Talented blockchain developers are a little like diamonds: they’re hard to find and expensive to get. What if you have your own business idea that calls for immediate implementation with leading technologies, but you can’t find the right specialists that can evolve it into something giant. This article shares a number of ideas on how to hire highly qualified blockchain developers who’ll not only produce innovative software but will also help you cut your development expenses.
We present you our list of resourceful ways to find skillful blockchain developers:
- Freelance platforms
- Facebook targeting
- Coding platforms
- Conferences
Can we be more specific, you ask? No worries, the details are below.
#1. Freelance platforms
Upwork is the most famous international freelance platform. There are so many people or even teams that you can find.
If you know this platform then you’ve already taken some steps. Sure, we will lead you through all the necessary steps towards fruitful cooperation with the best developers. Let’s start!
Step 1. Sign up / log in
If you are new on Upwork, you should register your account. This what the first step looks like.
If you already have an account here, just log in. But make sure you are registered as an employer. It is very important as on Upwork there are different roles you can choose to perform. Here how you can choose it at the very beginning. Choose your country, set up a password, check the agreement with Upwork policy and you are ready to go further.
Then fill in the information about your company and here you go – you can start posting your job or simply search for talented developers.
That’s how job posting begins, it helps to attract lots of developers to your project.
Step 2. Search
But it will also take a lot of your time to get through these bids. Who can guarantee you that you will find who you really want to work with? What if there are highly qualified developers but they won’t apply to your job posting for some reason? That is why it’s much better to define your demands for fruitful cooperation and simply search for them in a special search menu.
You can simply indicate some skill you’re looking for in developers. And you will see an advanced search menu with search results below. Here you can choose a location, where developers might be from, their English level, earned amount, job success, hourly rate, hours billed, the type of freelancer (independent one or an agency), etc.
Below you will see the list of freelancers that qualify. Have doubts? Just try it!
You can hire anyone you like as well as post a job to invite the specific developer or simply look through the profile.
Step 3. Read the profile
There are some things that you may pay attention to. Just take a look.
- Country. It might be very important to you. Also, each country has own reputation in each field.
- Specialty. If developers work in a specific niche, they know it much better over time.
- Overview. It is a short story about the experience, specialty, previous projects, etc. No need to explain.
- Hourly rate. Sure, it’s important! What if it’s more than you can pay.
- Statistics. It’s plain digits with common information about developer’s work on Upwork.
- Job success. It is how previous employers were satisfied with the developer’s work quality.
- Top rated. Not everyone has this sign. Only very successful freelancers can gain it.
- Agency members. Only agencies have it.
- Recent work on Upwork. Here you can see all the projects that developers had on Upwork and the related information. Also, you can see the client’s feedback.
So what’s left is just to take the first step, have a discussion with potential partners and hire them in the end.
#2. Facebook targeting
Facebook is a well-known social media platform where people not only can interact with close friends and relatives, but also find there a job or, otherwise, hire people that are able to develop your business idea. Let’s see how you can achieve it.
You can find the developer team you need on Facebook. By using Facebook’s advertising possibilities you can set it up to target any audience you want and show them your offer. It is much simpler than it seems.
Let’s follow the setup of an ad campaign targeted at the developer audience. Here’s the thing: you’ll need to have a business page. Without it, you won’t be able to set up targeting.
Step 1. Creating the advertising campaign
Go to the Facebook advertising account. To do that, click the “create ads” button which can be found right here:
The system will send you to the first stage of creating an advertising campaign. This is when you choose your goal. There are many options here, and we’ll break down the one you’ll need to find developers.
By the way, if this article gets 500 likes, we’ll post a step-by-step guide to Facebook ads. If you’re interested, please like and repost. This is how we’ll know you’re interested in this topic.
Choose “Traffic” as a goal and click “Continue”.
At the next stage you’ll set up:
- the audience you want to see your message;
- placements: where your message is going to be placed;
- the budget for your ad campaign.
And now let’s go over each stage in detail.
Setting up the audience
At this stage, you indicate the location of your potential developers, their gender and age, interests, and behavior. I’ll show how to set it up to find Ukrainian developers as an example.
Placements
You’ll only need placement in the Facebook news feed.
Budget
Here you can set a daily budget and a bid per click.
After you’ve fine-tuned the audience, the placements, and the budget, we move on to the next step.
Step 2. Creating your advertising message
- Upload an image;
- Choose a link:
- a website URL means that once a person clicks your ad, it’ll send him or her to your website. We’ll choose a simpler option;
- the Messenger is the option we choose. It means that when a person clicks your ad, he or she will be able to message you immediately. For example, “I’m ready to work on your project, let’s discuss the details”;
- Set up the Headline, Text, and Feed Link Description;
- Choose a call to action.
