Want to hire a mobile app developer? Here’s what you want to ask.
So you have an idea for a tech startup that’s main product will be a mobile application. Or you run an online marketplace type of store and you want to give your users more mobility. Or maybe you just have a good idea for a mobile app and you know nothing about app development.
Fear no more — here is a short list of topics you may want to discuss with your potential new business partner.
Ask about technology
Well, it may seem very obvious — you want to make sure your new developer knows the current trends and works with newest languages, libraries, and frameworks. You want to get that great tech specialist but let’s say that you don’t know much about technology yourself. To deal with this potential problem you can do two things; either you learn a bit about current trends or you press your interviewee to give you the explanation you understand.
In the first case, you may want to ask one of your past co-workers or colleague that work as developers or actively in IT what is really trending right now and why. If you have no acquaintances like that, you may try a professional hiring agency or any specialized discussion boards. Also, always remember to ask why. Using tech for the sake of using it may be sometimes more harmful than you would think.
In case you have no time to educate yourself and no free funds for the job agency, you can only ask for the interviewee to explain things they do to you. It has both very good and very bad aspects.
The good thing is, you can measure his communication skills. Also, you’ll see if his mindset is oriented on end-user. After all, you are the end-user of his explanation, so if he manages to inform you in a clear and understandable way, he may be the guy you’re looking for.
And the bad thing that can happen? You will have practically no way of telling if your interviewee’s knowledge is vast/correct. Thus, I’d still prefer to get a bit of a knowledge before the meeting and perhaps rely on the dev to correct me if I understood anything wrong.
Ask about work methodology
Choosing a person that understands and likes to work in the same methodology your company operates is quite important. For one, if you both lean towards this or that methodology it makes the whole process much easier.
Right now, most of the developers lean toward agile methodology rather than the older waterfall schema. Of course, each person and each project has a little different “type of agile” but this is what makes an agile what it is.
You’ll surely divide your project into sprints that have planning meetings at the beginning and groomings somewhere in the middle of a sprint. Also, you get ready, working app functionalities and features at the end of each sprint. At least in theory.
Ask about track record
Quite obviously, ask the developer to present you with some past references and experience. If you’re talking to small development team leader it shouldn’t be too hard — they can just show you the past apps they’ve created as well as a list of people they worked with.
However, if looking for a single developer, the things can get a bit funky. Many devs cannot talk about the project they worked in due to very restrictive NDAs and nature of the project. Still, you should ask them to show you what they did in the past if they can. If they show you some mobile apps or virtually anything that has to do with mobile apps you’re good to go. If not, you may want to look for someone else.
Discuss your idea
One thing many people from non-development community gets wrong is the role that any software developer has. A software developer is a problem solver. They do not code just because they can. They write software to solve actual real-life problems. Why do I mention this?
Let’s say you have your idea to build an app for your business for every mobile system there is. That’s fine, sure. But then, a developer who’s an expert in mobile software field says you might want to reconsider building a standalone application for each and every platform and maybe decide just to make a mobile version of your website. He might just found a cheaper, faster and more efficient way to solve your problem.
What I mean is that sometimes efficient way to solve the problem and your idea to solve the problem isn’t the same. If a developer informs you about that, you probably found a good person to hire.
At VESTIONE we do exactly that. We try to solve any problem in an efficient and consistent way. Why? We believe your success is also our success. If you have any questions be sure to leave them in comments or just contact us.
