What Skills to Look for When Hiring Remote Developers
Today, remote development is becoming increasingly popular among businesses. It provides flexibility for remote developers and helps create successful products faster.
Finding the right team of remote developers is a challenging process, but when it comes to hiring a person to work remotely for you, the difficulties become even greater. As the remote work revolution continues, companies of all sizes are embracing the "remote work" style and looking for top remote talent worldwide.
If you're still unsure about tapping into the global talent market, this article will help you evaluate all the skills necessary for remote developers. Let's review them all.
1. Must Have Deep Technical Knowledge
One of the most important skills a remote developer should have is deep knowledge of modern technologies and extensive industry experience necessary to execute the project. Ensure the developer has sufficient experience with multiple technologies, preferably on similar projects.
They should also be familiar with industry standards and find reliable solutions to all issues that arise during development. A remote employee should master development and deployment processes, task management programs, version control, full-stack, etc.
Additionally, to ensure the developer you choose has the necessary skills, you can
- Ask for work samples
- Conduct a technical interview
- Hire web developers from hackathons
- Give them mock coding scenarios
- Ask for reliable references.
2. Must Be Flexible in Learning and Work Schedule
For a remote developer's professional growth, having excellent technical knowledge is not enough. They must adopt a flexible approach to their work. They should be able to adapt to project requirements, create a work schedule that meets deadlines, and change their workflow as project demands evolve.
The developer should feel comfortable and flexible when solving problems and receive feedback positively. The programmer should be equally invested in the success of your application or website and take responsibility for their work.
3. Must Have Good Intuition and a Positive Attitude
Not everyone has good intuition. When your experience fails to provide a solution, intuition steps in. Great developers develop intuition by working extensively with algorithms. This allows them to understand problems faster, find better solutions, and offer creative ideas.
Intuition can be complemented by a positive attitude. The candidate should be enthusiastic about their work and give it their all. A developer not only accepts compliments but should also be ready to take criticism positively without taking offense.
4. Must Have Problem-Solving Ability
Problem-solving ability is an additional skill that adds luster to a candidate's profile and personality. They should be able to resolve issues in a timely manner, find solutions, and effectively handle unexpected problems. Whether it's a bug in the code structure or a scalability issue during deployment, your developer should be well-prepared to competently address each of these matters.
When dealing with complex codebases and teams, problems should be resolved without hesitation.
5. Must Have Enthusiasm and Generate Innovative Ideas While Working Remotely
Your remote developer should bring enthusiasm and innovative ideas while writing code. It's possible that in many cases they won't find ready-made code snippets; then they can use their creativity to find a reliable solution. Their enthusiasm and creativity drive them to learn new programming languages, experiment with code and frameworks.
They may ask you several questions that demonstrate their curiosity about the work:
- Is there any missing feature on the website?
- In what situation would this code not work?
- Can you find bugs in my product?
- Is your code scalable?
These questions help the remote developer identify areas that need improvement.
6. Must Have Good Communication Skills and Team Management Ability
Good communication skills go hand in hand with development experience. An experienced and skilled remote developer should be able to easily communicate with their manager and team members, discussing project goals, ideas, and issues.
Remote employees often face specific communication challenges when working remotely. Remote developers must have the ability to stay in touch with management throughout the project, meaning they report to their managers on overall project progress and any bugs encountered. They should know all remote work tools that ensure smooth communication and help maintain unity among project participants more quickly and easily. These remote tools help you communicate and collaborate with colleagues while managing your own work.
7. Past Work Experience
Remote developers have experience with trendy technologies and standard programs used in leading companies. Knowledge of the latest coding languages is very important for remote developers, as not all companies use the same infrastructure.
Since they don't come into the office regularly, they are expected to have a certain level of knowledge about the programs needed to complete the assigned task. With work experience, they already possess technical knowledge and skills. However, they need to be trained on what the company requires from them.
8. Ability to Creatively Solve Unique Problems
It may happen that during remote work, a remote employee encounters a serious problem and has no one to consult with to solve it immediately.
In this case, they could send an email to the client about how they plan to solve the problem, but a response may take a long time. However, this is not the best solution, as the developer might be working during off-hours and the problem requires immediate attention.
In such situations, remote employees should be able to find a unique solution without seeking help from the employer. Even if the employer is not satisfied with the proposed solution, it can be considered temporary until a better one is implemented.
9. Must Have Good Interpersonal Skills to Work with Teams in Different Locations
Good interpersonal skills are the hardest to find in an employee's skill set. To test a candidate's interpersonal skills, you can share information about the company culture, team interests, and preferences to see if there is common ground.
A remote employee must have good communication and interpersonal skills to work with other team members in different locations. Additionally, be sure to learn more about the remote employee's personality, tastes, behavior, etc.
You can also conduct a personality assessment or quiz/questionnaire by asking questions about values, beliefs, or unique character traits. The answers will give you a clear idea of which candidate best fits your organization or meets the requirements of your project.
10. Must Have Remote Work Experience and Be Familiar with Remote Work Tools
Regular employees who have never worked remotely won't be familiar with remote work tools. But with remote workers, it's different. They should be proficient in remote project management tools, including Trello, Basecamp, Asana, etc. This allows you to spend less time training them.
They should know all the tools used in remote work. This helps remote developers manage their workload more easily and quickly, track project deadlines, and communicate with managers and colleagues. Therefore, when hiring remote developers, be sure to ask about their experience and knowledge of remote work tools.
Final Thoughts
So, hiring a remote developer with the right skill set and experience is quite challenging. There is a huge talent pool of remote developers looking for work. In addition, this cheat sheet will help CTOs simplify the process of hiring remote developers.
Identifying this set of skills in candidates can improve productivity in the hiring process outcomes. However, before starting the hiring process, employers need to know where to look.