How to Hire a Web Developer For the First Time: 5 Most Common Issues
It may be difficult to hire a web developer for the first time, especially when you have no to little knowledge in tech, engineering, and computer science. Read the most common hiring challenges and…
It may be difficult to hire a web developer for the first time, especially when you have no to little knowledge in tech, engineering, and computer science. Read the most common hiring challenges and expert tips to tackle them from our CTO.
Hiring a web developer used to be almost an impossible task for our CEO, Ari Krzyzek, as she has limited background in tech to help her find the right candidates for our company. Many clients we've worked with also face this challenge when it comes to hiring, and more so for women business owners, likely because women make up only 27% of STEM workers.
Women's share of U.S. STEM workers
Recruitment in general is challenging, but it's even more so when you need to hire a web developer for the first time, while having limited knowledge of programming and engineering. How do you find a candidate that has the right skills and willingness to help your business grow, and grow together with it?
We don't recruit the first available candidate. We recruit the one who fits.
5 expert tips to hire a web developer
Peter Krzyzek, our CTO, is here to help you. With more than a decade of experience in tech and business, and a master's degree in computer science, Peter has compiled the most common web developer hiring challenges that business owners face. They are:
- Junk resumés
- Incompatible personalities
- Good on paper
- Onboarding process
- Joining mid-project
Let's see the practical tips to tackle these challenges.
Junk resumés
At Chykalophia, we can receive up to 150 resumés for one web developer position. That is a lot. So this is what we do to not spend too many days on it:
- Scan through the pile and toss out any obviously unqualified applicants
- Remove any resumés that did not answer the required simple questions you put on the job posting to make sure they read the whole thing (for example: To make sure you read the job posting, please tell us your favorite food)
- Set aside, not remove, any resumes which are clearly copy-and-paste products and not personalized at all
How to do it
- Add one or two knockout questions to the application form (work authorization, plus an attention-check line) so non-readers and unqualified applicants filter themselves out.
- Send everyone who clears that a short skills assessment before any human opens a resume, then rank by score.
- Set aside obvious copy-paste applications rather than deleting them, so you can revisit if the shortlist runs thin.
See a worked example
Say a posting pulls 150 applicants. A single required attention-check line (for example, "name your favorite food") might flag roughly a third who never read the post, and a short skills test sent to the rest tends to surface the handful actually worth a human read. Numbers swing a lot by role and market, so treat these as illustration, not a benchmark.
Tools to use
Workable for knockout screening questions that auto-filter applicants, and TestGorilla for skills assessments that rank candidates by score before you read a resume.
Steal our AI prompt
Here is a job posting: [paste job description]. Write 3 knockout screening questions I can add to the application form (one attention-check, two role-critical) to filter out unqualified or inattentive applicants, and suggest 2 short skills to assess before I read any resume. For each, explain what a good answer versus a disqualifying answer looks like.
Incompatible personalities
When a team member is incompatible with the rest of the team, it could lead to bigger problems in the long run. To avoid this, conduct a personality test, like a simple MBTI or the snowflake test, for the top ten candidates you have picked.
How to do it
- Send the top ten candidates the same short, low-friction assessment with identical instructions.
- Read the results as conversation starters, not pass or fail gates, so you do not screen out good people on type alone.
- Compare each candidate's work-style signals against how your existing team actually operates day to day.
See a worked example
Suppose you have ten finalists. Having each take a short work-style assessment might reveal, for example, two strong coders whose stated preference is heads-down solo work when the role is daily pair-programming with a talkative team. That is not a reject signal on its own; it is a prompt to probe collaboration directly in the interview.
Tools to use
16Personalities for a fast, free read on work style, and The Predictive Index for a validated behavioral assessment built for hiring.
Steal our AI prompt
My team's working style is [describe pace, communication norms, and solo versus collaborative work]. A candidate's assessment came back as [paste result or summary]. Give me 5 interview questions that probe whether their work style will mesh or clash with my team, and flag which specific traits to watch for.
Good on paper
The next challenge for business owners to hire a web developer is finding out who's real and who's not. There’s no denying that some candidates oversell themselves on their CVs, so this is when the interview sessions play a deciding factor.
