Recruiting Developers
We have currently been on a huge recruitment drive at One Result thanks to our great clients who keep on recommending us to other people.
We have recently recruited:
Senior Developer PHP
Senior Developer Android/Rails/PHP
Mobile Developer iOS/Android
Front End Developer
During the process we have learnt a number of things that I think are crucial to recruiting development staff.
Recruitment Companies
Recruitment companies are a necessary evil, it may feel you don't get much value but the majority of high quality candidates come through agency's and there are a couple of good companies out there.
Don't pay more than 15% and ideally 10-12%, listening to an recruitment consultant trying to justify 35% is an amusing past time.
Make sure you get a free replacement if they don't make it through their 3 month probation, if the recruitment company won't do this, they clearly don't care about getting you the right person.
Don't work exclusively with 1 agency they cant possibly have more than 5% of the candidates so why would you possibly want to exclude 95% of the Market.
CVs
Be wary of CVs that list every language ever written, a lot of developers seem to think if they have done a couple of hours work on something they can put it on their CV, if someone lists something on there CV make sure you question it.
Education and academia is a big thing in development and whilst personally I don't have a degree as I chose to real world experience over academic reward I still like to see developers with good degrees, if you got a 2:2 or a 3rd you just wasted 3 years so how good an asset is that candidate likely to be. I would rather see someone with an extra 3 years experience and no degree than someone with a poor degree.
Interviews
Don't waste valuable time, interview a candidate initially over the phone to check that they are going to be fit for purpose, in 10-15 minutes you will know if they are worth inviting for a formal interview.
Make sure you test them, whilst it can be excruciatingly awkward when someone is struggling to explain what is wrong with a code sample make sure you really pressure them with difficult questions.
Don't hire people who just want a job, the best developers are passionate about technology, when they are not at work they are playing with technology and working on their own projects - these are the people your organisation needs.
Watch out for Lone Wolf developers, people who can't work in a team and try and force their opinion on to their fellow developers. Developers like this will consistently rail road discussions and affect productivity.
Some questions to ask developers
What is your approach to testing?
What has been your biggest challenge in the last 12 months?
How do you keep up with industry news?
What are the latest features in version X of language Y?
What do you think of Frameworks like Zend, CakePHP and CodeIgnitor?
What is the difference between public, private and protected?
What do you use for Source Control? (I don't as I develop alone is a terrible answer!)
How would I protect against SQL Injection and XSS attacks?
Offering
Offers someone their current salary with the increase if they pass the probation, you save on the recruitment fee and it gives you a chance to really test them.
If possible particularly with people either out of work or contracting before you offer full time, ask them to come in for a 4 week paid trial on a contract day rate equivalent to the salary and really put pressure on them to deliver, this technique alone has saved us thousands in wasted recruitment fees.
You get what you pay for, hiring cheap is false economy, don't lose the right candidate for the sake of a couple of grand.
Conclusion
We have hopefully followed our own advice and got some top guys coming onboard over the next 4-8 weeks the only other thing I would say is trust your gut and take time to find the right person, very rarely is your initial impression of somebody wrong and if you thing they are not right, don't hire them - you will find the right person it just takes time.