How to Hire Software Engineers: An Extensive Guide for Companies

Software engineers design, develop, and implement software from scratch, enabling businesses to adapt to the ever-changing digital environment. That's why the demand to hire software engineers is growing.

However, hiring a software developer is a daunting task. It is a complex, time-consuming, and costly affair. Your company may be the best workplace, but you will still face challenges while hiring software programmers. Consider that the demand to hire software developers is higher than ever, and companies are allotting a lot of budget and resources to the hiring process.

The following tips for hiring a software developer at a startup or a large enterprise give the most effective ways to attract and hire talented software engineers. You can look at these tips to learn how to create a job description, find the right skills, interview candidates, and more.

Let's get started!

Why hire a software engineer?

Organizations hire software engineers for various reasons, such as:

• To scale your software development team.
• Upgrade your existing platforms and network capabilities to make your systems more efficient, and increase productivity.
• Develop innovative software solutions to manage the business more efficiently and support massive growth.
• Build a new database that can store more data and helps you fetch them in an organized way for better decision-making.

To summarize, software engineers design and develop computer software and applications. The terms software engineer and software developer are sometimes used interchangeably in most industries for professionals who develop software or applications loaded onto a computer or run the software as a service (SaaS) through a web browser.

How to hire software engineers?

Hiring competent software engineers to lead the digital growth of your company is a big responsibility that needs comprehensive planning and execution. It is important to have a well-defined hiring strategy and a robust structure for sourcing the best software engineers globally. The hiring process mandates considerable expertise in dealing with different hiring stages.

The first step of hiring a full-stack software engineer is documenting your company’s requirements. This will help you identify the type of development framework needed for your company, and then you can hire suitable candidates to lead your digital project. The following steps are related to logistical execution: drafting lucid job descriptions, screening and interviewing candidates, sending an offer letter, and finally onboarding them into your setup.

We will have a detailed look at each stage involved in hiring the best software engineers from around the world.

Tips to hire a dedicated software engineer

Here are some useful tips on how to hire software engineers to lead your company’s software development.

Understand the requirements

Identifying the job requirement is a crucial step in the hiring process. Therefore, it is necessary to clearly outline the skills, knowledge, and experience required for the position. For example, you can consider the following steps:

• Recruitment goals (expectations for new developers)
• Important technical knowledge
• Optional technical skills.
• Seniority

This will help you get a detailed picture of the software developer you want to hire regarding technical skills, experience, and job responsibilities. It also clarifies the specific tasks you want engineers to accomplish. The more effectively you do this, your chances of hiring a suitable candidate are higher.

Create a job description

A well-written job description plays a significant role in hiring a software engineer who meets the job requirement. You have to mention the roles and responsibilities of the candidate, the skills you are looking for, and the experience level.

It reduces the time and effort required to hire software engineers, and you can shortlist the most suitable candidate for the position. Additionally, you should also highlight the perks or benefits of working with your company so that it attracts the best candidates to apply for the job and be involved in your collective vision.

How to write a job description for a software engineer?

The best way to start is by writing a short introduction about the position. Then make a list of the responsibilities, skills, and experience. Besides, if the job needs some special skills, you should include them in the job description.

For instance, if the job demands a sound knowledge of some languages or frameworks, you should mention that. It is also important for the job description to be compact, concise, and to the point.

A brief encapsulation of all the relevant points makes for an effective software engineer job description.

Create a hiring funnel

Let's see what the hiring process would look like. This phase shows how to determine the hiring funnel, the key elements of the hiring process, and how to measure their effectiveness. Each phase represents a significant element of the hiring process, and it's important to prepare the groundwork for each step to implement a seamless hiring structure.

The hiring funnel represents the steps a candidate goes through during the recruitment process. It can vary from company to company and even from candidate to candidate, but there are generally five main stages.

- Sourcing and selection: As soon as you have a clear idea of the job requirement, and publish it on the job portal, you can create a list of possible matches and select the most promising ones from your pool of applicants.

- Screening: This is the first stage of the evaluation where a recruiter or HR specialist determines which candidates are suitable for the job.

- Interview: This is usually done by in-house experts to assess the candidate's personality and technical background. Make an offer or not: Based on the results of the interview and test assignments, you can suggest if the candidates can join the team or not.

- Negotiations: Candidates may reconsider their salary or seek additional benefits. Alternatively, you may decide to add some perks to close the deal.

Once you understand the hiring funnel, you should discuss the process with the team. Everyone in the team needs to know how it works. It ensures the team is aligned with the hiring process.

A hiring funnel monitored with some basic metrics saves time and makes it clear whether the recruitment process is working efficiently or not. Formalizing the hiring funnel as a roadmap with clear roles, responsibilities, and time/cost expectations will keep everyone on the same page during the hiring process.

Developer's portfolio

When hiring a software developer, one of the most critical factors to consider is examining their portfolios. It will tell you about the tech stack they've used in past projects.

When analyzing portfolios, pay close attention to the developer's role in the project to determine whether it corresponds to your required skills and expertise. If you need a full-stack engineer, you don't want someone who has just done front-end work in the past. Keep in mind that someone who has only done front-end or back-end development in the past may not have the full-stack development expertise you require.

