ETEAM, we make it a practice to create and review developer job descriptions in partnership with our technical team. This collaborative approach helps prevent oversights, ensuring that you don’t, for instance, request 5 years of experience in a framework that was launched just 3 years ago.
Don’t rely on only one channel
The days of simply posting a job on a board are long gone. Software developers now have a more dynamic job search journey, and many companies are competing for their attention.
To capture their interest, you must engage them with specialized messages through various channels, including social media, your company website, LinkedIn Ads, and employee referral programs.
Recruitment marketing is about leveraging every available resource, from employee narratives to SEO strategies, to set your company apart from the competition.
Become part of the dev community
Programmers are drawn to companies that can “speak” in their language.
One of the most effective methods to attract them is through knowledge-sharing and integration into the developer community. Present your company’s technical expertise at conferences, workshops, and hackathons.
Engage with open-source communities, as active contributors to open-source projects often share a passion for coding and can make outstanding candidates.
At ETEAM, we are dedicated to encouraging a community of individuals who share a passion for coding.
It stands as our most effective recruitment strategy!
Leverage the power of employer branding
Inbound recruitment is about attracting skilled software developers to your company without actively searching for them. It sounds appealing, doesn’t it?
However, it’s worth mentioning that inbound hiring requires considerable effort. Part of this effort involves maintaining the freshness and appeal of your employer brand.
At ETEAM, we recently underwent a brand review. This initiative enabled us to maintain a more consistent messaging and visual identity across all our channels, including platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed.
Step 2. Hire
Create a smooth candidate journey
As our HR Manager often emphasizes, “Creating a positive candidate experience is not merely a checkbox item.” It requires proactive steps to ensure a seamless journey. This includes promptly addressing candidate inquiries and keeping them well-informed throughout the process, particularly when it involves multiple stages.
Lastly, don’t ignore the importance of rejection messages. Instead of resorting to the typical “Thank you for your time” response, make an effort to provide genuine feedback, especially when candidates have already participated in interviews or completed coding assignments.
Invest in tools to streamline hiring
Recruiting software developers can be a time-consuming process. Incorporating tools such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) into your talent acquisition strategy can simplify and quicken this process, reducing candidate abandonment rates.
At ETEAM, we leverage ATS to automate labor-intensive administrative duties and streamline our remote hiring process (rest assured, critical decisions are still made by our team).
Remote hiring can be challenging, and employing the right tools can help us allocate more time to keep candidates engaged and enhance their overall experience.
Focus on real-life development tasks
Offering developers a genuine problem to solve, or one closely aligned with the actual challenges they’ll encounter on the job, is crucial. Assessing their approach to such tasks extends beyond evaluating code quality. It provides insights into their problem-solving abilities and how they apply their knowledge while working under time constraints.
Assigning a real-life development task can also expose candidates to unexplored challenges and technologies, demonstrating their willingness to learn and adapt.
Balance soft and hard skills
Ultimately, software development is a collaborative effort. Programmers require strong communication skills, whether engaging with stakeholders or assisting colleagues.
In fact, an Indeed survey positioned soft skills as more important than a Computer Science degree when assessing tech talent.
Technical interviews and coding assessments primarily focus on one aspect of a developer’s capabilities. To ensure a well-rounded assessment, we employ various methods to evaluate their soft skills while maintaining fairness:
- We observe how candidates articulate their ideas and thoughts during video interviews, taking into account factors such as body language and eye contact.
- We ask about their past experiences in team environments, including how they manage disagreements and collaborate effectively.
- We utilize role-playing scenarios to simulate real-world interactions and measure their soft skills in practical situations.
Don’t underestimate cultural fit
Even the most proficient developers may not thrive if they don’t align with your company’s culture. Behavioral questions serve as an effective means to evaluate whether candidates resonate with your organization’s values and work style.
Common examples of such questions include “Tell me about a time when you…” and “Describe a situation where you…”
By delving into candidates’ past behaviors, you gain insights into how they are likely to respond in the future. These questions can be tailored to inquire about their preferred work environment and evaluate their responses in alignment with your company’s values and practices.
