The role of a senior developer is that which requires more than a few years of experience. Whenever your company is looking to hire someone into this role, your approach should be one that is different from the routine of hiring a junior staff. In this article, we will take you through our recommendation which will definitely help you to attract talented personnel and the right candidate for the senior developer role.
Before you hire, the preliminary steps will be to make a list of the requirements for the role you’re hiring for. This is crucial because you want to go into the hiring process with a clear and concise picture of what you want and how these criteria will be measured for the candidates that bid. These criteria are certainly beyond the resume of the candidate.
Screening the candidates:
This is usually a long process while hiring professionals; however, it is very possible to save an ample amount of time during the screening process. This is possible if you create an assessment that is both relevant and realistic. To do this you may find the following tips helpful:
1. Provide options for a flexible screening test.
You don’t have to require every candidate to take an on-site coding interview. Develop a test that the prospective candidates can do in their own time wherever they like. You will be amazed by the number of people that will opt for this option because it makes them feel much less under the pressure and it saves you the time and the resources that would otherwise be used to plan an onsite screening.
2. Don’t ask basic questions.
The position you want to hire for is that of a senior developer, from their point of view, these basic questions may seem out of touch with their daily work. These are specialists, and fundamental questions are more of theoretical questions which they may not have encountered since their days of humble beginnings. Experienced candidates have prior jobs and may not be fully prepared for the basic algorithm questions.
3. Don’t make your test too complicated.
Don’t be tempted to ask a time-consuming question or give complex tasks in your screening tests. It will not give the candidates a good first impression of your team. You need to find the right questions, something that requires experience, a question that looks easy on the surface but will be almost impossible for someone with little experience to take on.
4. Try out the test among your team.
Whatever test you put out there, give it a try by asking your current team to take the challenge. This will enable you to determine whether you have a good ground for your screening test. You should however let your team know that the test is not to judge their skill or expertise. You should also try to make the result anonymous.
Live interview
Once you’ve moved on from the screening process, you will have to assess other skills the candidates may have and this will go beyond just the coding skills. For this, the candidates will have to be present in person. The candidates that make it to this stage must have met the basic requirement and must have proven their worth from the screening test. Now, you are searching for qualities that will improve your team and boost productivity. This could be technical skills or soft skills like communication or problem-solving skills. You need to strike a conversation and see how they respond. You need to ask thought-provoking questions as well.
In a live interview, you need to ask open-ended questions. This will ensure free-flowing conversation which you can stir in any direction you want and will give room for a dynamic response from the candidates.
In Conclusion
You should know that it is possible to attract great talent to your team, create a positive candidate experience and boost productivity by using the right approach.
