The job market outlook for mobile app developers will continue to be strong, according to CNN Money. Experts project a growth rate of 19% over the next decade, and a median salary exceeding $97,000.
For companies seeking to hire a mobile app developer, this means it’s important to get your hiring process right. The job market will favor candidates over potential employers, making it imperative that your team creates a strategy for reaching highly-qualified candidates, vetting their expertise, and offering the right level of compensation to attract new talent.
Fortunately, there are plenty of tools and partners that can help you achieve your hiring goals. The hiring process for mobile app developers can take a few different routes, depending on your needs. Here are a few tips and things to consider for bringing a new mobile app developer to your company.
Decide whether to hire in-house, outsource, or find a freelancer
Sometimes, it’s not always necessary to hire full-time help. Mobile app development can be achieved by hiring a freelancer or outsourcing to a team of specialists. Accordingly, there are pros and cons to each option.
Hiring in-house can be more expensive and time-consuming: recruiters spend an average of 23.8 days sourcing candidates, conducting interviews, and negotiating a final offer for every open position. But, hiring in-house has certain benefits. The new team member is often a better culture fit, spends more time learning about the business and its needs. Hiring in-house also facilitates communication and can end in a better-finished product.
Outsourcing to a team of specialists can also be expensive. While a company accesses guaranteed expertise, there can be communication issues and delays if the outsourced team is working on multiple projects at once. Outsourcing, however, enables a company to tap into a ready team of experts who have experience delivering a product to spec.
Freelancing provides possibly the most affordable option, but with some of the same drawbacks as outsourcing. A freelancer is typically hired to complete a concrete set of deliverables. Maintaining and supporting the app thereafter is a separate contract. However, freelancers are adept at joining a project and getting to work quickly, allowing you to get immediate expertise.
Research hiring platforms
Once you’ve decided whether to outsource, find a freelancer, or hire in-house, the next step is to identify the hiring resources you need to source candidates.
You could use freelancing sites or portfolio platforms to find mobile app developers. Many companies also tap into their networks to ask for referrals. But one of the fastest and most effective ways to hire a mobile app developer is to work with a partner like Index.
Index uses a tried-and-true process to find the right mobile app developer for your company the first time. It starts with an understanding of your requirements: tell us what kind of developers you’re looking for, and our tech account manager will start looking for the right fit for your brand.
Then, we provide a shortlist of candidates for your hiring team to review. We’ll send you a shortlist of handpicked 3-4 developers, ready to start — with a guarantee that these candidates have already been vetted. Of the thousands of applications we receive, fewer than 1% are accepted into our process.
You can review their profiles and choose who to interview. The final step is to interview candidates and then start your engagement with a three-month trial for any developer hired.
Working with a partner like Index can help ensure you make the best hire the first time around. The US Department of Labor estimates that the average cost of a bad hiring decision is at least 30% of the individual's first-year expected earnings — if mobile app developers make $97,000, that cost can be nearly $30,000. That’s not to mention the hidden costs associated with hiring: lost time, productivity, and morale.
Ask candidates for their portfolios
If you choose to do your hiring process without help, the next step is to make sure you review your top candidates’ portfolios. Ask each candidate to provide a link to their website, share client testimonials, or provide a demo of mobile apps on which they’ve worked previously.
A portfolio also proves that the candidate has experience. While hiring a recent college grad can offer its own set of benefits, for most companies, experience is key. The right portfolio should demonstrate a range of skills, technologies, and the candidate’s approach to the development cycle.
Use a skill test
Make sure the candidate has the skills needed to be successful before you make a job offer. There are tons of skill tests available to help you vet each applicant, from coding tests to design challenges. Check out our list in this post: 6 Ways to Test Software Developers.
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Complete an onboarding process
Onboarding is shown to improve project outcomes as well as employee retention. This process is especially important if the mobile app developer you hire will be working remotely.
At Index, we offer a three-month trial for any developer hired. This trial period serves two purposes: it allows the employer and developer to ensure the position is a good match, and it gives the developer a chance to onboard and get up to speed quickly. Our clients say this is one of the key benefits of working with Index.
“The assignment process went quickly, we have started with a trial and at the end of it, we felt comfortable to grow the team and assign more developers,” said Aurélien Carpentier, Directeur des Systèmes d'Information chez France Pari.
Ultimately, onboarding helps your company save time and resources while providing a great experience for the developer — encouraging greater engagement and productivity.
To learn more, read our blog and start the process of hiring your first developer to see what makes us different.
