How to Hire Software Developers for Your Startup: A Founder’s Guide

Imagine this: the founder has an exceptional idea for creating and launching the software. Nevertheless, the startup is limited in resources, so they are searching for options for hiring the right developer or development team. The statistics presented in Founders Forum Group indicates that 23% of new companies fail because of the wrong team. In this article, we discuss how to hire software developers for startup​ to build a sustainable project. 

MVP-First Hiring Strategy for Startups

An MVP-oriented approach is a strategy in which businesses focus on assembling a team to craft an MVP for a future product. This means hiring a small team of professionals with a specific skill set to get a core product with a minimum set of essential features to deliver it to market as fast as possible. MVP isn’t focused on building a complete or fully-featured application, but a functional variant. This enables users to test it to gather feedback and validate the core business idea.

The MVP-first hiring approach shifts the company’s needs from a fragmented team to generalist full-stack developers. In favor of speed-to-market, the business needs people who can tackle the frontend, backend, and database development, emphasizing solving problems and not achieving architectural perfection. From these, the core professionals’ skills include:

• Full-Stack Proficiency.

• Adaptability to Alterations.

• Strategic Problem-Solving.

• Growth Mindset.

This approach mitigates risk by testing assumptions on an early, long-term engagement basis, which minimizes or avoids cost or time-intensive development into features users would never adopt. Rather than building a complete product, they can stand to build lighter, MVP products to eventually achieve early customer discovery insights into consumer, or user, engagement with key product features. This information can help the development team bring attention to the top and flop features. 

Implementing a hiring strategy for developing an MVP allows companies to reduce waste and speed up the learning and development process to ensure the end product meets and exceeds users' pain points to remain consistent with the market. 

Check the estimated cost for a software MVP development.

How to Hire a Software Developer for a Startup: Step-by-Step Framework

The overall hiring process is a strategic roadmap of finding and securing the right talent for the fast-paced environment. This moves from defining tech requirements and scope, to interviewing, practical coding skills, and leading to well-structured onboarding. 

Step 1 - Define What You’re Building (Scope + Tech Requirements)

Before beginning to search for the team, the company must ensure that it has a clear understanding of what it is going to develop. This means identifying the future intended use of the product, the target market, and which business issue it is going to solve. Please consider the following:

• Product Vision: what will this product be for the target audience and the business?

• Core Features (MVP Scope): the must-have set of functions needed at release.

• Technical Requirements: which platforms? (web, iOS, Android), what integrations are required and at what level of performance?

• Tech Stack: the collection of frameworks, programming languages, and tools to build a product. The technology stack will determine what specific skills the founder will need to search for in candidates. 

• Constraints: budget, timeline, and regulatory compliance needs. 

• Team Size: this relates to identifying the size of the initial team and roles the company needs to fill (e.g., a full-stack developer, a frontend specialist, a mobile developer). 

Step 2 - Decide on Hiring Model: In-House, Remote, or Outsourcing

The hiring model will be the most important strategic decision for a new company because it directly involves cost and talent availability. There are three basic options when considering a hiring model in a company’s operation: in-house, remote, and outsourced. 

In-House Team

An in-house team means a group of personnel collectively working in a shared physical space. This fosters cultural alignment based on communication and collaborative socialization of individuals toward a common vision. However, this option comes with significant costs in office space rental, office equipment, and personnel salary based on a certain geographical locale. 

The in-house team option can benefit organizations that require an in-depth response to the evolving, highly regulated niches to which they develop their services, such as a medical application that processes health records. 

Additionally, the in-house team contributes to the overall security of app development, as full-time employees are subjected to the stronger legal protections, Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA), and internal security policies. 

Remote Team

A remote team implies a workplace where employees work from different locations. The advantage of this working model refers to the access to the worldwide pool of talent at a lower cost. This benefits the owners to economize on rentals and office overhead.

Keeping the team cohesive and productive through synchronous/asynchronous communication across different time zones remains one of the central challenges, along with IP protection. It might be cost-demanding for the founders to sign NDAs across international borders. Additionally, remote workers work via their applications that pose a security gap, especially when aligning with corporate security standards.  

