This article is part of our Guest Post series.

According to the founder of O’ Reilly media, Tim O’ Reilly: “Ruby on Rails is a breakthrough in lowering the barriers of entry to programming. Powerful web applications that formerly might have taken weeks or months to develop can be produced in a matter of days.” This statement is completely true as Ruby On Rails (RoR) is one of the most popular open source programming languages for web app development.

Ruby programmers love it for its powerful metaprogramming, fast prototyping, and development potential. Ruby on Rails development companies have also grown in the recent times with the increasing demand from the RoR community and companies that are building their web applications on the Ruby framework.

But finding and hiring the best ruby developers is not an easy task at all. In order to help you with this, we will walk you through the entire process of hiring the best RoR programmers for your business.

1. Clearly Define the Scope of Your Project

First of all, you need to find out the scope of your project. Define what you want to build and how long it will take it to get completed. In order to understand the role of RoR programmers in detail, you can explore resources like Hiring Headquarters. It will give you a better idea of the framework.

At this stage, you have to discover the specific requirements of your project. It will help you in identifying the type of RoR programmer you are searching. Put together all your specific needs in the form of a creative brief on a paper. This will help you a lot in the next stage of the hiring process.

2. Create an Effective & Precise Job Post

With the help of the creative brief that you have prepared, half of your work for this stage is already done. Your job post is an extension of your creative brief. But one of its major components are the details of the specific things you are seeking in the potential candidates’ resume.

If you’d like assistance revising your job descriptions to be more focused and strategic, we offer that as part of our IT Recruitment Services. 

There is no need for you to go into the small details when creating your job post, but make sure to summarize the scope of your work. The major elements of an influential job post are as follows:

1. Deliverables: What is your expected outcome at the end of the project?
2. Timeline: What is the timeline in which you want to accomplish your project?
3. Targets: Highlighting the major development phases, submit by goal dates, milestone payments, etc.

Beyond the scope of the project, you also need to cover job requirements in your job post:

1. Technology/Expertise/Skills: What do you expect from the RoR programmers? Do they need to have a command over certain development tools, technologies, libraries, frameworks, etc?
2. Experience: Do you want your RoR developers to have some certifications or degree? Also, mention how many years of experience they should have in the RoR domain?

In this way, you will be able to create an effective but precise job post for hiring RoR developers. Once it’s done you can post it on sites like Upwork so that to find the professionals who are capable to meet all your specific demands.

3. Shortlist & Filter Potential Candidates

Once you’ve published the job post, after a few days you’ll start receiving lots of profiles of potential RoR programmers. Now, it is the time to narrow down the applicant pool by shortlisting the candidates with whom you want to have a face to face interview. Let’s take a look at the four major factors that you need to consider in order to shortlist the profiles.

1. Portfolio of Previous Work: It is one of the most significant things that you would want to evaluate in the potential RoR developers’ profile. All the projects and work that the programmers have done in the past will help you gauge their talent and expertise. Also, you can give bonus points to those candidates who have worked on projects similar to yours in the past.
2. Niche Experience: In addition to their experience in the Rails framework, what other tools or technologies you want them to be familiar with? Do you want them to have an experience working with MySQL, GitHub, Sinatra, etc.? Or, you want them to be familiar with cross-platform development principles.
3. Feedback from Past Clients: It is always a good idea to review the feedback about the potential RoR programmers given by the past clients. This will give you an idea of their capacity to communicate effectively, solve problems, customer service, etc.
4. Professionalism: You have to assess whether the RoR programmers behind the job application is someone you would want to work with? Also, check their profiles on Upwork so that to know how they present themselves to the public. Moreover, you can check whether they altered their proposal to suit your specific project requirements.

4. Preparation For The Face To Face Interview

Face to face interview is only the platform that gives you an idea of the skills of the potential RoR developers who would be ultimately joining your team. You should prepare interview questions in advance by considering the guidelines of your project. Let’s explore some basic interview questions that can help you spot the real RoR talent.

1. What is your take on our Ruby app that we are planning to build?

This question will show how the potential RoR programmer can add value to your project and business. Also, you can get to know their thoughts on your concept or creative brief.

2. Have you ever built an app like this in your entire career?

You can ask whether the potential RoR developer has any experience of working on a project similar to yours in the past. Also, you can inquire about what kind of Ruby applications they’ve built earlier.

3. Do you have a command over a particular development methodology such as Scrum?

This question can be modified in such a way so that to know whether the prospects have command over a particular development methodology. Such as are they capable of working with Scrum or Extreme Programming (XP) under the Agile umbrella.

4. Shed some light on your favorite Ruby project.

You can ask this question to assess the creativity of a particular candidate over others. Also, they can tell you about the challenges they faced in the past while developing Ruby apps and the way in which they overcome them. In addition, you can also inquire about the peak moment which they have experienced in their career as a Ruby programmer.

5. How fast can you be in your work? Are you comfortable to perform under strict timelines?

This question will give you an idea of how quickly they can work. Also, ask them about their capacity to meet project deadlines. At what time they want you to contact them and how responsive they will be throughout the week.

You can follow these four steps and empower your hiring arsenal in order to find and hire the best RoR programmers from the market and make them develop high-end web apps and sites so that to establish a unique web presence for your business.

Guest Author Bio:

Anubhuti Shrivastava is a content crafter at Arkenea, a custom software development company helping entrepreneurs and businesses build successful web and mobile apps. She is passionate about writing articles on topics related to design and the software development industry.

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