How to hire a software developer
By: Amsterdam Standard
Tags: Recruiting, Software Development, Hiring, Nearshore, Dedicated Team Model

The three main ways to hire a software developer

Hire an in-house developer through job boards or recruitment agencies Hire a freelance developer Hire a dedicated developer for the project (onshore, nearshore, or offshore)

Hiring an in-house developer

An in-house software developer is a developer who is hired directly into your company. In this case, you are taking responsibility for the hiring process and paying employee wages and salaries and some employee benefits according to your country’s regulations. In-house employees most often live in the location of your company office and are physically present.

To hire an in-house employee you should post an open position on your website and/ or on one or more platforms for reaching the wider audience and attract applicants. Let’s mention a few popular job boards.

Linkedin

Linkedin is the world’s largest professional network with 690+ million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. LinkedIn began in co-founder Reid Hoffman’s living room in 2002 and was officially launched on May 5, 2003.

Today, LinkedIn leads a diversified business with revenues from membership subscriptions, advertising sales, and recruitment solutions under the leadership of Ryan Roslansky. In December 2016, Microsoft completed its acquisition of LinkedIn, bringing together the world’s leading professional cloud and the world’s leading professional network.

When posting a developer job on LinkedIn, you can pay by setting a daily average budget. The actual amount you’re charged depends on your daily budget and the number of job posting views from candidates.

Indeed

Indeed is the #1 job site in the world with over 250 million unique visitors every month worldwide. Indeed strives to put job seekers first, giving them free access to search for jobs, post resumes, and research companies. Every day, we connect millions of people to new opportunities.

Indeed helps you connect with talent, on desktop and mobile, so you can make more quality hires faster. Anyone can post jobs for free. You can post developer jobs directly on Indeed or through your company career site or ATS. To attract more candidates, pay to promote your jobs as Sponsored listings. Sponsored Jobs have higher visibility in search results and are 3.5x more likely to result in a hire.

Glassdoor

Glassdoor is one of the world’s largest jobs and recruiting sites.

Built on the foundation of increasing workplace transparency, Glassdoor offers millions of the latest job listings, combined with a growing database of company reviews, CEO approval ratings, salary reports, interview reviews and questions, benefits reviews, office photos, and more. Unlike other job sites, all of this information is shared by those who know a company best — the employees. In turn, job seekers on Glassdoor are well-researched and more informed about the jobs and companies they apply to and consider joining. This is why thousands of employers across all industries and sizes turn to Glassdoor to help them recruit and hire quality candidates at scale who stay longer.

Glassdoor offers a do-it-yourself job posting for small businesses with smaller hiring needs. For medium, large and enterprise businesses, they recommend their complete recruiting solution.

Monster

Monster is a global online employment solution for people seeking jobs and the employers who need great people. They’ve been doing this for more than 20 years, and have expanded from their roots as a “job board” to a global provider of a full array of job seeking, career management, recruitment and talent management products, and services.

In the Netherlands, Monsterboard is part of Monster Worldwide. Monster offers three primary plans: a Starter subscription, which costs $249 per month for one job; a Standard subscription, which costs $449 per month for two jobs; and a Premium subscription, which costs $999 per month for five jobs.

Use recruitment tech

There is another way to reach your potential candidates in the internet space. Thanks to the recruitment marketing companies as “MrWork” and “Onrecruit”. Using their products, you can reach your target group, harnessing the power of Social Media and Google, and reach both active and latent job seekers. At the same time, you can get insight into how you are performing, what outcomes you can expect, and what you need to do to achieve your recruitment/business goals.

Recruitment agencies

One more popular option for hiring in-house developers is using the services of recruitment agencies. A recruitment agency acts as an intermediary between a company that’s looking to hire someone and a job seeker who is looking for employment. At the end of the day, a recruitment agency’s main function is to find the most suitable candidate for a job opening. As a company, you will (high) pay fees for the recruitment agency service of finding you a suitable software developer.

Naturally, several factors will affect the cost of using a recruiter:

Type of role you’re trying to fill

The seniority of the role (e.g. junior vs. senior),

The urgency with which the role has to be filled and

Ability to find suitable candidates

Each of these things will have a bearing on the fee you will be charged when asking a recruiter to fill your vacancy. However, in addition to those, the 3 main factors that will affect your bill will be whether the job on offer is permanent or temporary and the annual salary that comes with the role.

Hire a freelance developer

If you don’t mind your developer working remotely or if you are looking for a developer for a short period hiring a freelance developer is probably a perfect option for you.

