7 Tips to find the Best Programmers for Your Startup

Lyudmila Kucher
Lyudmila Kucher

I specialize in outstaffing and staff augmentation, and I have extensive experti...

33 posts

Introduction

The start of every startup is beginning from a reliable team hiring. To be competitive on the market it is very important to hire professionals that know their stuff. The number of young businesses is rising year by year so as an employer, you will face competition in hiring developers for a project. Due to the data from Statista in March 2020, there were 804,398 businesses that were less than 1 year old.

how-many-startups-worldwide

To make a perfect product your team should have excellent tech and problem-solving skills, an understanding of the market trends, and a lot of enthusiasm for task performing. We described useful tips on how to find matching talents for your startup.

Choose the best way of hiring

In the modern world, there are no frames for hire. All borders are opened and you have a wide pool of solutions. For example, you can hire programmers for a startup via your internal department, use the recruitment agency, search via freelance platforms, IT staff augmentation or project outsourcing service.

Let’s overview each of these options a bit detailed with their pros and cons.

Hire a programmer on one’s own

This option assumes that you have time for such operating tasks and at least one recruiter who will be responsible for all stages of hiring: vacancy posting, all communication, onboarding, etc. Also, in the context of hiring programmers for startups, you will need to set aside the time of a technical person to check test tasks and conduct the first stages of the interview. This way of programmers hiring is ok if you do not have urgent needs and have already created processes. Otherwise, you can waste a lot of time and money to find 1 fitting employee.

Word of mouth

Another tactic you can leverage to hire an overseas programmer is by word of mouth. Talk to other business people in your niche, your friends, and acquaintances – communicate your intentions.

Creating an employee referral program is also a great way to spread the word that you need to hire IT developers. Employees, especially those who have been working for a couple of years, can also be well connected.

Searching for professionals by word of mouth is a cheap strategy. It saves time and significantly reduces the cost per hire. However, it can be overly unpredictable: since word of mouth advertising is only limited to the people you speak to, it becomes a challenge to cover all the bases in terms of finding the ideal programmer.

Hire programmers via freelancers platform

The freelancers’ platforms are a very popular option to find remote programmers, for example, software developers in Belarus. In most cases, freelancers are easier to find and cheaper. You just need to choose a freelance platform, for instance, surf through Toptal company reviews or explore Upwork alternatives for developers ready for freelance hiring. However, such websites for hiring overseas developers come with a myriad of drawbacks. For starters, they are packed with junior software developers who may not be the right fit for your project. The prevalence of fraudsters and fake reviews are only a few of the other common inconveniences you might face finding software developers on these websites. Also you can read Upwork review on our website to understand is Upwork worth it in 2025?

On the other hand, the quality of their skills also can be lower. If we are talking about creating a programming team, freelancers aren’t a great option. First of all, it will be hard to manage such a team and create quality communication between them. Also, remember that there can be some troubles with NDA. So use freelancers as an additional option if you need to close urgent tasks.

The recruitment agency

Is a good option if you are looking for a fast hiring startup programmer. Do you need a ruby on rails or PHP developer for the backend part of the project? Actually, the recruitment agency can easily prepare for you the list of candidates.

The few disadvantages of such collaboration are – high price, in most cases you pay some commission for each hired candidate, and lack of communication. Recruitment agencies are looking for technical matching candidates and do not go deeper – culture fit, career goals of the candidate, and so on.

The outstaffing companies or dedicated teams provider

Outstaffing is a viable option if you are scouting for the best place to find overseas developers. An IT outstaffing company builds a dedicated team of software developers who have hands-on experience on your project, whether it is a mobile game, IoT Software or hybrid application. These overseas app developers operate from the outstaffing company, which provides the necessary resources and handles payrolls.

Furthermore, outstaffing offers a flexible hiring model that allows for scalability when the need arises. You also have complete visibility of the project and total control over all development processes despite being abroad.

Time zone differences and ease of communication are major causes for concern for companies considering outstaffing. However, outstaffing companies utilise online tools and other technologies to streamline communication. For example, tools like time converters and digital calendars allow scheduling meetings across different time zones. Also, with the infinite number of instant messaging platforms available, communication is now seamless.

