Take Care of Your Biggest Asset. Here is How You Can Build an Exceptional Team
Having a difficult time hiring developers? Here is how we did it:
The most valuable asset of your company is the people running it. In our case, working with a strong developer team has been fundamental to the growth and success of devAcademy. Our developers are the ones behind everything that goes live and grows — they build the products, sell, and support our clients around the world.
Many times, we hear that it is very difficult to hire and keep developers, especially if you aren’t located in Silicon Valley. At devAcademy, we created our own strategy to hire, grow and keep local talent.
Here are 4 key points you should keep in mind when building your team:
1. Spot the motivated and passionate
When I first started looking for developers, I hosted a couple meetups, using social media to bring people together. People that come to meetups are one step above other developers. Why? They’re investing their time to share their knowledge and are meeting other community members to learn and grow.
It also shows passion. You have the vision and drive to grow your company, but if your team doesn’t share the same passion, you’ll have a difficult time to succeed. Great employees are those who are going beyond their comfort zone and are trying to create value. They are always trying to contribute.
2. Don’t base your decisions on a resume/CV
At devAcademy, we don’t use job postings or recruiters. Unfortunately, we have a small and poor hiring pool so we launched a 6-month internship program to hire motivated engineers from our local universities. Yes, you heard it — we don’t hire experienced developers. The internship program can be compared to a trial period in which we measure their progress.
Though it takes time to train them, we believe it’s worth the time investing in young developers who can learn fast, execute, and are hungry for knowledge.
3. Vision alignment and cultural fit
This is one of the most important factors in hiring. Your developers need to align with your vision and culture. We have an open and transparent culture so we want people who can fit into how we operate.
Get to know the people you are hiring. In our experience, we like to do the interview process in a different way. We take potential developers to show us their projects in a setting they feel comfortable — whether it’s at a coffee shop or at a coworking space. We chat about their interests, plans, and goals. It is essential for the growth of the company to have team members who understand your goals and your clients. If your team doesn’t believe in your your vision and they don’t share the same values, you’ll probably fail.
4. Hire slow and smart. Fire fast
It takes time to hire a good developer. Some come very prepared to an interview, so we don’t actually get to see their work ethic. It’s okay to take your time to find someone great because a bad decision can be much more expensive.
We do recommend to fire fast. Give expectations and milestones in the beginning so that you can measure how much they’ve learned since they started working. Of course, as the team leader, you need to provide mentorship, but don’t forget to communicate well what you want. If these potential candidates understand what you are looking for, they’ll work hard to get it. If they don’t, they can’t be working there anymore.
Founders and teams who don’t take hiring seriously and aren’t getting great employees in their company, need to fix those problems immediately. They need to rethink their approach. Getting the right employees to be in your company is a validation for the business. You need to treat it with relevance.