Freelance developers and programmers are self-employed, which means that they work for themselves on a contractual basis.

Today the process of finding and hiring freelancers has become more quick and painless. With the rise of platforms that assist in finding and hiring workers online, business owners can simplify the entire hiring lifecycle, from posting job offers to selecting and working with the best-fit developers. Companies are also able to track their freelancer’s performance and choose a convenient payment model (hourly rate or fixed price) depending on the scope of work they need.

The cooperation with a freelance developer provides a high level of flexibility — you can end it at any time convenient for you and find a new freelancer without dealing with paperwork.

One more benefit of hiring freelancers is the price of services. Often freelancers are located in the countries where the cost of labor is much cheaper. You might be able to get the same work done for a quarter of the cost or less than the hiring developer in your location. What’s more, when working with freelancers, you are free from extra charges like infrastructure setup, health insurance, sick leave, and other expenses related to hiring in-house employees.

There are a few examples of popular platforms to hire freelance developers

Toptal

Toptal is an exclusive network of top freelance software developers, designers, finance experts, product managers, and project managers in the world. Remote workers are those who work for companies globally whether it’s in the same city or different, they work and get paid.

Upwork

Upwork, formerly Elance-oDesk, is a global freelancing platform where businesses or individuals connect to conduct business. Upwork quickly generates a shortlist of qualified experts in multiple disciplines from around the globe with their proprietary AI matching technology. With each shortlisted software engineer candidate, you’ll be able to review detailed profiles, portfolios, and client reviews and ratings so you can find the perfect match for your project.

Fiverr

Fiverr joins the list of platforms that makes freelancing a whole lot easier for both the freelancer and the client. Through their portal, over 50 million transactions between businesses and contracted freelancers occur monthly. There, you can find thousands of IT specialists who have the credentials to complete your job. Whether you’re looking to hire a short term developer or an expert to grow within your team, Fiverr is a good place to look.

Some platforms specialize just in Freelance IT, such as Stackoverflow and GitHub Jobs.

Hire a dedicated developer

This third option is the in-between solution and can be the best choice for many companies.

A dedicated developer is a software developer or engineer that is committed to working exclusively for your company or on your project.

It’s possible to collaborate with dedicated software developers by using one of the following models:

Onshoring: Remote dedicated specialists are located in the same country as the hiring company.

Nearshoring: The hiring company office and remote specialists are located in a nearby location within the same time zone.

Offshoring: Offshoring involves hiring IT specialists in a distant country.

One of the most popular models of attracting dedicated developers is by hiring a dedicated developer or (extended) team managed by a nearshore software development company.

The hiring of dedicated nearshore developers has all the benefits of working with freelancers as an easy hiring process, the desired level of flexibility, and the lower price of services.

Dedicated Developers vs. Freelancers

- Dedicated developers offer a higher level of expertise

- Dedicated developers are fully focused op your project, whereas freelancers may work on more projects simultaneously

- The software development company providing dedicated developers is more likely to provide a better development environment, resources as well as communication support that might lack quality in case of freelancers

- Security is one concern associated with remote developers, and it can be better addressed if you hire a dedicated team from a trusted software development partner.

Tips for hiring a software developer

Here are some useful tips that can help you in selecting the right software developer for your project.

- Technical Ability: Does the developer understand your project’s requirements, business logic, and can provide appropriate solutions? The developer should have similar knowledge and experience related to the challenges you face and the technologies you use.

- Work Experience: How much experience the developer has when it comes to software development in business environments. Compare it and the depth of knowledge of technologies you are planning to work with to other candidates and see which one matches your requirement the best.

- Commutation: How a developer manages relations with clients and other team members; both in real life and via various communication channels like Slack, Google Hangouts, Zoom, etc.

- Methodology: Which approach to software development does the developer or company use? Waterfall or Agile? Who is taking care of the development process and budget perspective? So speak to them about this before starting the project.

- The lowest TCO (total cost of ownership): Of course, the pricing of IT services is important in your search for the perfect partner. You have to ask yourself how you are going to determine that pricing over a certain desired lifespan or TCO (total cost of ownership).

To sum up

Hiring a software developer is a big responsibility and not an easy task. Get your requirements and expectations in place and check all the above-described options. There is no “one best for all” solution regarding hiring IT professionals. You will need to find the one which suits the best for your project or company at the moment. Our clients are thriving with a dedicated nearshore team. They got a skilled development team in the short term and for a fair price. Since in partnership with us they can concentrate on their business goals and grow again. To see how it works for them, check our “Cases”. If you have any questions, we are happy to hear from you.