I'm hoping to hire a full-stack engineer who can build my app in React Native. I've had a rough time with freelance platforms in the past, losing money to a coder who didn't deliver quality work, which has made me wary. While I can judge design talent pretty well, I don't know enough about engineering skills to evaluate candidates effectively. What are some good ways to confirm a tech candidate's abilities before I make a decision? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
5 Answers
If you can't judge their skills directly, maybe go for people with a solid track record—think years of experience and good prior employment. This way, you can at least feel a bit more secure about their capabilities.
Consider doing a technical interview where you have them write a simple function right in front of you. Sure, people often grumble about coding tests, but they're really the only sure-fire way to confirm that someone can actually code.
Consider reaching out to your network for referrals. This adds some accountability for them and gives you peace of mind. Additionally, have candidates walk you through projects they've worked on—it's a great method to gauge their involvement and understanding of the work.
Since you're not a dev, make sure to ask for their GitHub profile. Reviewing their codebases can give you a clear idea of what they can do and how they think about coding, especially before all these AI tools took over.
When interviewing, I like to follow up most questions with 'why?' or 'how does that work?' to dig into their understanding. This helps filter out candidates who only have surface-level knowledge or have memorized answers. Just keep in mind that you'll need to have some grasp of the tech yourself to make this work.
That's a clever approach! It definitely shows who really knows their stuff.