These tips will help you hire the junior developer talent your business needs
Junior developers are essential for all modern businesses. Your company needs to have a flawless digital image, so you need to hire a great junior developer. But it’s easy to get lost in technicalities when looking for one. Focusing on coding skills is one thing, but ignoring all the other attributes that make someone a fantastic developer is not the way to go.
Luckily, as a tech recruitment platform we work with developers all the time. We know what makes one really great… and what doesn’t.
How to spot and hire a junior developer
1 – They’re an excellent problem solver
The most obvious and important trait for a junior developer to have is a flair for solving problems.
Junior developers are there to fix all of your techy issues. If your site crashes, your dev will have to be there to pick up the pieces. But they also deal with little things too. In improving your website, they’ll probably break a fair amount of it – code is just like that sometimes. So your new developer will need to be able to juggle all of these moving parts, understand their intricacies and fix their problems.
During an interview be on the lookout for a natural problem-solver. Someone that loves to get stuck in with the team and think creatively is going to be an excellent addition to your team.
2 – They’re a great communicator
Junior developers have to be excellent communicators.
On the speaking side of things, they have to be able to explain technical things to non-techy people – like you (probably).
But they also have to be expert listeners. The only way you can get to the root of a problem is by listening and understanding it. Developers are useless if they can’t listen to their team or client and understand the issues they’ve come across.
3 – They have a love of learning
As a developer your learning is never complete. There’s always new programmes, frameworks and languages to learn. If your new hire doesn’t understand this then they’re not in the right field.
A natural love of learning is essential for success in all fields. You need to be working with someone that is enthusiastic, passionate and has the energy to keep up with industry trends. If you hire someone that thinks they know it all, your company could be left in the dust.
4 – They have to be creative… to a point
Creativity is another attribute that compliments problem solving. And although it’s a great thing to be, it can also get in the way of progress.
Your new developer can’t be trying to reinvent the wheel every day. It just takes too long. There is an endless resource – the internet – which they have to be humble enough to use for quick solutions to problems. Otherwise they’re going to waste everyone’s time.
5 – Technical skills
Now that you’ve tested your candidate on their essential soft skills, let’s return to their technical ability. Can they manage a website? Build an app? Code in the languages you need?
Be sure to check out everyone’s DigitalGrads profile, digital portfolio and GitHub account to get a feel of what they can do.
A great and common way to discover how skilled your candidates are is to test them. Coding challenges can be found all over the internet. Employers often pull them out at interviews to really see what candidates can do.
Looking for more interview tips? Make sure to read our 10 questions not to ask candidates.
Are you struggling to find a junior developer? Have you tried DigitalGrads? Sign up to our hiring platform to post your job advert and get to browsing all of our aspiring developers today.