How to Make Hires as a Non-Technical Founder

Whether you’re an iPad app developer looking to hire a designer or an entrepreneur looking to hire a coder, finding and vetting talent is no easy task. Especially when the specialty you’re hiring for is something hard to judge like backend coding, how can you be sure you’re hiring the right person for the job?

After all, what looks good to you might turn out to be less than satisfactory once your mobile app is in front of real-world users.

Here are some guidelines that appreneurs can use when hiring out key parts of the app development process.

Start with reputation, but don’t rely on it

The first step to finding a good contractor is the easiest, since it has less to do with the quality of their work and more to do with how they perform on a team. Communication is at least as important as quality work, and good relationships with past clients is a great indicator of a contractor’s quality. Do they have good reviews from former clients? Do you like the look and feel of their past projects?

For mobile app developers in NYC and other tech hubs, talent can be found organically by reputation in the local community. In smaller cities, online reputation serves a similar function.

To hire an expert, consult with an expert

This may sound meta, but the best way to judge a potential hire’s past work is to have an expert in their field act as an intermediary. For example, when hiring a front-end developer, have a friend or colleague with coding chops check out their GitHub code contributions. They’ll be able to see things a non-technical founder can’t, like messy code or poor annotation.

The same tactic even holds true for more “subjective” disciplines, as in the case of a mobile app developer hiring for copywriting or UI design. You may like the look of their last project, but if it doesn’t hold up to real users, subjective opinion doesn’t matter. No matter the discipline, specialists should be able to explain why their decisions matter to improve the overall app.

In the long run, mobile app developers find the most success by hiring someone who listens to data and works to please end users above all else.