Monday 24 October 2016

How to hire an iOS developer?

You sat down to work today and see *Find an iOS Developer* staring back at you from the top of your todo list. This isn’t a straightforward task like “complete expense report”, “buy new coffee filters” or “fire Ralph” - this will take time, technique, and steady effort to complete.

First, the bad news: iOS developers are in high demand and have gone into hiding only coming out for interesting projects and to attend theWWDC. When you find a good one they can be very pricey.

But then the good news: Because of the obvious demand there are also thousands of people trying to join these group of talented recluses. But the challenge for you is to find members of the first group: experienced, talented, motivated and not the second group: inexperienced, looking to work on their first real project.

But first let’s talk about you.

Do you need an iOS Developer (yet)?

An iOS developer should be hired when you have a clear understanding of what you want and have decided that it should be for the Apple mobile market first (or in total / only). Do you know much about your target market - do any of them use Android? If so then hiring for iOS will not easily allow you to later support them; you might want to instead look intoPhoneGap or equivalents.

Do you know exactly what you want?

Do you have an idea or a plan? You are competing for developers and one of the signals you send to people who listen to your offer is how well thought-out your project idea is. Did you just dream up something that you think would be cool or have you proven that there is a market for the product and know exactly how it will work? Do you have mockups yet of what it should look like? With tools likeProto.io and Invisionyou need no development experience yourself to create something that looks (and acts like an app on your phone!) to validate the user interface.

A solid iOS developer will entertain multiple project offers and you want to stand out as professional, hard-working, and with a fleshed-out plan. Your project should feel that it already has momentum and its success is an inevitability.

Let’s talk about candidates again.

Vetting Candidates

Let’s assume that you post to one of the millions of free-for-all job posting boards that serve as the new age classified ads. Your inbox is then full of developers awkward cover letters and details of their experience with technologies you have never heard of.

How can you tell if you are:
- Talking to someone with experience?
- Talking to someone that can actually complete your project?
- Someone that can communicate clearly with you in regards to the details of the user interface, project status, and any problems faced during the build?
- Talking to a real person and not a dog trained by a talented prankster?

Research online presence

Developers have a number of tools with which they can show general competence in technical and non-technical areas. Look into each candidate's online activity:
- Blog
- Github or other shared code
- Twitter profile

You don’t need to do any private investigation-style research here - you are looking to see if their blog or code contributions match the general tone of a professional, match with their declared level of experience, and don’t contain any odd red flags.

Look in more detail at code contributions

Open source is a great way to vet candidates - you can look at actual projects that they have built and use them to ask questions about challenges faced and areas for improvements. Open source contributions are a clear way to tell see who is active and hustling in the developer community. Watching popular projects is a good sign, committing to projects is a better one, and being the creator of projects that are used by others is the best tell that you are dealing with a good candidate.

Components Built and Used

Not all code can be shared though - working for big companies means that some developers are quite good but simply aren’t allowed to show it publicly.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask what they would pull off the shelf for a new iOS project. After giving them a few details about your project ask them where they would start at a technical level. What components would they use for authentication, logging, UI components, caching, network handling, testing, etc.?

Feel free to also ask about specific commonly-used libraries likeAFNetworking,JSONModel,DateTools, etc. as well.

Complete Lifecycle Experience

An experienced iOS developer will have some pet apps that they have developed in the app store - either to make money or simply built when they were learning the platform. Ask them to showcase some of these and talk over the challenges they faced. Compared to all other development ecosystems the app one has the lowest barrier to entry: developers can directly make money from their work by only trading their time. What challenges did they face once the app was live?

Tool Opinions

A new developer loves everything about a tool, platform, or language while an experienced developer complains about its limitations. This is part of the experience lifecycle:
- You love it but feel like you don't fully "get it"
- You learn a good deal and start to realize the limitations of the new thing
- You master all the strengths of the tool, and start to feel the weaknesses
- You are challenged by the weaknesses and they frustrate you.
In that way very experienced people sometimes come across as hating the thing they use everyday while also quietly respecting it.

A good way to detect this phenomenon is to simply ask:
- What do you not like about Objective-Citself? How aboutSwift or Cocoa Touch?
- If given the chance how would you change the XCodeinterface?
- You are king for a day - how do you change the app review and feedback process?

Are They Constantly Learning?

Ask them about their first iOS project and things that they would do differently now versus in the past. Ask them what the last technical blog post, book, or talk they consumed that changed their knowledge was. What resources do they use to stay up to date with new tools, components, and techniques? How much do they know about WatchKit orHealthKit?

A Better Path

Develop with drafteq , we have around dedicated ios developers who love to work on interesting projects. We charge around $14-$25 per hour depending on the type of iOS project. Contact us at contact@drafteq.com or visit drafteq.com for more info.

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