The tech industry is known for bringing in a barrage of names for their star hires. Over the years, the most sought-after names ranged from Rockstars to Ninjas to A-Players to World Class and much more. Moving forward to the present, the hype hovers around a more complete designation for a technology wizard who can be a game-changer in the organization. Today He/She is called a Full Stack Developer and this designation can be found in the list of requirements for almost all of the hottest job boards in the tech industry. So what exactly is a full stack developer? In simple terms, he or she is one who understands and contributes to every layer of a technology application spanning from orchestrating server workflows and processes to database engineering to logical back-end scripting and culminating with front-end UI engineering.
For beginners, the comprehensive capabilities drawn up for a full stack developer profile might be overwhelming but it is to be noted that such a hire will be the most valued member of the organization. A full stack developer when recruited at the right time into a start-up could be the best hiring decision that their management made. They can be deployed for identifying a tricky yet critical glitch, improving overall system performance by optimizing or recommending optimization strategies for all layers from back-end to front-end or even be consulted to hire suitable specialists for individual technology capabilities as your team grows. The reasons are many and teams ranging from design to DevOps can seek solution consulting from full stack developers and hence they form a vital role in today’s technology engineering sector and especially in product development companies.
So how do you hire the best full stack developer for your organization? What are the qualities to look for? These questions could be in the minds of a lot of managers and start-up entrepreneurs. If you are amongst those people having this question, today we are providing a few tips to pick the best full stack developers for your technology services. Let’s have a closer look at the top 5 essentials you need to look for:
Knowledge of the customer layer in a technology offering
A great deal of success enjoyed by successful technology-led businesses can be attributed to the awareness of their full stack developers with regards to the customer presentation layer of their key offering or product. This layer is where the appeal of the product makes its presence felt. The components include usability, navigational ease, smoothness of design elements, faster loading of customer facing points of contact, optimized scripting for flexible visualization on multiple customer devices and many more. Though there could be research, marketing and customer-facing teams working toward building customer loyalty, the engineering team needs to be at the same pace as well. This can be achieved if the full stack developers you engage on the project are well versed with customer satisfaction metrics.
A professional spokesperson for your offering
As we said earlier, a full stack developer would engage with all teams in a project and hence they need to be exceptionally good in articulating knowledge and support. They would have a solid understanding of the end benefits the solution that is to be created. Be it guidance or advisory on technical aspects, spreading awareness of business logic behind technical implementations, motivating or mentoring peers in the project to give their best, taking the lead for implementing best practices and so on, full stack developers need to be extremely good with their communication abilities.
The talent you need and not what they have
A simple job post from your company for a full stack developer can draw responses from thousands in your locality. Each of them may have a whole bunch of skills and talent to their credential. But you don’t need just any full stack developer, but one who has the right expertise in technical excellence, relevant experience in your business domain and most importantly a cultural orientation that matches what your team has already cultivated. We agree that it is difficult to score a match at all these levels, but do not settle for the first couple of interview options and make a judgment unless your need is urgent. Quoting from the beginning notes, “A full stack developer when recruited at the right time into a start-up could be the best hiring decision that their management made”. So always keep this in mind.
Scout for feedback from references
Since you will be deploying a full stack developer into engineering the heart of your operations, it’s never too bad an option to survey their previous engagements to check authenticity and compatibility. Run through their portfolio, look up on the internet for references from the folio and have your own background check in anonymity about the credentials. The feedback you receive should be an important parameter in the hiring decision. Do not limit your feedback aggregation to just a single person but scout for multiple feedbacks.
Consider quality over price
While recruiting budgets may always be under constant scrutiny, we would advise to really keep the options as open as possible. Full stack developers are in high demand. If you happen to stumble upon a quality resource, then ensure that you do your best to stretch your budgets if required to accommodate them. The best always comes at a price and quality matters for your offering in competitive markets.
The above 5 tips should help you hire the best full stack developer for your technology business. Remember that these folks can make the stepping stone to your businesses success especially if you are a start-up and hence engaging the best option would be ideal. Get in touch with us to know how your organization’s technical excellence can be bolstered with our product engineering services comprised of the most talented full stack developers available in the market today.
