Hiring software engineers isn’t an easy task, right? Well, as long as you don’t make these 6 mistakes, we’re sure you can figure out how to hire software engineers and avoid the great resignation trend that is currently happening in the U.S.
Nowadays, every company in the US (small and big) is fighting to get a hold of software engineers, which is why hiring software engineers is difficult if you don’t have a solid budget. According to Forbes, the unemployment rate for IT employees hovered near 2.3%.
If you’ve had bad luck trying to hire engineers in the past or if you’re looking to start the hiring process, let us tell you how you can avoid making recruitment mistakes and be successful in your quest to hire software engineers.
1. Paying below market rates
According to Altigee, “The average annual salary for top software engineering roles in the San Francisco Bay Area is around $157,000, followed closely by New York, where it’s about $148,000. Software engineers in Seattle get on average $145,000 a year and in LA $143,000.”
Not giving what a software engineer is asking for is the first mistake you can make.
You might think giving equity can alleviate this issue. However, keep in mind that if you want to retain top employees, giving shares will not avoid the churn of good talent when they get offers from a FAANG company that’s giving salaries of $200k (Which by the way also include more tangible equity).
How can you resolve that if you don’t have enough cash in your bank account?
Nowadays, there’s a general trend in the US toward hiring remote workers outside the main tech hubs. That’s why the next step is to search for salary expectations in different locations to find out where your ideal software engineer could be located.
For example, did you know you could hire software engineers and many other technical roles for $4k to $5k a month in your same time zone?
Companies like Teilur Talent help start-ups in the Bay Area find tech talent that will say with their employees because companies can now pay above-local market rates by looking south of the border.
2. Not giving them the chance of choosing remote working
Remote work has come to stay!
Not giving your software engineer the chance to choose remote work is the second mistake you can make.
Most software engineers are more comfortable working from home, and with productivity management tools you can make sure to get the most out of your software team.
Some companies specialize in creating software engineering teams with remote candidates from scratch so that you can focus on your projects, not on hiring. Working with a hiring partner is an efficient way to mitigate risks and overcome the challenges of hiring a software engineer.
Call me biased - of course, I am - but this is what we are doing at Teilur Talent; helping startups and companies hire remote teams.
Our thoughts on the pricing structure of Toptal
While it's not possible for us to find details about how much of what a client pays ultimately goes to a candidate, we believe clients looking for transparent and straightforward pricing may want to look at other alternatives.
Our opinion is that if they are charging a client more than $12,000 monthly for a developer, they should at the very least be giving $9,600 to the candidate, but it's likely that it's even less than that.
What Hiring Managers Should Ask Before Choosing a Talent Partner
Before partnering with any talent provider — whether Toptal, Teilur, or others — hiring managers should consider asking the following key questions:
- What percentage of the fee actually goes to the talent?
- Are replacement or satisfaction guarantees included in the contract?
- How are regional salary benchmarks determined?
- Is there full transparency in how rates are broken down?
- What is the long-term cost difference between hiring directly and through a platform?
These questions can help businesses make informed decisions and ensure that pricing aligns with both market realities and ethical compensation practices.
4. Being too narrow in the search
So you’ve made up your mind and opted to hire remotely in Latin America. You have narrowed down your search to Mexico and Brazil as ideal places to find your software engineer. So which country should you choose?
There are 167.000 software engineers in Brazil and 107.000 in Mexico. Fact: You can search for “Software developer” in People on LinkedIn and using a country filter will give you some rough statistics about tech talent in Latin America
The fifth mistake you can make is to only focus on hiring in the U.S. when you can find a vast talent pool of software engineers in Latin America.
There are hiring firms, like Teilur Talent, that allow American companies to connect with Latin American candidates.
5. Poor onboarding
Don’t throw your software engineers right into software development blindly. It’s the easiest way to start off on the wrong foot.
Take the time to give as much support as you’re able to. It’ll be an investment that pays off in productivity and morale. Even a senior software engineer will need some time to get oriented in your work environment properly, even if it’s less than what a junior engineer would need.
Set up expectations, give an overview of workflows, team responsibilities, boundaries, and so on. If you give a software engineer enough information to get them working efficiently with your codebase, they’ll soon start delivering results.
6. Forgetting to highlight the company’s culture to them
The candidate must share your company's values and culture in order to become a useful part of your team.
Ensure that you have a dialogue with the candidate during the hiring process to transmit the organization’s philosophy. You should think about candidate motivators, like work challenges and growth possibilities.
If you end up hiring someone with excellent technical talents but that doesn’t fit your company’s culture, be prepared to let them go quickly.
Let’s wrap it up!
Now, you can figure out how to successfully hire software engineers and become part of the 5% of companies that hire top talent in a competitive industry.