For instance, the new company can be headquartered in New York; however, the developer, responsible for the server-side logic, resides and works in Mexico. 

Outsourcing 

Outsourcing is about hiring external third-party specialists to complete a part of software development services or cover the whole development cycle of the product. This is the fastest way of integrating specialists to cover the company's needs, since the outsourced team has specialized expertise. This can be the best option for founders with budget constraints who lack internal resources.

The company has to sacrifice direct oversight while maintaining clear communication, which might remain challenging. Additionally, there is a risk of granting third-party access. Startups often need to allow external entities access to their codebase and systems, creating the risk of data leakage or security breaches.

For instance, if a company plans to build a mobile application but lacks an in-house team, outsourcing is about engaging specialists from nearby and overseas locations to close the talent gap. 

Step 3 - Create a Hiring Funnel and Write Job Descriptions

Building an effective hiring funnel is critical for organizations to attract the right talent, and it starts with a well-structured description. The funnel demonstrates a candidate’s path, starting from the initial exposure to the job description, moving through a job offer, and leading to the first point of the contract. 

Job Description Structure 

A proactive job description will cover more than just the list of duties and should include:

• A Company Pitch: startup’s vision, mission, and culture. 

• Role Summary & Responsibilities: an explicitly defined summary of the role’s function and what responsibilities the developers are expected to fulfill. 

• Required Skills & Qualifications: a well-thought-out list of core skills (e.g., programming languages, frameworks) and potential nice-to-have skills. 

• Soft Skills: this is about non-technical characteristics required for the start-up environment. These can be things such as problem-solving, adaptability, flexibility, and communication characteristics. 

• What We Offer: The salary range, benefits, equity, and anything unique and growth opportunities needs to be indicated in this sub-section.

Where to Look for People

Companies must be aware of channels to look for candidates to balance the scarce resources. Effective channels will include: 

• Specialized Tech Job Boards: platforms like Stack Overflow or AngelList, where developers can actively look for technical roles. 

• Professional Networks: LinkedIn is one of the most powerful tools for posting job offers and actively sourcing candidates. 

• Community & Forums: communicate with developers on Reddit, Discord servers, or local meetups to identify passive candidates that are not in the active job search. 

• Referrals: addressing the networks of current employees to look for the high-skilled candidates that have a sense of the company’s culture. 

How to Filter Results

Once the founder begins receiving resumes, it becomes critical to manage and filter through the large volume. 

• Initial Screening: utilize either application tracking systems or employ a manual keyword search to screen resumes based on specific technical skills and years of experience. 

• Portfolio and GitHub Review: startups can review developers’ portfolios, personal websites, or GitHub profiles to assess their contributions and evaluate their practical application of skills beyond what is indicated on resumes.

• First Contact: the company representative can schedule a small conversation with a candidate to test their communication skills and evaluate their interest in the role. Additionally, they can ask a few high-level questions about their experience. This enables the business to narrow the scope of candidates to set the next stage of the hiring process. 

Step 4 - Shortlist and Interview Developers

The process of shortlisting and interviewing is about checking the candidate’s technical expertise and overall fit with the corporate culture. This process goes beyond skimming through to assessing the client’s technical expertise, but a deeper dig into their problem-solving style, and alignment with a corporate mission. 

Shortlisting

After receiving applications, the shortlisting process is about an in-depth review and analysis of resumes and portfolios, in which the founder should look for the following:

• Experience: that’s about clarifying the candidate’s professional history and whether it aligns with technologies and responsibilities the owner defines. 

• Portfolio & GitHub Profile Analysis: this relates to exploring the candidate’s work on projects to gain insights into their drivers for motivation, practical skills, and problem-solving. 

• Clear Communication: the company representatives can check how well the candidate’s resume is structured to detect their ability to communicate proactively, which is a required skill in the fast-paced IT landscape. 

The Interview 

The interview should be a two-step process to analyze the candidate’s technical expertise and soft skills.

