Web developers are everywhere. You can find them on job boards, in your personal network, for hire on freelance sites, on LinkedIn, or in a million other places. The question is, however\u2026 how do you pick the absolute BEST available option? The one that best suits you, your company, and your needs?<\/p>\n
You might think that the answer would be obvious\u2026 after all, the one with the highest level of skill is the best choice, right? Not so fast. There are several crucial traits you should look for in a web developer that don\u2019t necessarily have to do with their level of technical talent. While that is very important, it\u2019s also very important that your developer have good soft skills \u2014 skills regarding communication, working with teams, and problem-solving.<\/p>\n
A great technical developer may be one-of-a-kind in terms of hard skills, but if they don\u2019t have the right soft skills, they may actually cause more problems than they solve. You want to weed out these kinds of people during the hiring process and select only the best all-around candidate.<\/p>\n
This article is going to show you how.<\/p>\n
In the West especially, some developers go into development for the promise of an easy job and a fat paycheck\u2026 they have no real passion for their work and would rather \u201cphone it in\u201d than give you their best performance. The might have the technical skill, sure, but without the drive to create, innovate, or offer standout creativity and support.<\/p>\n
Think about it this way \u2014 your developer is responsible for the way your website or your software is presented to your customers. If they don\u2019t have a genuine passion for making the absolute best site or product possible, then you probably won\u2019t be able to stand out among the crowd of your competitors.<\/p>\n
In other words, if your developer is a foundational part of your team, it makes sense that you would insist they actually care about their work. You should ask about this in an early round of interviews and only select the candidates you feel can satisfy this requirement.<\/p>\n
Developers live in a world of small details\u2014 getting them right, testing, and re-testing. Select a developer who can live and thrive in that world and continue to get the best results from their work. In other words, a developer who is not only very detail-oriented but also persistent about providing high-quality work.<\/p>\n
When in development, it\u2019s very easy to overlook one or two \u201csmall\u201d imperfections and write them off because they are, after all, small. But that\u2019s exactly what a good developer would NEVER do. Good developers are nitpickers. They don\u2019t like imperfections as a matter of principal. They want things to work correctly.<\/p>\n
In fact, you should probably hire the kind of developer who is so concerned about getting the details right, you almost have to force them to stop working because the project is on a deadline. They should be very concerned about smaller and smaller imperfections and it should be up to you to convince them that the project will never be perfect.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re in a technical field, you do a lot of business online, or you\u2019re going to end up working on multiple software projects, you and your developer will spend a lot of time together in planning and execution. So it\u2019s very important that your personalities mesh well. It\u2019s not a matter of just being able to tolerate each other\u2026 it\u2019s a matter of actually liking, respecting, and trusting one another.<\/p>\n
The last thing you want to do is find yourself in a position where you simply don\u2019t trust your developer, find yourself second-guessing their work, tend toward micromanaging them, and a whole slew of other issue employers run into. This is a downward spiral. If you don\u2019t trust the developer, they will probably grow to resent you, leading to an even worse relationship.<\/p>\n
Further, even if you trust them to do good work, it\u2019s all for nothing if you don\u2019t like spending a lot of time with one another. A good personality \u201cfit\u201d is one of the most important things you should be looking for.<\/p>\n
Some suggest holding an interview in a public place like a coffee shop of a restaurant to get more of a feel for their personality. How you do it is up to you, but the personality of your developer is almost as important as their technical skill.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s stereotypically common for developers to want to spend all day in front of their screens working on their favorite projects without needing to talk or interact with people at all. That\u2019s fine at certain times, but at other times, your developer will need to attend meetings, update the team on their projects, and occasionally even face clients. The better they are at doing this, answering questions, and alleviating concerns, the smoother the project may go.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not saying your developer has to be an extrovert and love being around people, but at the bare minimum, they should be able to put on a pleasant personality, have good face-to-face discussions, and communicate well.<\/p>\n
While the first rounds of interviews should be able to give you an idea of how the interviewee conducts himself or herself, you can always ask open-ended questions about how they view collaboration and communication.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not enough for your developer to have a high degree of technical skill. They should also have a genuine passion for the work they do, have a detail-oriented personality, and be likable and trustworthy. In addition to their technical skill, be sure to also screen for these \u201csoft skills\u201d during the interview process. If you do, you\u2019ll find yourself able to rely on your developer more and more and continue to have a great working relationship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many Developers Have Good \u201cHard\u201d Skills. But Here Are Some Important \u201cSoft\u201d Skills to Consider… Web developers are everywhere. You can find them on job boards, in your personal network, for hire on freelance sites, on LinkedIn, or in a million other places. The question is, however\u2026 how do you pick the absolute BEST available …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[744],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4762"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15791,"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762\/revisions\/15791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.capitalnumbers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}