Finding great software developers

Your software business is growing. To keep pace with the upscaling, you need a great software team to handle all the tech things so that you can focus on your work of expansion. But, do you know how to find and hire that great software team? A team that shares the same vision as you?

It’s hard to find good developers, as their skills are so much in demand that unless you are Google or Facebook you’ll never attract top developers to build your software projects. Even if you find someone with great talent and skills that person may not be the right fit for you and your team: he might not understand your instructions well, or may collaborate well with the rest of your team. Yet it’s vitally important to get the fit right in software. Building a great software is all about a team working together.

So, how do find great software developers? Here are some tips from our experience in working with hundreds of companies around the world building their software products.

Know what roles you need to hire for

A software team is composed of many distinct roles. Each role is essential and together they move your project forward. Remove one and you’ll see that things aren’t moving as they should. A role doesn’t mean a single hire, many roles are one person but sometimes many persons also fill a single role. Let me give you some examples: you need a business analyst role, someone who would understand the business problem you are trying to solve, then also understand how the software will solve that problem and most importantly know what are the priorities within the solutions. You also need a product manager, who will know what the product is supposed to do, when a certain version should come out with what features to meet what business need. This product manager will be the coordinator who talks with the tech team communicating the need and scope and then understand the technical challenges that the team faces and then faces the business side to understand their needs and communicates what’s what’s possible and what’s not. Now these two roles - the business analyst and the product manager tends to be two very distinct role but if the project size is small or if you just can’t afford two separate resources it’s just about possible to mix them both an have one hire that takes on both the roles. And if small startup it could be the founder who takes that role along with other roles like business development and even sales.

Whatever the context, before you even think of searching for your team, have a list of software roles you need to fill up. Then do your maths and figure out how many hires can you do and see if you can spread out the list of roles within them. This will guide you to the next step of the skills you need in your hires.

Know what you want to make

You need to know clearly the what you are making and what your business priorities are during this making phase. You should all the main features of the platform, which features are the most valuable and which are good to haves and which you can do without. The technology platform should be a big factor in this, for example you should know clearly what you want to keep inhouse and what you can get an external agency to do for you. For example, you can outsource salesforce development and keep the rest in house. In a perfect world you should also have clear specifications and requirements documents before you start adding software developers in the team who would build those features - but that’s in a perfect world!

In a startup, the minimum viable product aka MVP holds the most importance before the product or service is launched. Creating a neat and efficient MVP increases the chance of the startup being successful as well as fund raising and beta testing. And, that is where the software development team becomes crucial. So if you a startup just going through the motions of making your first attempt at the software your needs for the team is very different from the situation where you are an established software company thinking of extending an already selling software.

Remember that having a clear view about what you are building will not only help you identify the skillset you need but also help you ask the right questions when you find potential candidates.

Reference, reference, reference

The tech world tends to be a very connected world. Personal advocacy is always a first choice for everyone when it comes to hiring people for a software project. In this case, you have to keep in mind that your product or service is based on, and according to that you have to find the right people with appropriate skills. Maybe a web developer has helped your friend greatly, but it will not come to handy if your product is based on android application.

Here at Kaz software, around 80% of our customers are referred to us by our existing clients and partners.

Searching on the internet

Searching at the right forums and discussion boards can land you rare skilled developers who are not available in other platforms. Many software development teams work as agency and offer their services through their own company. If you are willing to work with a readymade team who can start working for you, this is a really good option. Kaz Software is a good example of such sources of ready to start teams. We maintain skilled teams working in a wide range of technologies from web application to mobile apps. The added benefit of using a company like ours is that we come with resources that a software project needs time to time but not always - resources like technical writers, designers, testers and systems support. And you can take help from such resources on a need basis, greatly reducing your HR spend and managing your budgeting.

Online platforms for freelancers like UpWork or Fiverr are widely used by employers who want to hire a remote resources. These platforms tend to be good for smaller or one off type projects. However, you can find freelancer groups as well who work together to offer service to startup owners to build solutions. The services can be web or app development to custom CRM solutions. This can be a really effective solution if you’re running low on budget. Also, you can find freelancers while knowing their actual review and rates. 

Social media and LinkedIn also can be a great option if you want to know the detailed and previous portfolio of employees. The experienced ones post their portfolios there, specify their skills, and the level of their endorsements shows their overall efficiency at their job. Even they don’t match your preferences, you can always connect with them and other people to get more people’s profile. Start by searching for the keywords relevant to your requirements and get the list of potential employees. Browse through the results, assess the profiles and send a proposal to them.

Offline search

You can always go search for technical people in person in events. A lots of conferences, meetups and hackathons take places regularly where you can find the right person to work with and discuss your work briefly. Especially in hackathon, you can get to see the efficiency of any individual or team who are just an event away!

Remote Resources

You don’t always need your team to be situated in the same spot. The entire world can really be your source of software hires! Remote software development teams can easily be managed using collaboration tools like Slack, Zoom, Jira, etc.

Remote software teams should only be hired through reputable software companies as they provide infrastructure for managing those resources, provide the right working environment, run the payroll, manage their holidays and work hours, etc. The most crucial reason for hiring remote teams from established software companies is the things around a team that makes a team coalesce and work with motivation. These include great office spaces, network and systems support, team activities and team building events. All of these keep technical staff motivated and companies benefit from that motivation.

Recruiters and managed service providers

Last but not least, if you want to outsource the hiring work to save your time, you can work with a recruiting agency or with a MSP aka Managed Services Provider companies who are mainly specialized in technology recruitment. This is a path we don’t suggest to our clients unless they are really short on time or are desperate for resources they cannot find in any other way. The main reason for putting this as a last resort is the difficulty of finding the recruitment agency that really understands your needs properly. Usually these agencies are working off a generic keyword driven hiring agenda that is not always the perfect fit for your actual need.