MBA1346 4 Essentials When Hiring a Developer

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night, not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things, of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more.

PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do.

More faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Because you and your business deserves the best. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode you will learn the four essentials when hiring a developer. If you're building a website, a web app, a digital product, a mobile app, you're going to need to hire a developer or developers. Luckily I have a bit of experience with this, being a founder of a tech company, Webinar Ninja. The funny thing is is that when you put a job post for a developer, you're going to get a flood of emails no matter where you post it. People are going to be coming out of nowhere. They're going to find a way to get to your Skype, to your support team. They're going to scrape the Internet to find your personal inbox. So how do you choose from all these eager candidates? These are the four essentials we must have as a criteria when we hire developers on our team. I want to share them with you so you can have a smoother experience, a clear direction and know how to filter out all the candidates. All the noise and Find that rockstar for your project. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Hey guys, I wanted to flag a new podcast that should be on your radar. Joy at Work. We spend so much of our time driving results at work, but not driving more joy. Joy at Work brings together business leaders, authors and influencers to discuss how to infuse more joy into everyday work life. Subscribe in itunes, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts and learn more at@atkearney.com joy so you need a developer. What are the most important things you need to look for? Here are my four essentials. Now I know many of you are like, probably on the top of the list is technical skills. I'm not that technical, Omar. How am I supposed to evaluate this person? We're going to get to that because technical skills are actually the last one of the four essentials. And I'll get to how you can evaluate their technical skills before you hire them or, or before you commit to them. So let me start with essential number one, and that's cultural fit. I know this sounds like very woo woo, but it's very, very important that you find the person that is going to be the best cultural fit for any position. Why? Because they could be a superstar in terms of their technical skills or their skills in their job. And I'm talking about any position, a customer service agent or a copywriter, in this case a developer. They could be a rock star. But because their values and your values don't match, it becomes a short term relationship. People are unhappy, they're unhappy, you're unhappy, they just don't understand how you work. One of the ways to find out if they're a culture fit is to ask them in the interview, what are your values, your work values, what are the things that are important to you when it comes to where you work, how you work? And some of these have to align with your core values as a company. If they say honesty and transparency and that's one of your core values, you feel like they're going to have some sort of cultural fit. But one of the best pieces of advice that I have received in the past by friends, other entrepreneurs, and recently in a must read book that I read, explosive growth is would you want to have a drink, a coffee, a beer with this person after work? If the answer is no, there's a probably a good chance that they're not a good cultural fit. You as the leader of the company really have a lot of influence over the culture of the team. And if they are not somebody you want to hang out with or spend time with outside of work, then there's a good chance they're not going to want to spend time with them at work. So you want to make sure that they're a good cultural fit. And I love that barometer because it's a really easy thing to kind of gauge after the interview. Yeah, that person seems cool. I wanted to spend more time, get to know them a little bit more. And by the way, this is reality. Especially if you have a physical office, even if you don't have a physical office and you have a remote team, you'll have team retreats and things like that. And you'll have to be in the same room, you'll have to spend a week with them or something like that. And you got to enjoy the process. So cultural fit is number one. Number two, a developer needs to have problem solving skills. They need to like to solve problems. That's really what a developer is. They're creating solutions and the code is really just the way they actually solve these problems, how they come up with a solution. But you want to find somebody that really gets a high off solving problems as a problem solver. And you can straight up ask them in the interview, what was the most satisfying problem that you solved as a developer? See how they respond. And I want to emphasize the word how here, because are they passionate when they say it? Are they excited? Oh, let me tell you about that time when we had this problem or this bug and it was nagging the whole team. And then I got it and I tried a few things and it worked and it was amazing because it helped the whole team get through this roadblock. Their satisfaction and their excitement for solving problems shows they like solving problems. So ask them that question in an interview because this is going to be their real super skill. You're going to present them, hey, we need to do this, this and this with our website or with our app or with whatever. And they're going to be like, how are we going to do that? How are we going to get around that? How are we going to solve that? Or you might have a bug, you might have an issue. How are we going to fix this problem? And you need problem solvers on the team. And the developer is the ultimate problem problem solver. All right, essential number three. Let's just recap real quick. Number one, cultural fit. Number two, they're a problem solver. Number three, and this is a big one, communication. You have to have a decent level of Communication as a developer. Now, when I say communication, I'm talking about two things here. Number one, somebody who is willing to ask questions, speak up if they need help, is willing to help other people, has some level of transparency, will say things that are on their mind and are not afraid. Number two, if you're hiring globally, sometimes you're going to find the best technical developers are not the ones with the best English communication skills or whatever your language is that you run your business. If you're in Germany, it might be German. The point here is that they may not speak your language or English very well, but it has to be at a certain level, at least verbally and written, where you can understand them. And number two, that it's not holding them back from communicating. They're not so embarrassed by their language skills that they don't talk. Now, I'm going to tell you right now that this is the most difficult skill to find in developers. I don't know. I don't want to generalize here. There are great developers on our team that are amazing communicators because it's such a priority for us. It's one of our essentials. But through the interview process, we realize this is the weakest skill for most developers. They don't know how to communicate and they don't know how to participate. There are rockstar developers that we were going to hire but couldn't because they refused to be on a video call. They refused to participate in a weekly sync, like a weekly meeting. That might sound strange to you, but this is commonplace in the world of developers. Now, I'm not saying it's so common that you can't find a developer that will do it. I'm saying that it's something that we've encountered more than once. So they got to be willing to communicate, to be open, to have the language skills enough to not feel so bashful about it.