Step 3. Keep
Create a positive onboarding experience
Effective onboarding sets the expectations for what lies ahead, shaping the experience for new programmers and fostering trust and loyalty.
We leverage onboarding as an occasion to offer new developers a comprehensive view of our organization and workflows, including our technical playbook and protocols.
In the initial weeks, we prioritize scheduled check-ins to address any concerns, encourage two-way feedback, and offer additional resources if needed.
Provide and ask for regular feedback
Receiving feedback early and consistently is not only important in development but also in facilitating effective work relationships. It provides programmers with a sense of purpose and significance by helping them grasp the direct influence they have within the team and on project outcomes.
To ensure feedback remains constructive, it’s essential to establish guidelines. For instance, one of our principles is that “feedback should be directed at actions and deeds, not personality.”
Remember that feedback is a two-way exchange. Encourage programmers to provide feedback through employer surveys and eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) scoring, enabling them to contribute to the improvement of the work environment.
Don’t assume money is the only factor
While competitive compensation remains a necessary factor in attracting tech talent, it’s no longer the only consideration. As the tech industry evolves, the emphasis is transitioning from merely maximizing income to achieving a more balanced work-life equilibrium.
This shift boosts the significance of non-compensation benefits, with developers placing increasing emphasis on wellness, health, social responsibility, and purpose-driven organizations when making career decisions.
Create a developer-friendly work environment
Establishing a developer-friendly environment is the most effective strategy for attracting and retaining talent, ensuring your hiring endeavors bring the desired results.
Here are several measures to achieve this:
- Encourage collaboration by implementing internal tools and coding standards (be cautious as excessive tool usage may hinder productivity).
- Invest in infrastructure, encompassing both hardware and software, to support developers effectively.
- Emphasize work autonomy and flexibility to accommodate developers’ needs.
- Engage developers in projects meaningfully.
- Minimize unnecessary meetings, enabling developers to focus on coding tasks.
- Leverage AI to automate repetitive processes, sparing developers from everyday tasks they find unappealing.
Step 4. Grow
Promote knowledge sharing and continuous learning
Hired’s 2022 State of Software Engineers report reveals that 72.2% of respondents view new challenges and continuous learning as their primary career motivators. Over half express concerns about their skills becoming less relevant.
Prioritizing knowledge sharing and professional development can significantly support your hiring efforts, attracting developers who are committed to staying competitive.
Developer meetups serve as a valuable platform for team members to share their insights on specific topics or technologies. We leverage them as a path for socializing, exchanging best practices, and staying up-to-date with the latest industry developments.
Additionally, we conduct internal project demonstrations, enabling developers to get insights from other teams, even if they aren’t directly involved in a particular project.
When designing your continuous learning strategy, consider combining internal knowledge sharing with external training opportunities such as certifications and conferences. This holistic approach facilitates comprehensive skill development.
Measure developer success and celebrate wins
To attract top software talent, you need to cultivate an environment where meaningful work is acknowledged and rewarded.
Establish goals and employ measurements to measure progress. Rather than fixating on counting lines of code, shift the focus to evaluating outcomes.
For instance, track compliance with deadlines and how often you have feature releases. Celebrate collective achievements as a team, but also recognize individual contributions by creating employee recognition and rewards systems.
To sum it up
Attracting and hiring top software talent goes beyond simply preparing appealing job descriptions and conducting effective interviews. In today’s competitive environment, where developers often change jobs in just 16 months on average, retaining and nurturing the talents you have is equally essential.
Therefore, the process of attracting and hiring top talent should encompass the entire employee journey, starting from sourcing and screening candidates, up to building a compelling employer brand, providing opportunities for learning and development, and implementing employee recognition programs.
Eventually, the key to success lies in creating a meaningful work environment that not only attracts talent but also ensures their satisfaction and commitment to your organization, minimizing the need for constant recruitment efforts.
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