How to find mobile developers for your startup

Everyone needs an app, and the reason is that it allows businesses to have a chance at being competitive. Along with that, getting to people via their mobile devices is increasingly becoming crucial to success. Thus, companies are starving for programming talent.

Commonly, entrepreneurs find developers for startups by outsourcing dedicated programmer teams. In this article we will break down the key aspects of how to find a mobile app developer crew and screen individual members to make sure they are a good fit to deliver the product you need.

Define Your Future App

This is the beginning, at which point you’ll want to get into as much detail as you can. Here are some of the deciding factors to consider with your future app:

1. The platforms. Are you using a hybrid, cross-platform or only one platform?
2. Overall size. The amount of work that needs to go into development and design.
3. Additional technical specifications and API integrations the developer should be aware of.
4. Design specs. Fonts, colors, images, and logos.
5. Development milestones and timeframe.

*If you’re not certain which platforms would be better for you, here is a short rundown for different frameworks to help you answer this question:

• Native: Based on this decision the budget will vary. Creating only one a native platform app for either Android or iOS will cut you off from reaching out to the complete user base. On the other hand, making multiple native apps for all the platforms is resource-intensive.
• Cross-platform: Aside from the previously mentioned hybrid and cross-platforms, various businesses also go for the web apps. All of them are more easily updated. Another thing with hybrid options is that many run on older technologies. These are JavaScript, CSS, HTML. There are dozens of potential mobile app developers for hire who will be up to the task. You’ll get to choose from among less expensive professionals as they won’t need to use the most cutting edge languages.

All this can only suggest that cross-platform and hybrid are more cost-effective. In terms of money, they really are. However, at the expense of the most important metric – user experience. Combined methods perform much worse than native. Also, the partial need to optimize is still there, despite all the claims to full compatibility.

In order to stand a chance against your competitors, you should offer more value to the user. This is why the most far seeing startups are developing multiple native versions of their apps. This is hard to pull off without external assistance, which is why multiple remote teams are usually involved to fulfill this goal.

 

With all the above outlined, you may now start screening the developer teams to build your future app. Here are the main guidelines:

• Don’t Rush It: In a startup world, time constraints can trap you into going for quantity over quality. You better believe that you need only the good programmer to be among the ranks of your future contractors. Don’t settle for anything less. Aside from putting forth average practices, bad developers will go against having anyone that looks better than them on the team.
• Don’t Let a Single Person Take Charge: This might be a rockstar coder with a whole bag of professional accolades and yet there are specific signs you have to watch out for. With experience, developers start clinging to the old ways they’re used to do things. On a job interview, one of these highly seasoned programmers might offer writing the code in a language different to that you had in mind. They’ll say they can do it both faster and better, hence the development time and overall project costs. As a business owner, you might feel pleased to find a developer for your startup who has an enhanced workflow, but you should consider this threat.
• Of course, you’re lucky if your needs and their methods align perfectly, but otherwise, the senior programmer can suppress innovation in the development process coming from others. In this case, you are trading off communication.
• Look for Collaboration: The world of tech is always evolving. It goes without saying that you want to stay in touch with the newest solutions out there. Which is why you should look for the younger and worse off kind of mobile app developers. The ones that are still above average but make for a great fit when working together. The perfect candidates should have diverse experience that will not narrow them down into repeating their old practices.
• See How Well They Code: Ask them to show how they work. A very telling way to check the programming skills is treating your candidate to a little test.

You may start by requesting the best piece of code the candidate has written to date. This will highlight the less skilled and inexperienced.

For the second round, ask them to write a piece of code in a limited time window. This will make sure your candidate’s work is legit and not written by anyone else.

With the above, you get some perspective on their use of the best coding practices as well the level of general understanding.

These are some of the most valuable takeaways we’ve got from working on our projects over the past years. We hope they’ll help you make all the right decisions in the course of building your startup and drive your future business to success.

Good luck!

*The views expressed are those of the post’s author