Managing Remote Teams: Hiring

Hiring is the hardest part. Whether it's full-time, part-time, quarter-time, or hourly, finding the best fit on a technical and interpersonal level is possibly the most challenging part of the process.

And the process is daunting – resumes can lie; assessments may reflect intellect but overlook aptitude; personal referrals can fall short. Poor hiring decisions can result in setting projects back months, lost revenue, growth, and worse. While there’s no fool proof way to guarantee a perfect match, there are some key indicators to assess to gauge whether this candidate could be “the one.”

Hiring is holistic, so here’s our take on how we vet and qualify our candidates across technical, interpersonal, and team engagement.

The Hard Skills

When hiring talent like software engineers, product managers or UX designers, technical competency is a requirement, not a nice-to-have.

At Fraction we prefer to take a straightforward, human approach over automated testing platforms. Why? With enough studying, anyone can pass a test. But our Fraction MIT-educated engineers assess more than whether candidates get the right answer – we care about how our candidates think.

Explain to me your thought process cannot be captured in a multi-select question.

The fraction software developer assessment also isn’t meant to be a “got-ya” test either. The questions are intentionally straight-forward so that a seasoned engineer with 5+ years of experience can easily talk through their thought process and how to solve the problem.

The Soft Skills 

Being a technical superstar doesn’t guarantee success either. For better or worse, some developers are better at communicating their questions, needs, and progress.

Following our technical assessment, the Fraction team does a hands-on qualitative assessment to gauge communication style, industry and client experience, and overall demeanor.

Onboarding a highly technical software developer to an engagement that requires frequent client facing where the developer needs to breakdown non-technical concepts may be challenging for both parties (unless expectations are set at the forefront, more on that later).

The Team Skills 

High marks on soft skills, especially around communication, should indicate a good team player, but sometimes that’s not the case.

Given our developers are meant to integrate within your team, we dig into their team and leadership experience. Since all our developers, PMs, and designers have 5+ years of experience, we go deep to understand how they work with or run teams. We look for collaborative, pro-active leaders who’ve produced results.

That way when they join your team, they can jump right in to show not only technical value, but also join the team dynamic.

Let us match you with the right talent to augment your team or for your next project! Set up a exploratory chat or take a look at our US-based senior developers today.