The hiring process can be long at times and also potentially expensive. Candidates have a lot of skills, traits, and experiences that all come off from their resumes. But when it comes to software developers, what are you really looking for? Is it better to focus on their languages and frameworks or their projects? Should you hire a python developer or someone with a wider skill set? What type of skills are you searching for and how do you differentiate developers with an equally strong skill set?

From our wonderful experience, we're sharing what are we looking for when we're hiring developers. Here's a quick look into our developer hiring process.

1. Search for Leaders

Most developers can easily code without ever wanting to be responsible for other people. But a leader can become a true asset for your company in terms of his ability to motivate his team and aim for success in deadlines. A leader can mentor, delegate, convince and influence the team to take clear directions and push for the project's success.

2. Take on explorers

Some of the best features that we've developed within Upstack came from developers that thought outside the box and constantly wanted to improve. When looking over resumes, indeed we're interested to see credentials and experience, but we absolutely love it when we find developers with personal projects like our own apps and contributions to open sources. This means that their mind is constantly looking in the future, trying to understand better the technologies that they work with.

3. Find people that develop value

We have a lot of developers in Upstack's community, from mid to senior performers, with different types of attributes. But we've found that the ones that are most important are:

• the ability to self motivate and direct
• having a greater focus on the overall business value and not necessarily on the technology
• and being a good communicator and collaborator.

These people, that can directly add more value to the business will surely be placed in key positions within any organization.

4. Find team players

Programming is a logic operation, therefore developers tend to have different styles. It's least likely that you will see two developers come up with exactly the same solution or even a close approach on the subject. This means that developers need to show that they can adapt to the standards of a team, taking into consideration that they will write code that others might work on later. The ability to present their thoughts, take and give feedback are key matters in building teams.

5. Hire the best

All of the best developers are amazing at what they're doing, by being bold, creative, competitive, and also being able to explain technical concepts to non-technical people. These are the developers that also understand the industry and your audience.

It might not be that easy in finding the right developers that suit your company. But when you know what to look and test for, you'll be now 5 steps closer to building your perfect team.

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