That’s it. Now you only have to click “Place Order”. And once it’s passed moderation, your ad campaign will be launched to search for cool developers on Facebook.
#3. Coding platforms
Meet Github! It’s a cloud based, hosting platform for open source (OS) developers, who use it to host and share code based on open source frameworks and technologies, like Blockchain. It is a must for every respectable developer to create an account and commit code on Github. So it is worth it to check this site. Let’s see how it can be done.
Step 1. Register an Account
Without hesitation register an account on Github. Even if you are far from programming. That is a vital step, as there are limitations for unregistered visitors. It’s very easy so I’ll leave it to you.
Step 2. Make a Search
Thanks to Git Revision Control System you can easily track the developer’s progress.
That will take most of the time. You can make a search for the desired words. For example, “blockchain”. Here is what I’ve got.
You see, 6 535 (even more now) repositories contain this term. Try to search by yourself, I assure you – you’ll get even more. That’s a very popular topic. If you understand the topic, you can judge the developer’s blockchain knowledge by the technical components the repository has. In case you know a little more than a beginner, you can judge by the number of stars and sharings each repository has.
There is an advanced search and it has a lot of options. For example, you want to know whether a certain developer team has repositories with blockchain technology. Here is what you need to enter in search fields.
Then click the “Search” button and here is what you get.
Step 3. Read the profile
Github is a goldmine of information about talented developers.
If that’s the profile of a company, then you can see the whole contact information, the created repositories, top languages that the company operates, and people who contribute to the company repository.
If you are looking through some person’s profile, then you can see the contact information, the company where the developer works, the contributions that were made and lots of other interesting information.
Step 4. Contact developer
There is so many information in each profile that it’s a very easy task.
You can simply send an email to an interesting candidate. Also, it’s easy to follow anyone there, check the activity, fork their repositories and, what is equally important, check the followers. The number of profile followers on Github is a good indicator of its level and reputation among open source developers. Also the more stars the profile has, the more qualified the developer is.
So you see, it’s not so hard to search for skillful developers on coding platforms.
#4. Conferences
No wonder, businessmen can not only exchange their thoughts and knowledge here but also find business partners. Here you can find out everything about your topic of interest, what other companies do and don’t do in the technology sphere, and even how much everyone earns. Also, companies and developers make connections with each other. In the end, you will get lots of information in one place, and you know – it is priceless.
Okay, enough with a preface. Here are some steps towards your brilliant idea implementation.
Step 1. Find the conferences of interest
There are tons of information about different conferences on technology sites. You can visit any of them. So if you are interested in blockchain, find out about such events near you. For example, Business Insider prepared a list of around the world. As you can see, there are several conferences being held each month. There’s more on other sites, come check it.
How do you think we know about it? Just a little hint: we are those developers who go to such events. The nearest one is BlockchainUA. Moreover, we like to take challenges at hackathons, like BlockchainUA Hackathon. Come join us!
Step 2. Prepare in advance
Simply create a master plan to take over the conference. No worries, you don’t need to be a speaker for this. Just find out in detail about speakers and their speech topics. The corresponding audience will come to each speech. So you have to anticipate the one where you will find who you’re looking for. In result, you won’t need to visit all the speeches. Your target might be both the speaker and the audience.
Step 3. Communicate
After speeches, people go to discuss vital questions in a special zone. It is the time to show what you’ve prepared and asked what you’re interested in. Use a friendly tone as a tool.
Step 4. Meet your acquaintances
Find out who out of your acquaintances is going to the same conference. Plan your meetings. It might be very useful, as they can advise you to contact a specific person or development team that might be the one you’re looking for.
Step 5. Visit the Stand Zone
It’s the place where lots of software products are presented by different development teams. You can ask whatever you want and even try their products. They can give you discounts or keys to trial versions with limitations.
Step 6. Give a task on the Hackathon
Another way to get talented developers is to give them a task. Sure, you need to discuss it with organizers. But that’s a very useful way to test and choose the most skillful developers. Why we know that? Because we won such hackathon and received an innovative project. But that’s another story!
Note, that if you go to the local conference, you will find local developers. Their work might be more expensive than developers from other countries can offer. To find the last ones you need to travel and visit conferences held abroad. For example, BlockchainUA that we visit. Also, you can go to the biggest conference in the world – Web Summit. By the way, we are always there too. If this option doesn’t suit you and still you want to find developers with more attractive terms for cooperation, you can always use our three resourceful ways to find great remote developers that are described above.
Conclusion
In general, you should use all the available sources. Each of them reflects some part of a developer’s life, confirming the skills. A little piece of information in one place can lead to lots of useful data elsewhere.
So don’t waste another opportunity to work with the greatest!