The main advantages of collaboration with dedicated team providers are:

 

  • the cost-reducing on taxes and fees
  • wide candidate poll worldwide
  • experience with team creating
  • support with onboarding and replacement of the candidates
  • fixed-price
  • NDA and guarantees

 

Also, a bigger part of companies has trial periods that can make the process of finding the ideal candidate.

Look at the talent at the right location

It’s not a secret to anybody that the rates for programmers depend on locations. For example, due to Payscale, the average software programmer’s salary in the USA is $62K per year, at the same time the average salary in Ukraine will be around $30K. So if it’s possible to use a remote team for a project you should use this chance because it can help to reduce project software development cost or perhaps spend more man-hours for the better result. Consider the possibility of hiring sharepoint programmer or any other developer located in Ukraine or Poland.

Prepare the list of skills for your perfect candidate

No matter which way you will choose, you need a list of requirements for the future candidate. If you have no idea or you are a non-technical person you may find someone to support you to find skilled online coders for hire. An example of the CaaS (CTO-as-a-Service) solutions cover similar cases.

At this list, you can collect not only technical requirements but soft skills you are expected to see in the person for this position. Especially if we are talking about some leading positions or which require a lot of responsibility.

Make sure that the candidate is fitted due to the culture

It is very important to point out. Every company has its own culture, values, etc. Finding programmers for a startup that fits within your organization’s values, culture, and personality is a task, to say the least.

What are your company’s values? What is the most important at your job? Ask the right questions, an example:

  • Imagine your perfect work process
  • What characteristics do you like or dislike at your potential boss
  • Describe a work environment in which you’d be unhappy
  • etc…

Such simple questions will help you to understand if this person will fit your culture. This will prevent burnout, miscommunications, and ruined expectations.

Make sure that the project’s and candidates’ goals are correlating

The point is similar to the previous. There are white, grey and black niches. Not all of the employees are interested in working in some of them. Someone may be against working with tobacco or alcohol corporations. If the candidate has a bias towards your type of business, the best option is not to hire him.

Also, there are some expectations about vertical and horizontal growth. Check what ambitions your candidate has and compare them with what you can give him. The similarity at this level will help build long-term relationships.

Check the previous experience

This is gorgeous if your candidate is already experienced in the same industry. In this case, the chance of his understanding the underwater rocks is increasing. The onboarding into the new project will be faster and this can save you time and budget.

Also, it is a good experience to ask about some references from the previous job.

Ask to solve the real-time problem

This question tests their problem-solving ability. As an employer, you want to hire people that get things done and when faced with a problem actively solve it. A good answer should show that the applicant took the initiative, did not act thoughtlessly, and was willing to ask questions and work as a team.

The questions can be different: What steps do you take before making a decision? Or How will you solve a problem like this?

How the IT Resourcing Companies Can Help to Find a Programmer for a startup?

The dedicated programmer’s team providers have a pool of advantages in the context of team creating:

  • You can prepare only the list of requirements for the candidate and wait for shortlisting, instead of the full recruitment process
  • Fast delivery. IT-staffing companies have a pool of available candidates so the perfect candidate will be found in a few days.
  • High-quality. The companies are selecting candidates, before the next steps.
  • Guarantees. You are signing the contract and NDA with the company which provides dedicated team services.
  • No operating expenses. You shouldn’t pay additional taxes, office rent, bonuses, etc . It is not necessary to hire HR or recruiters for your team.
  • You are fully managing your team.

Why is Talmatic the best option for hiring programmers for startups?

Talmatic is a concierge-type service for dedicated programmers hiring. We are providing access to a unique vetted pool of talents ready to render a wide list of web and app programming services including custom IoT development services. We are not working with freelancers and collaborate only with software companies so usually our candidates are not available for hire in another way.

As a services provider, we guarantee that you will directly manage your dedicated team. Also, Talmatic offers a risk-free trial period during the first week, which means that you can discontinue any further work with the programmer with 1 day’s notice.

Moreover, all over talents are located in Eastern Europe – Ukraine and Belarus. So you can count on the cost that in Western Europe and high-quality of provided programmers.

Sum up

Finding suitable programmers or teams for startups is not an easy task. The best way to do this fast, quality, and efficiently is to take some support from the outside.
If you have any questions about our processes, prices, tech stack – feel free to contact us! Our team will give you more information and provide answers to all your questions.

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