1. Analyzing the Candidate’s Technical Skills:

This part of the interview goes beyond rote memorization, but checks the professionals’ analytical skills and how they solve problems. Technical skills can be assessed through: 

• Behavioral Questions: it’s about asking questions on the projects the candidate has completed to analyze their role in the team, how they performed tasks, and how they encountered challenges. 

• Scenario-Based Questions: pose a hypothetical problem and have the candidate walk through the process from design to implementation. That’s about testing the professional’s technical depth, problem-solving skills, adaptability, and scalability thinking. 

• Coding Challenges: the interview can include a brief discussion of the coding problem to check the candidate’s immediate problem-solving skills under the pressure. 

Find out how to find an appropriate tech talent for the fintech industry projects.

2. Evaluating Soft Skills & Cultural Fit

Checking soft skills might be the top priority for small companies, as they underline how the candidate is going to approach their work and collaborate with the team. It’s essential to check the following:

• Adaptability: it’s about how well the candidate responds to altering requirements, challenges, and ambiguity. 

• Self-Organization: quite an essential element to check whether the candidate can self-organize their work without constant supervision. 

• Communication: checking how easily the candidate can explain complex notions among colleagues. 

• Mission Alignment: it’s important to clarify why the candidate chose this specific company to check their passion, as it’s a determinant of a long-term commitment. 

Step 5 - Conduct Tech Assignments or Pair Programming

Evaluating developers’ practical skills is critical for founders to prove a candidate’s coding abilities mentioned in the resume, along with their problem-solving skills and real-time collaboration.

Tech Assignments 

A tech assignment is a take-home task where the candidate completes a real-world coding challenge within a set timeframe. Its purpose is to check the developer’s capability of building a fully functional product from start to finish. 

• Practical Skill Assessment: it’s about the candidate’s coding style, problem-solving approach, and project structure. 

• Pressure Reduction: it enables candidates to work in the familiar environment, enabling them to produce their best work.

• Time Commitment: experienced candidates may have different interviews, so the real tasks can be aligned with the candidate's time capacity.

Pair Programming

Pair programming involves a real-time coding session between a candidate and a team member, with the objective of jointly solving a technical problem on the spot. It provides the company with the ability to:

• Test Collaboration: the goal is to immediately evaluate how the candidate collaborates with the team throughout the process, and how they respond to the feedback. 

• Assess Problem-Solving Skills: pair programming enables founders to check the candidate’s immediate thinking in high-stress situations and their comfort with ambiguity. 

Step 6 - Make an Offer (Equity; Remote Terms)

After completing interviews and technical assessments, the founder’s next step is making a compelling offer to the candidate. The offer can differ from the traditional corporate packages by including unique features to compensate for the potentially lower salary.

Equity is a key feature that the company can offer to the candidates, representing a small ownership of the company’s shares. Developers have the right to purchase the stock options at a fixed price, affecting their long-term commitment. 

However, equity does not occur right away; it occurs in phases (or vesting). The standard vesting period is four years with a one-year cliff. This means that the developer has to stay at the company for one year to get 25% of the equity. After passing that one-year threshold, the remaining equity vests in equal amounts every month for the next three years.

In the case of remote work, the offer can include terms clarifying expectations about working hours, communication tools, and a clear reporting structure to promote decent work worldwide.

Step 7 - Onboard Fast and Smart

The onboarding process shifts from just paperwork to designing a proactive integration to foster developers’ productivity from day one. Effective onboarding considers three elements:

• First, the company has to grant access to the codebase from day one to eliminate waiting time for all the necessary accesses.

• Secondly, assigning a mentor is essential to keep guiding the candidate for the initial weeks, answering questions, and helping them navigate through the organization’s processes. 

• Thirdly, it’s important to provide the candidate with small, manageable tasks within the first few days. Developers can quickly adapt to the codebase and organizational environment, and can then quickly adapt to the fast-paced environment. 

Startup Hiring Strategies

There are three hiring strategies available to find developers for startup: assembling an in-house team, hiring remote freelancers, or integrating an outsourced team. Each option carries its own advantages and disadvantages. 

