The Qualities You're Looking For In Your Next Developer

They Are Off The Market in 10 Days

Finding top-notch technical talent isn't easy. It takes time and resources, not to mention cash, and you have to be committed when you do find the right fit, as yours probably won't be their only offer. Think about it - the average developer gets an offer within 10 days of poking their heads up and "thinking" that they might be open to new opportunities. While this could be a blog about moving quickly in the hiring process, rather it's about making the right hiring decision with limited information under the confines of hustling to make an effective hire.

For many, finding the right technical hire isn't only about comparing skills and experience. Making sure your developers can listen, learn from their mistakes and take direction is equally important. A truly great fit will have the right personal qualities to match your team's culture and pace. So, what are the 6 qualities that you need to make an effective hire? Let's get to it.

Hustle

While I could be talking about any number of Gary Vaynerchuk articles, instead I'm pointing to another New York Scion of Awesomeness, Joel Spolsky. A mix of technical ability, ambition and drive are what ultimately produces the best technical end result. The most technically advanced developer who isn't striving to do better or pushing their own boundaries may not necessarily give their best. Being energetic and continuing to evolve by researching, learning and contributing new technologies is a great way to measure that key quality.

Communication

Believe it or not, this is the most important question that you will ask any developer you are considering hiring. A highly skilled developer who doesn't communicate well won't add much value to your team. At Relus, we look for developers who can articulate their thoughts and write well. We operate as a team. We brainstorm together and expect everyone to participate whether on Skype, Slack, Trello, or Asana. A developer should be able to write a technical document and communicate updates about his work. This is especially important if working remotely - which is something that we do between our growing NYC office and the migration teams we have all over the far-flung globe.

No amount of Ruby, Java, or JavaScript skill will matter more to you than the developer’s ability to keep you abreast of what is happening with the project and to address your needs in a timely and kind manner. Good, regular communication is the foundation of productive project management and it’s absolutely crucial when you are hiring someone to execute your vision.

Again, there is no right answer to this question, except an answer that you feel good about. Ideally, the developer has an established process for communicating with clients. Some developers write daily emails, others prefer phone calls, some do weekly check-ins. What you are looking for is a willingness to communicate regularly and the ability to clearly communicate to you the progress of the project.

Resilience

You want someone who is levelheaded and will not rush to get the job done. It's about maintaining the same pace of development and delivering consistently. Many of us now work in constantly connected, always-on, highly demanding work cultures where stress and the risk of burnout are widespread. Since the pace and intensity of contemporary work culture are not likely to change, it’s more important than ever to build resilience skills to effectively navigate your work-life.

Building resilience skills in the contemporary work context doesn’t happen in a vacuum, however. It’s important to understand and manage some of the factors that cause us to feel so overwhelmed and stressed at work. Our current work culture is a direct reflection of the increasing complexity and demands faced by businesses globally. In a study conducted by IBM Institute for Business Value in late 2015, a survey of 5,247 business executives from 21 industries in over 70 countries reported that the “scope, scale and speed” of their businesses were increasing at an accelerated rate, especially as the competitive landscape becomes increasingly disrupted by technology and radically different business models. The result is at times a frenetic way of working. Being hyperconnected and responsive to work anytime, anywhere, can be extremely taxing. In a 2014 global survey of Human Capital Trends conducted by Deloitte, 57% of respondents said that their organizations are “weak” when it comes to helping leaders manage difficult schedules and helping employees manage information flow and that there is an urgent need to address this challenge.

Emotional Intelligence

It is widely accepted that soft skills such as active listening greatly affect how people feel and respond to their boss and senior management. If they feel valued, appreciated, and heard, they are engaged and motivated to achieve goals set out by leadership. Great leadership is, in fact, servant leadership: attending to team members with empathy and helping them succeed.

Emotional intelligence deepens our empathy—a capacity to sense the feelings of others. Our ability to use soft skills determines our level of emotional intelligence.

Simply put, emotional intelligence is that “something” within us that helps us to sense how we feel and enables us to truly connect with others and form a bond. It gives us the ability to be present and listen to someone when they most need it. Emotional intelligence is that sense of internal balance within us that enables us to keep our composure, make good decisions, communicate successfully, and maintain effective leadership even when under stress.

Mindfulness

This one may seem odd, but an unintended consequence of a rapidly developing industry is the immense pressure of finding stillness in self while the world rushes on. Sometimes, thinking creatively and finding the solution to complex problems requires an ability to stand still and reflect. Being mindful of your environment, the people around you, and how you fit into the bigger picture instills trust and confidence in prospective employers.

Many of the people who shaped the personal computer industry and the Internet were once members of the hippie counterculture. So an interest in Eastern faiths is all but hardwired into the modern tech world. Steve Jobs spent months searching for gurus in India and was married by a Zen priest. Before he became an American Buddhist pioneer, Jack Kornfield ran one of the first mainframes at Harvard Business School.

Critical Intelligence

Too often, developers will get a requirement or a user story and rush off to build something because they think they understand it. And at last half the time, what you get back wasn't exactly what you wanted. It doesn't matter how good a coder someone is if they're building the wrong thing. A great developer will ask questions that make you think and clarify a feature before it's implemented.

Great developers have worked with a handful of technologies long enough to become experts and are competent with many. Of course, finding a programmer who has worked on a product similar to yours or that uses the same technologies important. The right programmer for your project will be able to hit the ground running because they already know the right technologies. They will follow coding standards and will write code that is understandable and commented where necessary and can be passed on to someone else easily. By combining their cognitive abilities and diverse industry experience, they’re able to arrive at optimal solutions quickly. An experienced developer is well versed in best practices like agile development, task management software (Jira, Trello, etc.), version control (If they know Git, it’s a sign they’ve moved on past older systems like SVN), and working in different environments (local development environment, and working knowledge of deploying applications) so ask them about these things.

A good programmer does what is asked of them while a great programmer thinks of the end user of the software and works to solve problems for them within the abilities of the organization. A great programmer wants to know the feature they’re building is of high value and pushes back when a feature creates no value for anyone.

Leadership

More and more, an ability to "own it" is becoming a prerequisite for employees. Projects tend to evolve and grow and employers want to feel confident they have all hands on deck. An employee that can take ownership, responsibility and ride the wave (because it won't always be smooth sailing) is a valuable employee. If they can steer the ship that's even better.

What else would you add to the list of must haves for hiring the modern developer?

As a member of Relus' recruiting team, Brian Fink focuses on driving talent towards opportunity. Whether helping startups ascend or enterprises adapt to the unknown, Fink works with innovators who can handle ambiguity of a constantly changing technology landscapes. His career includes 10+ years of successfully scaling IT, Recruiting, Big Data, Product, and Executive Leadership teams across North America. As an active keynote speaker and national commentator on recruiting trends and talent acquisition tactics, Fink focuses on client development, candidate engagement, organizational transformation, and recruiter education. Follow him on Twitter.