With considerable demand for Ruby on Rails driven applications, we are constantly on lookout for professional talent in this domain. Over the last few months there are some specific characteristics we have noticed in the hiring-training-absorption phase that generated good talent in-house. The below listing is based on what we feel are strong factors that will help companies and hiring managers select the right talent for Ruby development.
1. Aligning to company values – if you are a start-up or midsize company you need to be clear about aligning organizational objectives with the candidate’s expectations. If the company culture promotes honest and transparent employee-employer relationship, there is very high chance of the employee performing productively and adding value to the company. Though good paychecks do hold forte in the hiring process, company values matter too.
2. Work environment – Once hired, the Ruby on Rails programmer is bound to come up with his/her own set of ideas (from past experience or recent qualification). The key is to utilize such non-routine ideas to make an existing project better. It might happen that the company has been using Test Unit for rails application testing. However if a new employee justifies the merits of using Rspec or Cucumber for application testing then as a business owner you can give it a shot.
3. Open Source contribution – If the candidate has significant resources put up by way of knowledge, insights or experiments on forums like GitHub, then the candidate is more often than not likely to see through set norms and go above and beyond to deliver excellence to the client. Since programming for the love of it is a key trait that defines our success in cut-throat competition these days, our suggestion would be – hire such early adopters or norm breakers before somebody else does!
4. Basic premise – Do get your candidates checked for sound foundation of basic knowledge such as OOP principles. Many companies have the tendency to grill potential recruits on advanced concepts such as APIs. However we truly believe that a person with sound knowledge of programming concept can readily grasp these.
5. Team spirit – Programming and development projects are often entrusted to multiple people. Try to gauge how good a team player is the candidate. Yours is a team-oriented operation. Lack of humility or empathy to team spirit can be a serious baggage later on. Make sure you are adequately covered on this soft skill aspect when interviewing potential hires. You will be sure to pick the right candidate this way. This factor becomes all the more necessary for a growing or midsize organization.
While measurable expectations will set the tone for initial rounds of interviewing, we believe that this is not the sole criteria when hiring Ruby on Rails developers. One has to look beyond qualification and experience and study their general aptitude to professional life.
If you see a surge in Ruby on Rails project demand, and want to capitalize with insight based talent sourcing in this domain, then we hope this post is of assistance to you.