Peter recommends only inviting those that passed the personality test to the interview. Then, you can ask more about their experience and past challenges during the technical interview. To further see their capabilities, you can also request their code samples and conduct a technical test.
How to do it
- Only invite candidates who cleared the earlier screens, so live technical time goes to real contenders.
- Run a short live coding interview on a realistic task and watch how they reason out loud, not just the final answer.
- Ask for two code samples or public repos and skim for readability, tests, and commit history.
See a worked example
For instance, a CV listing "expert in React" reads the same whether it is true or aspirational. A 45-minute live coding session on a small, realistic task, plus a look at two of their public repos, usually separates the two faster than another round of behavioral questions. Depth of signal matters more than puzzle difficulty here.
Tools to use
CoderPad for live collaborative coding interviews, HackerRank for standardized take-home assessments, and GitHub to review a candidate's public repositories.
Steal our AI prompt
I'm hiring a [role, for example mid-level React developer]. Design a 45-minute live coding exercise based on a realistic task from our stack: [describe your stack and a real problem]. Include the starter prompt, 3 follow-up questions to test depth, and a simple rubric for what strong, average, and weak answers look like.
Onboarding process
Document everything (handbooks, processes, tools, systems) so new joiners don’t feel lost and are used to how things are run around here. You might also want to set a deadline for them to get into the company flow and culture, so they know when they will need to start working on a project.
How to do it
- Write the essentials down once (accounts, tools, code conventions, who owns what) in a single searchable home.
- Turn repeat "how do I..." answers into short recorded walkthroughs so you explain a process once, not per hire.
- Give each new hire a dated first-week checklist so they know what "onboarded" actually means.
See a worked example
Imagine a new dev's first week with no written handbook: they ping three people to find the staging URL, guess at the branching convention, and lose a day. A single onboarding page covering tools, access, conventions, and a first-week checklist tends to turn that scramble into something closer to a self-serve first day. The exact time saved varies, but the failure mode is predictable.
Tools to use
Steal our AI prompt
We're a [describe company size and stack] onboarding a new web developer. Draft a first-week onboarding checklist and a table of contents for our handbook, covering accounts and access, tools, code conventions, communication norms, and who to ask for what. Mark which items should be a written doc versus a recorded screen walkthrough.
Joining mid-project
New joiners often join a company in the middle of an active project and are expected to hit the ground running within a few days, regardless of level.
To avoid confusion, assign a buddy to help them understand this particular client, their wants and needs, the current challenges, the goals, the timeline, and the data flow.
How to do it
- Assign a buddy who already knows the client and can answer questions without judgment.
- Have the buddy record a short context handoff (client goals, current challenges, timeline, data flow) the new hire can rewatch.
- Point them to a single live project page so scope and status stay in one place, not scattered across chat.
See a worked example
Picture a developer dropped into an active client build on day three and expected to ship. Pairing them with a buddy who records a 15-minute walkthrough of the client's goals, current blockers, and data flow, plus a shared project page they can re-read, tends to shorten the "I don't know what's going on" period noticeably. Buddy programs are well supported by onboarding research, though the actual lift depends on how often they meet.
Tools to use
Loom to record a reusable project-context handoff, Asana to keep scope and status in one place, and Microsoft's onboarding-buddy research for a template that speeds time-to-productivity.
Steal our AI prompt
A new developer is joining an active project mid-stream. The project is: [describe client, goals, current blockers, timeline, and data flow]. Write a buddy handoff brief that gets them productive fast, plus a checklist of the 8 things their buddy should walk them through in week one.
How long does it take to hire a web developer?
Hiring a developer (or any position, really) leads to a long-term relationship. So, take your time and find the one you think is most compatible with your team and your company values. In the meantime, set aside time to also learn a thing or two about programming and web development so you can at least speak their language during the interviews.
In our case, it can take up to two months to hire a web developer! This is because we don't just recruit the first available candidate. On the contrary, sometimes we handle a little bit of extra work during the hiring process. It's a little sacrifice to make sure our new team member is a good fit for our projects, other team members, and our company culture in the long run.
Hiring a web developer is not the only challenge that business owners face. There are also financial challenges, gender bias (for women business owners), VC pitching, and many more. And if hiring in-house feels like too much right now, our web development team can build, support, and grow your site for you.
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