The smartphone era is upon us and it seems in order to retain or expand your audience reach, you need to cater for their “on-the-go” lifestyle – that is, making sure that your online store is mobile friendly. Although simply making sure that it’s scalable on a mobile web browser, it’s a good idea to start looking into a potential mobile app. Having one available for your company is a tremendous golden opportunity to tap into new revenue streams, as it’ll encourage your customers to interact with your store even more, thus boosting sales. If this is an option for you, it’s important to hire a skilled and experienced developer to custom build this. As a IT recruitment company that specialises in hiring IT professionals, here’s a basic IT recruitment guide when it comes to hiring your mobile app developerand what questions to ask:
“Where can I find examples of your previous work?”
Resumes are nothing without the work to prove it. Any reputable executive recruitment agency will tell you that legitimately qualified qualified candidates should be eager to provide you a list of apps they have been majorly involved in creating and developing, as well as complete with links to each in Apple’s store, Google play or Google’s Andriod app. It’s important to evaluate their work as it gives a good indicator on their quality of work, creativity, skills and whether they have the right vision to produce the type of app you’re after.
“What smartphone are you using?”
No, it’s nothing to do with Apple vs Android elitism. But knowing which phone they’re most comfortable with can provide insight into your candidate’s knowledge and passion about a specific mobile platform. Although it doesn’t particularly matter which system they use, you can use this question to determine how passionate they are about apps and their opinion and views on how to make it successful. If your primary goal is to generate or increase revenue, your perfect developer would know exactly what features you would need to maximise the amount of money flowing in.
“May I have a list of your current and past employers/clients?”
Personally talking to the clients your candidate has worked with is the only surefire way to guaranteeing the actually developed the apps they claimed. It also gives you an opportunity to ask how reliable, responsive, responsible and results-orientated your potential candidates are. Although they may have developed a number of apps, if their work ethic is poor then they may be more of a liability than an asset if you continuously need to be reminding them of their impending deadlines. Additionally, candidates may only offered references they know have a favourable opinion of them. It’s worth your while to look them up on LinkedIn and contact employers who haven’t been listed as a reference to gain a better judgement.
“What can you create?”
If your app doesn’t contain anything unique or revolutionary, most likely it won’t catch on with your customers. Suss out the magnitude of your candidates skills and figure out whether it’s something that can be incorporated into your app to create an innovative experience for users. For instance, can your candidate add 3-D Gaming, social media sharing, GPS location services or product discount code elements to your app?
“What is the process you follow when designing, testing and submitting mobile apps?”
During the IT recruitment process, it’s a good idea to figure out if they have the right IT know-how; most likely you will only have basic understanding of their job so it’s important to know you have invested in the right person to do the job properly. This question is an excellent opportunity to figure out the level of organisation they have if they should work for you. Can you trust them with deadlines and knowing that they’re on the right track to getting it tested and deployed with little micro management involved? Your ideal candidate should be able to provide an extensive explanation of the steps he or she would take when designing and testing the app to weed out the glitches and how they intend to fix any bug problem. They should also be able to example how they plan to submit it to app stores for approval – this is often a long and gruelling process so your developer should know how successfully navigate through this.
“What are your terms and conditions?”
Figure out whether you’ll be paying by the hour, a flat rate payment or a deposit taken at the beginning of a project, with the rest paid upon completion. The most basic apps can set you back between $1000 – $5000 but more complicate apps could be thousands of dollars more. You should also confirm that you will be the one with sole rights to the app you invested in, solidifying this by getting you and your app developer to sign a written “copyright assignment” or “work made for hire” contract. This will evidently state that you own the app’s design, source code and all of its content. This is a necessary step and will save you an array of potential problems and legality issues further down the track.