Projects included in a developer's portfolio showcase their abilities and approach to the design process. It is something that most potential employers are interested in knowing. It helps you find if their work is relevant to your project and enables you to shortlist the candidates.

Familiarity with different software environments

Software engineering is a vast field, and no one can be a true expert in every skill. Many programming languages, frameworks, and tools lead to confusion. In addition, there are new updates in the industry every day that change the way developers work and tackle problems.

The best software engineers are always aware of new technologies and keep upgrading their skills. Even if they don't know everything, their expertise with multiple programming languages and frameworks gives companies the flexibility to get things done.

If you are looking for a software engineer, you should consider someone familiar with multiple software development skills and environments.

Test their coding skill

It is almost impossible to gauge the capability of a software engineer by looking at their resume. A coding challenge can help you determine if the developer is a good fit for this role and has the technical proficiency to handle your software project. Many hiring managers use a random coding test available on the internet to check the coding skills of software engineers.

Do you think it is a wise thing to do?

It's not because every test may not be suitable to evaluate the skills of a software engineer.

You need to design a coding challenge or give them a real-life situation to assess their skills. You can use online code testing platforms such as Codility or Coderpad for presenting custom coding challenges to potential candidates. It will help you find how the candidates approach and solve the problem.

Besides, you get many other features from these platforms, such as live coding challenges, drawing mode, and take-home projects that present different coding challenges to the candidates. This helps in a thorough examination of the candidates and helps you find the most proficient developers who are adept in excellent coding skills.

Evaluation of soft skills

Many hiring managers make a big mistake and think soft skills don't matter while hiring software engineers. They only focus on technical skills. While technical proficiency is the core skill set of software engineers, soft skills are now equally important, especially if you are working in a cross-functional team.

However, that's not the right way of approaching a hiring process. When hiring software developers, you must focus on their soft skills, including communication, analytical & problem-solving, time management, and collaboration skills. These skills are vital for a successful development framework in a company, especially for remote work setups. The success of many projects largely depends on how adept the employees are in their soft skills to deal with the different situations and scenarios they are likely to face.

Software engineers might have to communicate with the non-technical team and take their input during the development process. It does not matter if they work individually or in a team; developers must be able to communicate their ideas and comprehend what others are saying. This is why soft skills are so important when working in a team environment and are an indispensable part of hiring suitable candidates for your development requirements.

Creative and innovative capabilities

Creativity is what drives innovation in software development. Technical and theoretical knowledge is always vital in creating high-quality software. However, if those were the only required skills, hiring software engineers for your team would be much simpler.

You would want to find and hire software engineers who are quick on their feet and competent enough to get ideas out in the wind. Candidates with a creative mind are more likely to come up with innovative solutions to complex problems and create an efficient software framework for scaling the company’s objectives.

Decide quickly and make an offer

When hiring software engineers, we recommend you decide on your next step within a day. It's not just about giving candidates a simple answer. Over time, the evaluation results will fade, and you will not be able to make confident decisions.

If all goes well and you think the engineer is right for you, make the offer as soon as possible. Always keep in mind that candidates are likely to have other interviews. While you think about it, another company may make a better offer. Also, try to get a quicker response from candidates by stating that your offer is open until a certain date.

The basic strategy is to keep things short, figure out who is responsible for each step, and clearly define an action plan for exceptional situations like overshooting the budget and planning a way to offset the budgets with other candidates

Having the right mixture of talent and experience

With talent being one of the most scarce resources in the industry, you will want to hire software engineers who show talent and can prove their technical abilities and soft skills.

You also need to consider what role the engineer will need to fulfill. In that case, if you’re looking to solve a problem in a specific way, then hiring a software engineer with experience in that subject matter might serve a more efficient purpose. Otherwise, while looking to grow an existing team and drive innovation, a fresh mind might be a better option to think outside the box.

How can Turing help?

It can be time-consuming if you want to find software engineers that fulfill all the criteria of your job requirement and fit well into the company’s culture. Finding the ideal candidate that matches your organization's vision and can lead the development project to new heights requires a lot of effort, energy, and resources.

To avoid all the hassle related to hiring and ensure that you hire the best candidates for your software development projects, you can choose the services of deep job platforms like Turing.

Hiring software engineers with Turing is incredibly simple. Turing uses an Intelligent Talent Cloud powered by AI to source, vet, match, and manage the top talent worldwide. All you need to do is choose from a featured list of engineers, who have already been pre-vetted for a Silicon Valley bar, and start working with the engineers with a 2-weeks, risk-free trial.

Conclusion

These were some of the best tips on how to hire software engineers for your upcoming project. To summarize, finding the right candidates can be a time-consuming process. Depending on your requirements, you may need to complete a series of steps to find and hire the ideal software engineer.

On the other hand, hiring a software engineer through a reputed organization can eliminate the tedious and time-consuming process.

Turing helps businesses hire qualified remote software engineers. In fact, companies can even hire dedicated development teams with experience and expertise to ensure the business demands are met, We evaluate candidates through a series of technical tests across 100+ skills, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MySQL, Oracle, Python, Ruby, PHP, React.js, Node.js, etc. We also assess their communication and interpersonal skills for efficient teamwork.

With Turing, you can hire software engineers in just 3-5 days and can build your dream engineering team with the push of a button.