Hi All, We just got the green light to go a head and start the process to hire a jr dev for the team? Currently I am the only developer on the team, and I am going to be leaned on heavily on the interview process.
I want to make sure that I vet the person properly. This is all new to me any help and or pointers are greatly appreciated.
Top comments (7)
Focus more on enthusiasm. I’ve always found that the best junior devs are the ones with the greatest enthusiasm for the work. They’re the ones who won’t get discouraged when they’re presented with a challenge.
Exactly this. Remember that you are hiring Jr. Developer not an Intermediate Developer, he probably doesn't know much, what is important is the willingness to learn.
Ask about hobbies, involvement in dev communities like dev.to, freecodecamp, etc...
And most importantly, make sure you hire a nice guy, you don't want to work with an asshole.
If you are in fact hiring a "jr" developer, you should absolutely expect to spend time training them...
Technical expectations of junior Devs should be lower. As others stated, enthusiasm and interested to learn is more important. The question is not what they know, but what can they learn?
There are several reasons to hire junior devs.
I am trying to hash out expectations from management on what they want from the new role as well as myself with training said new person.
If you are that worried about a deadline you don't want a real "jr dev". You want a "dev". I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just clarifying what I believe should be a company's or team's attitude towards hiring a "jr" developer. You are describing basic on-boarding of bringing somebody on. That is the same from jr all the way to senior. If you don't have time to "teach" somebody because you are worried about a deadline, then you aren't looking at a "jr" dev to begin with.
so what are you exactly looking for to be done?