How to Spot a Great Software Developer
How to find a great developer? Defining technical skills is quite easy but not enough. I’m going to tell you what skills to pay attention to in interviews and what questions to ask to test them.
?? Problem-solving.
The best developers understand that technology is needed to support a business. They suggest elegant solutions that can grow with the business.
?? What to ask:
Give a task. Think in advance of a time limit, a team (i.e., a solution includes collaboration) and a specific business problem that needs solving.
Pay attention not only to the result but also to the way the person reflects.
?? Ability to ask the right questions and listen.
This skill helps you formulate specific technical objectives for your business needs. In a constructive dialogue between the developer and the product owner, the exact needs and tasks are formed from the reasoning about what should be added to the product. The developer must not only hear the first introductory notes but also to discuss, ask clarifying questions.
?? What to ask:
Ask for a situation where a new feature was developed on the product and after the release, it turned out to be not what the customer initially wanted to get. What led to misunderstanding and how was the situation solved?
?? Ability to work in a team.
Technicians often have valuable hard skills, but at the same time do not know how or do not want to be a team player. When hiring such people, your business will have obvious communication difficulties and business processes in general. By working as a team, your developers will find better solutions faster.
?? What to ask:
Ask to talk about a situation when a colleague could not cope or could not find any solution, and your interlocutor helped him.
?? Thirst for knowledge.
Good programmers learn all their lives. New technologies and solutions appear constantly, something is outdated, something finds new application. To keep your business at the forefront, your programmers must constantly consider new technological opportunities.
?? What to ask:
What the interlocutor does in his free time. Does it work on open source projects? Maybe working for yourself on some personal project? Listening to podcasts? What are the last articles on IT read?
?? Skill to get to the bottom of the matter.
Everyone knows the situation when the bug was discovered. And when he was corrected, five more were found. Some employees will fix the initial bug and report on the completion of the task. Others will fix other errors and look for the root cause of their occurrence, the primary error. The second type of employee is much more useful to your business.
?? What to ask:
Set a task: A bug was found in a critical process in the application. How will the interlocutor diagnose and solve the problem?
?? Ability to estimate time and resource costs
It is difficult to underestimate the importance of proper management of time and human resources for a business. Often, developers call overly optimistic terms, not laying time for unforeseen difficulties, testing, revision. And then the inevitable difficulties and disruptions of business plans arise.
?? What to ask:
Set a task, give introductory information about the environment in which you will work, the number of employees involved and the ultimate goal (what needs to be done. It is not so much the quantitative values that the interlocutor will name, but how he will reason and what to put into the process are important.
?? Willingness to jump into fire.
2020 was rich in situations when a business was covered a lot at one moment, circumstances changed critically in a second. And such situations will always be. You need employees who will not work from call to call and, in the event of a crisis, look for excuses why they cannot connect to the problem before 9 am on Monday.
?? What to ask:
Ask what the interlocutor will do if the product owner calls him on the weekend and says that the application has a critical problem, the database has fallen off, or users cannot log in en masse. What will he do?
Formulate the problem so that the conditions speak of the problem, not an individual one, but rather a team error. This will help you figure out if the developer is ready to solve team problems.