3 Insider Tips On Hiring Software Developers

In the competitive market for talent today coupled with the emergence of key digital roles, the talent pool for tech roles today are extremely scarce. As such, organisations are willing to compensate market premiums for these key roles.

However, this also poses a huge challenge for organisations during recruitment. Given the limited talent pool, how do organisations decide on their hiring strategy? Should they go the traditional route by simply asking questions? Or should they decide whether to hire the candidate based on the results of a coding test?

Here are some insider tips collated from organisations on hiring developers:

Send a coding test

The skills required of a software developer is likely to be vastly different as compared to other roles. As such, a simple face-to-face or pen and paper interview is unlikely to draw out sufficient insights on the candidate’s coding skills. According to findings from Digital HR Tech, 73% of surveyed candidates take a coding test sent to them. At the same time, more than 90% of these candidates who started on the test are likely to complete them. This suggests that job applicants for software developers are likely to complete an assessment test that is aligned with the work that they do.

Customise the coding test

JavaScript, Python, R, C++ – the list of tech software is endless. It is likely that these job applicants have basic proficiency in these tech software. However, what organisations might want to test is whether the candidate is minimally proficient in the basic tech software, such as JavaScript or HTML. Customise the coding test accordingly to the job requirements as well as testing these job applicants on their basic software knowledge is imperative to sieve out the best candidates.

Give a real-world problem

In addition to testing the candidate on their basic coding skills, it is important for these software developers to be able to translate their tech software skills into providing solutions for real-world problems. The best way to test their skills application is to throw them a real-world business case to work on. That is likely to provide organisations better insights on who are merely good as basic "Hello World" coding and who are able to apply their skill set to the workplace.