5 golden rules to recruiting the best developers Viewpoint careers advice blog

5 golden rules to recruiting the best developers As digitisation reaches every corner of every industry, it’s important to recruit top IT talent to future proof your business. But where should you start? The best developers out there have a diverse spread of skills and experience. And, due to the fast pace of technical innovation, you need to make sure you attract those candidates with the most   in-demand technical skills in order to remain competitive now, and in the years ahead. For example, JavaScript sees consistent demand (despite being around since 1995) and its use grew by 97% in 2016, according to  Fossbytes, with Angular JS, Java and Python also growing steadily in popularity. Google’s Go programming language was also singled out as the programming language of the year, according to the long-running Tiobe Index, a search-based ranking that gauges the  popularity of top and emerging languages among developers. As a result, it can be difficult to match the best person for your specific role, business and industry. It’s not just an aptitude for syntax that counts, there are many other attributes you need to identify and evaluate to recruit the best of the best. 1. Focus on the examples given on their CV A candidate should provide plenty of links (usually via their GitHub profile) to showcase their work. Deep dive into these examples to see how a candidate codes, their specialist areas and skill set. You should have access to a full portfolio of code. This can be particularly useful for graduate or junior positions where work experience may be lacking. Try to look for developers with a variety of projects and those that complete their projects. Also, analyse their code examples in terms of functionality (does the project do what it should do?), readability and the level of documentation/information available. 2. Evaluate the relevancy of their skill set Analyse how a developer’s skill set has changed over the years to see how adaptable and relevant their coding skills are. This aptitude for learnability will make a candidate stand out from the crowd. For example, Java is a popular programming language, partly due to the rise in popularity for the Android platform. With Java 9 due to launch this year, it’s likely to stay in demand. And Angular JS has improved greatly between versions too. A top developer will know about these trends and be able to demonstrate how they have adapted to them. 3. Look for continuous development Good candidates expand their knowledge using tools including the Codeacademy, Thinkster, Coding Campus and Stacksocial. Also, hackathon attendance is another clear indicator of a coder who loves their job and embraces new technologies. Outside of their technical prowess, look for candidates who also seek out continuous professional development opportunities. For example, are they willing to take ownership and additional levels of responsibility? Have they taken the initiative when working on more challenged projects? 4. Understand the importance of trends While a solid foundation of traditional coding skills is important, there has been a rise in demand for new and complementary tools such as preprocessors, the ReachJS library, Docker container, Node.js and Google’s Go language. Other important programming trends include CSS frameworks, video tags and the open-source cluster-computing Spark framework. Artificial intelligence/machine learning and robotic applications are also due to see surges in popularity. Good candidates should be able to identify such industry trends and diversify to match the fast pace of change in the digital landscape. 5. Don’t forget the soft skills Cultivating a digital culture across your business is imperative for your business to remain competitive. As such, you need to recruit developers with good communication and interpersonal skills to explain the positive impact of technology on your business. You also need to build development teams that can deploy to deadline. As such, there is a real need for DevOps skills and a holistic knowledge of your business best practices to make deployment processes more efficient and reliable. It’s not enough to “just code” anymore. Top developers need to code in a variety of languages, adapt to change, keep up to date with industry trends and integrate their hard and soft skills to achieve your business goals. If you found this blog helpful dont forget to read our other digital transformation tips: Want to be a top developer? The languages youll need may surprise you Tech employers speed up their hiring processes Full stack development: what does it mean for your career? Hybrid skills needed now for projects and business change 7 surprising ways a hackathon will boost your employability