All the companies, whether startups or giant business holders are accepting remote work policies across the globe. Atlassian has recently made remote work permanent which tells that people can acknowledge its power. Today’s advanced technology (affordable devices and strong internet connection) is playing a vital role in this. The world’s workplace is changing dramatically: with work from home, virtual teams, and virtual meetings. Remote working companies’ success depends on the perfect person in the right position.

If you are looking for hiring software developers remotely - must seek these essential skills.

Communication skills

The most important rule of working remotely is over-communication. It sounds wrong but it is absolutely right. No question is wrong that you ask because it is most important to over-communicate so that the whole team is on the same page.

While hiring, if you are communicating with the developer using email, make sure the email is drafted well and the candidate is answering all the follow-up questions that you asked them. It is a good trick to add a hidden question in your email and ask the candidates to answer that question in their next email so that you can judge if they are detail-oriented.

Team Player

Employees are the greatest assets of a company or industry. When all the team members own the team, they tend to be more open to sharing their ideas without any fear or favor. A friendly behavior with teammates creates a good and motivating working environment.

While hiring, you can ask questions that explain the behavior of the candidate. For example, it is good to ask them to share an example where you worked as a team and achieved great results in a project. This will definitely help you to understand the approach of the candidate to work as a team player and if they can take the work quality to the next level.

Fast self-learner

Since new technologies are emerging at such a fast pace, the projects take quite sharp turns while implementing solutions. New and smart solutions require a good knowledge base and sometimes need the developer to think out of the box and try solutions that are different from the current tech stack. Hence, it is important to have the ability to learn something new efficiently.

You can create a small take-home exercise that requires a skill that is similar to the current skills of the candidate but requires a little bit of research work. The candidate doesn’t need to score A in it but you will be able to understand more about their learning skills.

Time management

Working remotely means dealing with different time zones. A suitable candidate must pay attention to the time management that it deserves. A suitable candidate for your team would be the one who is ready to overlap for a set number of hours.

While hiring, you can also share a time-bound exercise. The candidate must be able to complete the assignment in the given time. Ask them to share more details about how much time they take to complete a specific part of the assignment and which parts take more time to understand if it was a technical difficulty or the bad management of work modules to work on.

Problem Solver

We’re hiring a software developer and a shopify developer and an ideal successful developer is a problem solver. You can ask them to create a prototype of an interesting problem or to find and solve the buggy portions of the code. It is a bonus if they’ve added test coverage.

It is tricky to find a perfect software developer. In fact, you don't even need the “perfect” developer, but the right mix of skills: both hard and soft skills. The hiring process doesn’t have to be a horror story. A closer look at the details would help you find a good programmer for your team. This is actually a journey of getting to know different aspects from experience, skills, communication, and context.

At Upstack we are already making this journey, from the first call with the developers who then go through an eight-step vetting process - which focuses on technical aspects, of course - but also on the essential points mentioned above that make the difference between a good developer, and a great one!

Drop us a line and let’s get in touch - embrace remote working through Upstack!