And.

And they got to be transparent. They got to be able to ask questions, give comments, give feedback, give their opinion. Communication is so important. Now, I know some developers in other companies that maybe their English is not so good. They've been quiet, but they're such good developers and they have the willingness to get better at communication. They have the willingness to get better at English, for example, and they're happy to take English lessons. You know, the company will pay for English lessons and get them better in English. And that's something maybe you can work out if you find a superstar developer has the other essentials. Great, the communications that gray their English can get better? How about nurture them and say, hey, are you willing to get better? Are you willing to take some lessons that we will help you pay for and all that kind of stuff and see their response? If it's a yes, then you know, you got somebody who's at least going to try. She's going to try to try to communicate, she's going to try to get better, she's going to try to improve her communication skill. All right, Essential number four, of course, their technical knowledge. Whatever you're hiring for a PHP developer, an angular developer, front end, back end, you need to know they know their stuff. So one of the best ways to hire somebody who knows their stuff and is a good fit for your company or your projects and needs is to write a really good job description specifying exactly what you're looking for. If you know other companies that have hired for a similar position that do similar things, you can kind of look at their job description and borrow some of the language. If you do know some of the stuff already, write a job description. We have episodes on that. You can check out our archives or go to 1,000mba.net show to learn how to put together a job description. Number two, ask for samples of work. Ask for what they've built before and they show you a website. Ask them, what did you do on this website? What was your job? Did you complete it A to Z? Did you do everything front and backend or did you do the functionality only on the back end? See how active they are in the developer community, like on GitHub. Are they answering questions? Are they communicating? Are they a leader in their space? And lastly, we always trial our new hires, whatever the position, not just developers, any position. So you can put them on a two week trial, say, hey, we want to hire for two weeks. How much is your rate for two weeks? We're going to give you a small little project, something that they can knock out in two weeks. Take a look at the results, see how they do. And this is a real world example. It's going to be worth the investment. And guess what? You don't have to hire one developer. You can actually hire more than one, two or three. Three developers get them work on three different things or maybe the same thing if you like and see who does best in real life. Are they communicating? Are they a cultural fit? Do they have a problem solving attitude and what are the results of their work? And then you can hire the best person or hire all three if you want.

Is it time to reimagine your future. The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Edu.

All right, to recap the four essentials when you're hiring a developer. Number one, they're a cultural fit. Number two, they're a problem solver. Number three, they're a communication communication. Are they a good communicator or a decent one that's willing to improve? And number four, technical ability and skills. And I want to emphasize the skills that you need. They could be great at a lot of things, but are they really good at what you really need for this role, for the job, for the project? Thank you so much for listening to the Hunter Humpier Show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now. And whatever you use to listen to podcasts, whether it's Stitcher Radio, Apple Podcast, Overcast, Spotify, we're on them all. By hitting subscribe, you tell the podcast app, hey, I like the show. When a new episode comes out, make sure I get it before I go. I want to leave you with this. Sometimes it takes longer than expected to find the right hire. That's okay. And by the way, I highly recommend when you do hire, earmark several people that would work, interview many people and put them on trial. Like I mentioned, it doesn't always work out right off the bat. You don't always hit a home run as soon as you find somebody, right? So it's good to have people you can try out in real life and see what goes on. And hey, it's transparent. This is a trial. This is a two week trial and there's no harm done if you just say, hey, thanks but no thanks or great job. Let's continue. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.