
7 Ways to Hire a Freelance Software Developer
March 22, 2024
Hiring Remote Software Engineers: Tips and Strategies
March 26, 2024When you know you will be late to meeting a good friend of yours and need to apologize, you turn to your favorite messaging app and when it is to get an essential (a soap or toothpaste) in less than an hour, then a delivery app. You even pick your friends of the future on an app. You can now find app developers to build your favorite app easily, but will your choices be the best?
Clearly, mobile apps assume a position of great importance in our lives and that is not going to change anytime soon. There is a flurry of apps released, with up to 70,000 released in a month during 2023. But how many of them actually get to a million downloads. Not many. This is why, if you are trying to develop a mobile app, and you just chanced to come up on this website, you may be in luck. This blog will guide you on finding the right app developers for your mobile app in 2024.
Identify Your Project Requirements
This is a single point but a long hop. There’s a lot of things to look at here. From the marketing perspective, who will be using your app, what do you intend to accomplish with the app and what price you think the app should be at.
From a technical perspective, how many developers will it take, what is the tech stack, and what necessary skills would you need? Who are the non-developers you would need and what would they do? These are some of the questions that you would need to ask yourself when you note down the project requirements to try and find app developers.
Create a Detailed Job Description
A job description is your baby step towards your candidate. Don’t misstep, instead make it good. Write a job description that includes your project requirements, offer a salary they will happily say yes to, and introduce the work duration and the resources that will be provided briefly. Describe why they would love working at your company.
Start with lines that make an impact and really draw them into why they would love working at your company. You can end by adding relevant details for contacting you or any other terms in the contract you may have missed mentioning that they would be better served knowing right away. Adding all these points will help strengthen your job description and help you find an app developer who will be the best fit for the job.
Choose a Reputable App Development Partner
Sometimes it is not easy to find app developers by yourself. There is another option, that of taking the assistance of a reputable app development partner, and for this you would need to provide a brief. The brief will explain the details of the project, what your expectations are and the time it would take to complete the project.
Here you would be talking to an app development partner, who would note down your requirements, assign the resources to your project and get them started on your project. You would need to mention such things as the budget you have for each developer, how long their services would be required, what resources you can provide them with and what you would expect the partner to provide.
Screen Candidate Profiles
Screening candidate profiles is easier said than done. When screening candidates, it is important to look at both technical as well as non-technical skills even though the position only demands technical skills.
When screening candidates, also be mindful that you may not get the perfect candidate, so be more lenient than you are known to be! Also, if there is a lot of training required, especially if it is in a niche area, try to hire someone with not too much experience.
Have multiple stakeholders on the screening panel, and not only from HR. This helps have different points of view, which may be very necessary when you are building an app that needs to appeal to a wide audience or when you are trying to find app developers and they must be familiar with a technology not too many people are well-versed in.
Conduct Technical Interviews
Before you begin to conduct the technical interview for an app developer position, you must first clearly define the objective. Then create a standard process for the interview itself and decide who the stakeholders will be at each stage of the interview process. This will be of great help when you try to find app developers who are best suited for the job.
Start with the relevant questions, some of them assessing for situational awareness, others for solution awareness and still others assessing the general behavior of the candidate. Have a liberal mix of questions from each category.
Next, assess the technical skills of the candidate through written tests. These tests must be time-limited and make sense in the setting. Try to avoid questions that require detailed explanation and work, instead opting for questions with elegant yet smart answers. Ask more questions if you can, but do not waste too much time on one.
This is where a platform such as Gighees can be of great help. When you post a requirement on Gighees, our hiring managers will take care of everything else. They will match you to the right app developers. Are you looking for a front-end developer? We have you covered. A back-end developer? Got you! Or do you want to hire a freelancer familiar with the MERN stack? We have thought of all the possibilities.
Evaluate Culture Fit and References
Culture fit is just as important as a knowledge fit. Evaluate the references presented by the candidate and speak to each one for at least five minutes when they are free. Note the questions that are relevant to each and make sure that you ask them.
Speak to at least one reference from a previous company or institution and make notes on what they say. Assess the notes and determine if the candidate would be a good fit for your environment.
Though we encourage you to look at culture fit, we would advise you to be more lenient as the person would be working as a freelancer and not a permanent employee and though culture fit is important, it is other aspects such as the general attitude and behavioral traits you should be more concerned about.
Negotiate Key Contract Terms
What are the conditions you want to highlight when interviewing or rather when onboarding the candidate? Make a note of them so you can present it to the candidate for their review. Some contract terms you may need to highlight are the project’s duration, deliverables, time for development, deployment and review, necessary functions, etc.
Then discuss these terms again with the candidate, to achieve greater clarity. Make sure other contract terms are also covered in as much detail as possible. Confirm with the candidate again to ensure that all their doubts are cleared up.
Trial Period and Onboarding
Do you want to keep your freelancers on a trial period before you decide whether they are a good fit for your company and up to the task that you will be assigning them? We will not recommend doing this as this is not something that makes sense for you or the freelancer. When you are in it, get both feet in it!
You are already hiring on a contract basis, so it makes sense to take time and find the right app developers for the role. Ask the right questions, set the right expectations and ensure access to the appropriate resources. Avoid jumping to conclusions and clarify the doubts they may have at each stage of the hiring process.
Closing Words
Finding an app developer need not be a tough task. Manage it better with a service like Gighees, which allows you to hire them for the exact solution you want to develop. A mobile app also has several components, and you would need a different kind of developer for each. You cannot just hire one developer for the entire app.
You would generally need a team of developers, one developing the solution, another aligning with the user needs, deciding what platform you want it to work for, and still another analyzing how well the app is doing and suggesting improvements to it. Mobile app development is a challenge. Let it not get too hard trying to find app developers. Talk to us today!