How to Hire Java Developers
In 2020, Java celebrated its 25th birthday with more than 12 million developers using it worldwide. There are over 38 billion active Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) and more than 21 billion cloud-connected JVMs. Some of those JVMs are supporting the infrastructure and architecture for companies like Twitter, Uber, Netflix, Spotify, CERN, Siemens, and many more.
It’s safe to say that Java has been a big player in the industry for a long time and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. For companies that want reliability and performance, Java is definitely the language of choice and the demand for Java developers is now greater than ever. This guide will dive into the process of hiring professional Java developers with a focus on the challenges faced by both sides of the interview table. We will take a look at both the technical and non-technical skills which are required in order to build a successful team.
Table Of Contents
Non-Technical Skills to Look For in Java Developers
Before diving into all the technical stuff a Java developer needs to know, you are going to hire a new team member above all else, so the non-technical skills are just as important as the technical ones.
Big Picture Focus
Some programmers like to start coding the task at hand without understanding anything more than that. This approach can sometimes work, but it’s very dangerous in the long term because this type of code is difficult to maintain and it is usually not optimized. When the codebase grows and the fixes are “quick”, the project can soon become a behemoth and the new developers can get too afraid to touch it.
What you should look for instead are programmers that prefer to understand the project before dropping a single line of code. They should know how the task at hand fits in the bigger picture, and how it lines up with the business objectives.
Soft Skills
Ask the candidate about the latest hard feature that they had to implement, something that they struggled with, because those features are really easy to remember. You may not remember a task that you’ve implemented smoothly in a couple of hours, but you will definitely remember spending three days debugging an issue only to find out that a word was missing from a config file somewhere.