Hiring a developer when you don’t have any technical background can be intimidating. You may think what if you cannot understand whether the candidate is a good Rails developer and you may also become fearful thinking if you get embarrassed while interviewing the candidate.
This is a basic hiring guide that will help you eliminate this kind of fears from your mind. There are tips using which you can be sure whether the person you’re interviewing has solid Ruby on Rails skills. Using these tips, you can become confident while hiring a Ruby on Rails developer even if you have no knowledge of this web development framework.
Having some hiring experience is a plus but not sufficient for hiring technical developers. You need to have years of Rails experience in order to be able to ask the right questions and understand the candidate’s answer during the interview, but what will you do if you don’t have years of experience? What should be done in this situation?
This is clear that without Rails experience, you can’t interview a Rails developer. So how should you tackle such a situation? This post has the answer!
Your hiring experience along with the tips mentioned in this article will do wonders. Using your HR experience, you can assess the candidate’s communication skills and a few important people skills such as listening skills, patience, body language, persuasion skills, and good judgement, and by using the tips of this article, you can gauge the depth of his technical knowledge.
Take help from an expert programmer for the interview.
An amazing way to assess technical skills is to take help from an expert programmer for the interview who will ask technical questions for you sitting with you and the candidate in the same room for hiring a full-time employee. This is the simplest solution to this problem as you won’t be able to learn enough of Ruby on Rails in a few hours so that you can ask your candidate technical questions and can gauge the depth of his Rails knowledge from his answers.
So some expert Ruby on Rails developer who is probably a guy from your friends’ list on Facebook or someone who is a senior developer working in a software company whom you know personally can be of great help in this situation. You can request him to interview your candidate for asking technical questions. It should not take much time. You can pay the person some amount of money for his time or you can also give him something as a gift.
Has your candidate worked on Rails projects before?
It’s very recommended that you hire someone who has lots of Ruby on Rails experience -- someone who has worked on several complex Rails projects before. If your candidate can show you a few amazing Rails projects he/she has worked on, you have to understand that he/she obviously knows a lot about Ruby on Rails. So hiring that person won’t be a bad decision.
If someone has worked on various Rails projects before, it indicates that the person has a lot of Ruby on Rails knowledge, skills, and experience, and it hints that the person will be probably be a good choice for your work. But at the same time, you also have to look at other factors.
Hire someone who is a great fit
One important deciding factor that you should consider while hiring a Ruby on Rails developer is whether the candidate has similar experience, which means whether the candidate was involved in projects that are similar to the work that you have.
Keep in mind that it can be hard to find such a person who has built application(s) similar to the kind of applications that you’re interested in. But in case you manage to find such a developer, know that the developer will be a great fit for you and he/she will probably be able to amazingly satisfy you with high-quality work. This kind of developer will be able to produce the results that you want and you will not need to spend much time giving him instructions.
Posting job ads
Regarding job ads, keep the following points in mind:
- Post your job ads on the right platforms.
- Make the job description as short as possible while keeping all the necessary information.
- Describe in your job ad exactly what kind of developers you’re looking for. This will eliminate unnecessary applicants saving you so much time.
- The job title should be short and at the same time, it should convey exactly what kind of employees you’re interested in so that your job ad attracts the right candidates.
Final words
To summarize, seek help from an experienced Rails programmer for the interview, hire someone who can show high-quality Rails projects as work samples and has great people skills. Selecting someone who has worked in your domain would be great. For example, if you’re interested in a healthcare application, someone who has already built a few healthcare applications would be of great help.
You can also hire a web development agency. This will simplify the hiring process to a great extent. Hiring a web development agency will eliminate various steps mentioned in this post saving you so much time. For example, you don’t have to post job ads, just find some good Rails agencies online. And you also don’t have to take help from some Rails guy for interviewing because asking technical questions is unnecessary in this case as in most cases, an established Rails agency has all the necessary technical skills, about which you can know by taking a close look at their portfolio and customer reviews.
Do you need a Rails application developed? Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have such requirements. We have a team of Rails specialists who can produce exceptionally high-quality Rails apps for you.
