How startups find & hire remote developers

Hiring remote developers was hard in our small SaaS startup in the beginning. We learned a lot. Now we fill an open position reliably in 1–2 months with people way better than in the past. In this article I will describe the process we run, which platforms we use and how we do our interviews to figure out if a candidate is a good fit.

Where We Find Candidates

If you are frugal you want to avoid spending much money on job ads. But a full time hire will cost you thousands of dollars each month plus a lot of time to find, select and train the candidate. Investing at least a little can make a big difference. By increasing the pool of candidates you may find someone better with a lower salary expectations, are quicker learning speed, which can already redeem your investment for a job posting.

Investing at least a little can make a big difference.

We usually invest about 300–500 € for a job. Usually this means one paid posting in a single paid platform in combination with using free platforms:

• post on a paid platform like remote.io (299$) or remoteok.io(349$). Occasional promotions may make this even cheaper.
• free post at LinkedIn — you may get a few days promotion for free if it is your first post
• free post at indeed.com
• free post at specialty communities and groups, like https://reactjobsboard.com/
• additional channels such as Slack Communities for Frontend Developers found by Googling

On average we got 39 applications per series of job postings for our past hires during the following 30 days. After a month almost no additional applications come in if we don’t promote the job any further.

The interview process

Initially we tried interviewing a candidate only once based on a CV/online profile to decide if we wanted to work with them. It may be obvious to you but we needed to learn that this will not lead to good decisions. Our process is a lot more structured now and has 5 steps:

Step 1: Questionnaire on Typeform

The job posting refers to a Typeform, that asks a series of questions. They include questions about public profiles (GitHub, StackOverflow), technical skills, past experiences and salary expectation. About 50% of applications are weeded out here (remaining: 20)

Step 2: 1on1 Interviews Scheduled with Calendly

The second step is a personal interview, taking between 30 to 60 minutes. 1on1 interviews are scheduled using calendly. The candidate can pick a timeslot avoiding time-taking calendar dance. The first interview is a mix of technical and personal and includes a whiteboard coding test. This again reduces the candidates by about 50% (leaving 10).

Step 3: Project Assignment to Hand In Code

Promising candidates get a coding challenge to solve at home (max. 3–4 hours). The assignment is directly related to our actual work. This makes it easier to assess if the candidate will do well within our actual project, makes it more interesting for them and at the same time helps in the onboarding in case they are hired.

The projects are always something we already solved in the past. For once out of fairness we will not hand out actual work we need to get done. In addition having solved a problem gives us a good feeling for the quality of the solution and its details. About 60% of candidates make it to the next stage (leaving 6).

Step 4: 1on1 Interview #2

If the handed in project is good, we invite for a second interview in which the candidate can explain and also show that s/he can think how to develop it further. After the first interview we also always have a “main concern” about a candidate. The goal of the interview is to learn more about this concern. This can be anything from skill to personal attitude. For example the candidate could be too sloppy when creating solutions, too quick with requirements, too unclear in the way of expressing ideas etc. The success rate of this step ist about 50% (leaving 3 of the initial average of 39 candidates).

Step 5: 1on1 Interview #3

In the last interview, we make sure another person leads this call so that we can double-check more on a personal than on a technical level. At this stage we are already sure the candidate has the needed skills. Given the 3 candidates from the previous round the last interview usually has one clear winner or sometimes even two promising applicants (last time we hired two out of three).

To Keep In Mind

When running a process like this there are a few things you need to consider in order to get good results:

Process Communication

The whole process is a two-way communication between you and the candidate. You should be very upfront about the steps, the time it takes and what to expect from each step so that the candidates are not surprised there is “another interview” coming. At the same time you will learn a lot about the communication behaviour of a candidate going through these steps. How they make appointments, how quickly they respond, how clear they communicate. This is just another piece of information you have when you want to evaluate.

Taking Notes

Since there are many steps involved don’t rely on your memory. Take notes and especially keep track of your main concern regarding a candidate to target this aspect in your next call.

Speed

You don’t want promising candidates to pick another job. After the first interview, every following step should happen within a few days, maximum a week. You need to communicate delays quickly. Candidates are used to not receiving responses and will move on if they feel like they are not in anymore.

Salary

While asking for a salary in the questionnaire, don’t rule out a candidate because of this. On an international scale there is a lot of insecurity what the “right” salary is. We already had situations where a candidate requested a salary about 2x or 3x higher than our limit. When interviewing such a candidate, be blunt about it. Tell them “In your questionnaire you gave a salary expectation that is a lot higher than what we can offer. If this is very important to you then it would not be well invested time if we do the interview now.” Some will quit right away or after the interview but often the expectation is due to insecurity or was just not as important.

Promote Your Benefits

An interview situation is also one where you need to sell yourself. Especially if the candidate is very good and will have other options. As a startup looking for developers you usually have some advantages you can highlight:

• use of latest technology (did I hear somebody say jquery?)
• control of whole features instead of tiny optimisations
• working on a product instead of ever changing agency projects that do not inspire pride

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