How to Hire a Programmer Part One: CV Interpretation

Victor Osetskyi
Aug 29, 2017 · 7 min read

“How to hire a programmer?” is a burning question for businesses of any size. Team creation or augmentationis always long and difficult process. It is never too easy, especially with developers. Unlike hiring a copywriter, for example, where all the process may be conducted by the single HR manager.

Existek is a custom software development company helping our customers to solve their business challenges with best in its class software. Contact us to get an instant and free expert consultation about your custom software development project.

Many of the IT companies have created the CV templates. The motivation is clear: they want to unify all thecandidates to simply look at the systematized information in similar resumes and get needed data to hire a programmer as quick as possible. However, these templates are mostly developed by the HR manager, whose work differs from the ones with deep knowledge of the IT sphere.

The templates make developers equal: good ones look like intermediate developers, at the same time, thebad ones look like intermediate as well. Analyzing the “template–built” CV, you have to be just a bit smarter toget some extra details from this standard resumes. This technique is just a good way to input some numbers, but not as good for telling something useful about the programmer.

This article is to help you get clear with the question how to hire a programmer and as a result — find excellentcandidates.

First, before coming up to the interview with the Senior technician, the way to hire a programmer should gothrough two more people: the recruiter and the HR manager. Mostly these two roles are united to one personsince they’re doing a similar job. So here we shortly consider them as one.

HR managers are also living persons that appreciate their own time. So they should not be compelled to readthrough the tons of the text in search of what developer is really skilled in.

As you aren’t the only one who is going to see the resume, be ready that it will be divided into 2 significantlydifferent parts. That is what the candidates should do to walk the way to be hired. But for you, as the technician, it is useful to be aware, how good CV looks like from the top to bottom.

The resume should have accurate structure. For simplifying both HR manager and interviewing technicianwork — CV is divided into two parts: short and expanded. The short part contains basic information and ashort skills list. All the detail concerning project description, experience with every technology stated — theseare points for the second expanded part.

The short description contains a headline. The way developer sees himself. Two or three simple sentences, describing main characteristics from the professional perspective. If the headline does not contain thetechnologies, look for it in a separate “principal skills” unit. But this very part simply contains enumeratedthings separated by a comma, things that are simple to answer at the first stage of the interview. Besides ofthe technical skills, here is the place for the general information, which may interest the employer: age, education, overall experience in IT, readiness to the business trips etc.

Simple approach to the CV review

This is the part that demands exclusive attention to hiring a programmer. It doesn’t mean the candidate can write it the way he wants — the rules here are less strict but still exist. HR reads the “short part” as a novel: from the very beginning to the end. This is why this “book” has a volume of a brochure.

But the “main part” is the section for the technician to pay attention at. Containing core information, it is moredetailed and expanded, to give you right idea, of what kind of person and specialist you are going to evaluate.

The first part is commonly dedicated to the skills and knowledge. Every section within this group is dedicatedto some group of skills:

  • Main skills
  • Programming languages
  • Technologies and frameworks
  • Experience
  • Recommendations (Optional)

What is the best way how to hire a programmer? It is an actual demonstration. Means, the example of thecode written by this programmer is number–one–thing for the senior technician to consider. As from theperspective of the hired programmer, he can attach it to his CV as the separate file in .zip, for example. Onemore not less notable thing. The “mecca” of all the developers — the GitHub. If the candidate has the account, (which is highly appreciated) the link to his account with examples of his code is also closely examined here. Itallows to see, what kinds of projects developer was taking part in, the amount of his personal input or edits.

The main skills should contain everything stated in the short description part, plus, everything that is notstated but is honorable to mention.

The core data to find out how to hire a programmer is to structurize skills and experience you require most of all. This information is mostly used during the actual interview while asking questions and listening to theanswers. That what is stated on the paper is just a basis for the dialogue. The best way to see it in a CV issimple listing, e.g:

“Expert knowledge in main front–end technologies: JavaScript, HTML, CSS. Also widely using of othertechnologies: jQuery, AJAX, MooTools, XSLT”

Such presentation focuses your attention on a personal specialist’s skills, to have a clear idea of it. All thefurther details are received during the interview.

But as personally for yourself, you may structure information into the table like this:

Such structure allows you to simplify the perception of the candidate’s skills and experience and see thewhole picture. Moreover, such arrangement allows you to compare two or more candidates and see thebenefits of one or another.

After the skills list, the education goes next: university, faculty, specialty, years of education. That means, youwill see, if the person you are interviewing was studying professionally to obtain his skills, or he is self–taught. However, this point may be formal for your concern, as self–taught people are sometimes much moreexperienced, than ones prepared for this. Or it can be Vice Versa. The thing is: it will give you a direction tothe further dialogue.

Next on is employment history and projects involvement. The choice to describe it as one part or separateinto two parts — is for the developer. The employment history gives you clear vision to measure developer’soverall competence, his teamwork competence, etc. What is important here is the periodicity of workchanges. If it occurs approximately every 6 months — it shows low candidate’s competence or reliability. May be there are some issues present, as like impossibility to work in a team or the lack of skills. Nonetheless, ifthe software engineer has been working at one spot for five years, for example, his skills could possibly be stuck.

Concerning the work on the projects, the questions to ask are like “What was YOUR input in the project?”. Asyou thinking how to hire a programmer, but not a team, it is valuable to measure this one specialist and hispersonal behavior apart from the team.

Recommendations — is one of the best inventions in the recruiting. What car would you rather purchase: theone advertised on a TV or recommended by your friend? The same rule works for the recruiters: the trustedworker is better than two untrusted. So if you deal with the CV with recommendations attached, like letters, links to external recommendations, previous employers contacts — this one may be the valuable find. Also, you may just have a look at the recommendations section of the candidate’s LinkedIn profile.

Some advanced tips when hiring a programmer

Despite the CV may be pretty standard, there are different tips and tricks helping you to know how tohire a programmer if you read between the lines. This information may be far from candidate’s professionalaspect, but it will reveal him as personality. And in its turn, it will help you to find ties to better cooperation inthe future. It is not required for you to be a psychologist. Such questions may be different to every newcandidate. But it is much better to get that information previously, then get surprising pieces with time. Hereare some additional points to look at:

  • Does he have a professional email address/ Skype ID like first-name.lastname@ or is it look likeThECoOlGuy.
  • Is CV up to date; i.e. it should not have something like: “Operating Systems: Windows 98, WindowsXP…Windows 10” unless he sends a CV to some project related to legacy code maintenance.
  • Have he started in the industry or he was working as the seller, then as a tax officer, then as a teacher andnow wants to be a software engineer.
  • Does he always move up in his career or there were downs like from team lead to just a senior developeron the same team and project.
  • If you are looking for a person for a web project — he should also have some experience with JavaScriptand libraries like AngularJS and jQuery

Conclusion

Finding out how to hire a programmer — is not an elementary task. Everything stated above is consideredonly as unified pieces of advice. Every company has its own nuances and differences, and listing them in thedetails will require a full-size book. However, this universal basis is still enough to be pretty sure that you’veresearched the resume in the proper way. Reading the text you’ve probably noticed that we had mentionedthe questions that can be asked during the interview which will surely follow the review of well-built resume. These questions are the subject for next article.

If you are competent in the question of how to hire a programmer, and you have your own successfulstrategy — you are welcomed to leave the comments in the section below. You may Contact Us directly or visit our Services Page to get development team for your next project as soon as possible.

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Existek is a custom software development company helping our customers to solve their business challenges with best in its class software. Contact us to get an instant and free expert consultation about your custom software development project.

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Victor Osetskyi

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