In-House Team

Assembling an in-house team is the best hiring model for companies that regard the product as its core. It requires a long-term commitment based on the robust alignment with corporate mission, vision, and values, and is based on the day-to-day real-world communication. 

An in-house team is perfect for the companies focused on building a mission-critical technology, operating with sensitive or highly-regulated data as those in fintech, banking, or medical industries. That’s due to the strict emphasis on security, where the physical presence is non-negotiable. 

In-House Team: Advantages

The in-house team poses a range of benefits for companies, including:

• Direct oversight over the progress.

• Faster Response to Change: is about the immediate response to the urgent issues, market shifts, without relying on third-party schedules. 

• Data Security & Confidentiality: organizations that operate via the sensitive business or customer data can reduce risks of breaches compared to external vendors. 

In-House Team: Disadvantages

Regardless of the direct oversight, real-time & rapid response to changes, and alignment with corporate culture, the in-house team faces a range of challenges:

• It’s extremely time-consuming for the in-house team to onboard and retain the right talent, especially for companies with limited brand recognition. 

• As an in-house team works within one geographical area, the company may lack access to specialized talents. Additionally, even if the required talents are available, it might be cost-demanding to hire them. 

Remote Freelancers

Hiring freelancers can positively affect a company’s software development based on access to the global talent pools. As new companies require product quality within a limited budget, hiring remote freelancers can benefit from expert crafting of a well-thought-out MVP without a long-term commitment.

Remote Freelancers: Advantages

There are the following benefits that remote freelancers can bring to the founders:

• Flexibility & Scalability: startups can scale up or down the team based on the overall product demand.

• Hiring Speed: companies don’t need to conduct an in-depth onboarding process as compared to full-time developers. They just clarify the scope of the assigned tasks and determine the time for the result submission. 

• Focus on the Core Team: if the new company operates an in-house team, it can hire freelancers to cover some critical tasks to bridge the talent gap and reduce costs, while focusing on the main business priorities. 

Remote Freelancers: Disadvantages

Hiring freelancers may impose the following challenges, so an in-depth analysis is required to build a thorough hiring strategy.

• No Direct Control: after defining the scope of tasks, the owner doesn’t have control over the freelancers’ progress. Clearly-defined tasks and predetermined deadlines may be challenging in the case of milestone alterations.

• Risks of Overpay: in general, the founder can set a fixed-price payment model to pay for services. Nevertheless, if the scope is altered, the company has to compensate for the alterations, leading to significant overpayment, while the time & materials model isn’t always an option. 

• Potential Delays: the misaligned or misunderstood requirements can lead to the time-intensive revisions that will cause a delay in the milestone submission. 

Outsourcing Teams

Outsourcing is about assembling a team of developers and delegating development tasks to them. There are three types of outsourcing. A dedicated team represents the hiring of a team to tailor software from scratch. Staff augmentation is about integrating one or two narrowly specialized experts into the in-house team to close the talent gap. Project-based outsourcing is perfect for projects with a well-defined scope and milestones, and the company can hire a development team to complete the project per the predefined timeline. 

Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring Developers for a Startup

Hiring a developer is the most essential decision for a company. Nevertheless, it’s important to consider the following mistakes to ensure building a strong and effective team. 

Hiring Without a Clear Product Vision

A clear product or MVP vision is a blueprint for the hiring strategy. If the company fails to define the project’s vision, it won’t be able to determine the skill set required for its completion. This will lead to hiring the wrong talent for the project, minimizing the chance of a long-term commitment. Consequently, the company will waste time and capital, leaving it without the proactive results. 

Hasty Decisions

Founders often experience a sense of urgency when it comes to crafting and launching the product. This leads to making hasty decisions, which result in wrong hiring decisions. Rushing interviews and skipping technical tasks can result in a bad hire. As an outcome, a single bad hire can cause time loss, a reduction in team morale, and resource waste, provoking a delayed time to market.  

