How to Hire Top Software Engineers for Startups

Finding software engineers for a startup may be challenging in case you have never dealt with recruitment in the engineering sphere. However, this article will help you with that!

Recruiting software engineers is considered a multidimensional competence that consists in technical insight, social networking, intuition, and process control.

Are your role is of the owner of a small business or a startup with the function to directly participate in the depth of the hiring objective? Then, all the strategies depicted in this article are right for you!

When hiring for an early-stage startup, business founders should get ready for the following reality. Recruiting is one of the responsibilities in a startup whose revenue on time spent is as a happy coincidence as trying your luck at a roulette wheel in a casino. Startup owners either win a fortune with super skillful software engineers accepting their job offers or they end up meeting with dozens of engineering specialists over 5 months and still failing to fill up the role in the team.

As far as receiving a decent number of final candidates for interviews is a daunting task, we would like to throw some light on several significant moments regarding how to hire software engineers for startups. So, let’s start!

How to Conduct Screening

Right after confirming the solution requirements, the initial step of the hiring procedure is to screen the candidates for the software engineer role. Currently, applicant monitoring platforms, as well as recruiting tools, are your option to simplify this complex process.

When it comes to traditional hiring, most employers meet applicants at interviews, conduct mutual screening, negotiate with the shortlisted software engineers, and then send the job offer to the right person. However, many experienced recruiters state that this approach is not quite agile and accurate. Moreover, it is extremely time-consuming and costly.

Nowadays, the majority of powerful businesses, as well as small but ambitious startups, reach out to B2B marketplaces (like Engre) that provide clients with a decent database of software engineering contractors. Such marketplaces deliver only certified and reliable software engineers. This hiring approach is proved to be effective and budget-friendly!

Read more at enggtoday.com about several more ideas on how to find engineers for your startup.

How to Interview Software Engineers

Interviewing is certainly the key part of recruiting software engineers. As soon as a startup owner gets in touch with the shortlist of potential hires, they should do their best to assess the following aspects:

• Does a certain engineering candidate sincerely love what they doing?
• Does a certain software engineer know the programming language required to design a certain solution?
• What level of English do they have?

Here, we strongly advise startup owners to recruit software engineers according to their experience, expertise, and flexibility. Take a look at the solutions from their portfolios, attitude to work, and understanding the industry.

Additionally, proceed with asking software engineering candidates general questions. Try to integrate them in a discussion on various topics for you to get an idea of their intellect in general.

In case you are a startup owner with no technical education, it would be ideal to take support from anyone on your team. Anyway, when deciding on the finalist, you should accentuate such features as creativity, problem-solving, and being a team player.

Focus on Hard Skills, Never Ignore Soft Ones

When it comes to hiring top software engineers, accurate identification of tech proficiency oversteps the subtleties of the programming language and the tech stack.

At the same time, these technical aspects should not be ignored during interviews because they help to evaluate whether engineers have an excellent background (without that, it is impossible to design truly qualitative solutions, even if engineers have impressive creativity). Those things must be the essential technical strength of a good software engineer.

During the interview, a brilliant strategy to check a candidate’s qualification is to set a programming challenge unlimited by language. Introduce a certain challenge to the candidate and suggest them to code the solution. You should indicate the only condition: this solution must be correct.

The above-mentioned allows startup owners to assess whether software engineers can solve problems and what style of coding they apply.

Note that coding skills should not be the only factor to accentuate. Soft skills play a great role as well. Great software engineers should be able to deliver their ideas clearly and with respect to their colleagues.

Where to Hire Software Engineers

Top places to find and hire software engineers are the following:

• LinkedIn.

Your task is to design a catchy profile of your startup to encourage software engineers to apply for your vacancy. LinkedIn is an incredible platform to develop a referral chain. It supports users in receiving recommendations to promote your business and hire software engineers via networking with acquired contacts;

• Glassdoor.

Glassdoor has won the reputation of being a reliable tool for hiring software engineers because it has a social influence on job seekers: everyone visits Glassdoor to leave as well as find anonymous commentary regarding employers.

So, to attract software engineers via Glassdoor, you should build a positive startup brand while being sincere and innovative.