Ignoring Soft Skills

Indisputably, a company needs professionals with great technical expertise to ensure impeccable product development. Nevertheless, ignoring soft skills can undermine team morale, as the employee might be uncooperative, which can cause miscommunication and misunderstanding. This can lead to costly time-to-market delays. 

Choosing Based on Price Rather Than Quality

While new organizations experience budget constraints, prioritizing price over quality can cause extreme development damage to the future product. The low-quality code can result in insufficient coding and increased technical debt, which will require extreme investment to fix in the long run, affecting the company’s budget for the future. 

Top Hiring Platforms for Startup Founders

Founders have a variety of options for finding and hiring a developer based on their purpose: full-time employee, long-term contractor, or professionals for a quick task. 

GitHub

Owners can review developers’ code contributions, open-source projects, and collaborative history, providing a transparent look at the candidate’s practical skills and coding style. GitHub is a great hub to find skilled and community-engaged experts. However, it requires founder’s technical proficiency to evaluate the code themselves. 

Upwork

Upwork is the largest marketplace for freelancers, so the founders must be meticulous, as the platform varies in quality. It’s well-suited for both short-term and long-term contracts, making it beneficial for companies that need to hire experts for specific tasks. Upwork provides robust management tools, ensuring secure payment processing and presenting an in-depth review system. 

Fiverr

Famous for its ‘gig’ economy model offering a lower and fixed cost, which is perfect for the small and defined tasks, including writing a simple script or fixing a minor bug. Owners can benefit from Fiverr in minor problem-solving while it’s less suitable to long-term projects as it lacks deeper engagement of other hiring models. 

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is a reputable platform within the developer community, enabling companies to find top-tier and senior talent. Founders can access knowledgeable candidates active in the developers’ community, but the competition for these talents is fierce. 

Gun.io

Gun.io screens developers to validate their technical expertise, professionalism, and communication, providing founders access to a high-quality and more reliable talent pool. The service comes at a premium but can suit founders who prioritize quality and speed over cost and lack internal resources to screen candidates. 

Dice

Dice resembles a long-standing tech-oriented job board, often trusted by established corporations in finding full-time IT experts. Dice can be a good source for companies, it poses experienced professionals with a proven track record, but it’s more cost-demanding and less flexible than freelance platforms, which might be challenging for early-stage startups. 

How Agilie Helps Startups Build Developer Teams

As an IT organization, Agilie keeps streamlining software development for companies and enterprises in different industries, ranging from fintech to logistics, real estate, and marketing. Agilie nurtures owners in assembling the development team through the following outsourcing models and payment contracts:

• Dedicated Teams: the full-cycle development team, from UX/UI designers to frontend/backend developers, QA specialists, and DevOps engineer. Suitable for long-term projects with evolving needs and required ongoing support. 

• Staff Augmentation: Agilie provides startups with professionals of different levels of expertise and seniority. The founders can integrate the narrowly-specialized talents to compensate for the lack of internal experts. 

• Project-Based Outsourcing: for companies with fixed project requirements, Agilie provides a team that can complete the predefined milestones with the highest levels of security, tech expertise, and deadline compliance.

• Fixed-Price Contracts: Agilie values clients by offering the fixed-price model to minimize overpays when it comes to well-defined project requirements and scope. 

• Time & Materials Model: for projects with evolving needs, the clients can pay for the actual effort, time, and resources used to complete the changing requirements. 

• Custom Contracts: Agilie focuses on flexibility, so custom contracts can suit companies with the clearly-defined MVP but evolving product development needs, enabling clients to switch between the fixed price and time & materials model without compromising the quality. 

Learn more about Agilie’s expertise in software development.

Summary

Hiring a developer for a startup calls for a well-defined strategy that will lead to faster MVP development, better product quality, and minimized risks. Evaluating both soft and hard skills, using thorough coding tasks, and prioritizing quality over price can lead to hiring the best talent in the long run. This approach increases the chances of attracting skilled talent with a durable commitment. 

Interested in hiring a top-level IT expert? Our outsourcing services are right at hand!