Database management is a crucial part of any organization, as they have to manage their huge data. As a result, it has created a huge demand for database developers for different roles, such as data analyst, business analyst, SQL administrators, IT manager, etc.

Hiring the right technical team for an organization is a daunting task for hiring managers and recruiters who are from a non-tech background. As a non-tech recruiter, you will get a lot of resumes and you will get confused about how to hire candidates, how to conduct pre-employment assessments, what skills to look for in a developer, etc.

However, in this article, we will discuss the best tips to hire a great database developer and also streamline the hiring process

Start With A Good Job Description

Initiate your hiring process with a compelling job description. In your job descriptions, clearly mention your company’s requirements, and what are the roles and responsibilities an ideal candidate must undertake.

It is the best recruiting approach as with a clear and precise job description, your candidate pool will be filled with well-skilled and experienced candidates. As a recruiter, you and your position supervisor should read through and sign off on a job description before it goes live. Hence, it will be easy for you to easily evaluate the right candidate for your organization.

Technical Screening

Technical screening is one the most important part of the recruiting process of hiring a development team. With technical screening tests for database developer, you will a deep knowledge about the skills and experience of the developer, and how passionate he or she is in their chosen field.

With screening test, you will get an idea about the following technical skills of a developer:

• Designing database tables and structures
• Writing optimized SQL queries for integration with existing applications
• Creating database triggers for automation
• Maintaining data quality and managing database security
• Creating views, functions, and stored systems.

Generally, technical screening is all about general information, such as past experience and the interest of the candidates. Also, you can get a deep knowledge of a candidate’s technical skills.

Use Simulators

Simulators play a crucial role in hiring database developers and help to save time, money, and effort a recruiter puts towards hiring the right team. Basically, it is a coding assessment test for candidates as it provides a real-life situation to test the developer’s skills to write an optimized query to access data from SQL database prior to a face-to-face interview.

Here are some of the benefits of using simulators to hire database developers:

• Much better than interviews
• Helps to reduce bias
• Helps candidates to assess their interest
• Help recruiters and hiring managers to examine a candidate’s technical skills.

Online SQL Skill Assessment

Conducting an online SQL skill assessment is the best way to determine whether the developer is the right fit for your company’s requirement or not. Using an online SQL skill assessment is easy to set up, even if you are from a non-tech background. This skill assessment test will help you to filter out the best candidates and can save your time by up to 50%.

Some of the benefits of using SQL skills assessment are:

• Effectively assess candidate SQL and coding skills
• Competency mapping – Compare with industry benchmarks
• Informed hiring decision – Identify the right fit for the organization
• Increases productivity
• Provides detailed analysis

The online pre-employment assessment allows applicants to take the test anytime and anywhere. Advance proctoring makes your recruitment process extremely powerful and manageable.

Coding Interview

Once the candidate passes the SQL skill assessment test, it’s time for a face-to-face coding interview. In an interview, you can test the skills of a developer, such as communication skills, problem-solving skills, past experience, time management skills, creative skills, and other soft skills. As you have already examined the technical skill of a developer in the previous step, you can still ask questions related to database knowledge, frameworks, programming languages, etc.

A great database developer is responsible to design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain the database of an organization. Here are some of the essential skills you should look for prior to hiring a database developer.

Good Knowledge Of Data Modeling

Data models are a critical part of database management as they describe real-world entities such as ‘customer’, ‘service’, ‘products’, and the relation between these entities. So, your database developer must have good knowledge of how to perform data modeling, perform a benchmark stack to ensure performance, and validate user requirements.

Additionally, a developer must also avoid pitfalls such as data redundancy, null saturation, and tight coupling.

Hands-On Experience in Database Programming Language

As database developers are responsible to design, write and modify code to improve a company’s database, they should have a deep knowledge of the database programming language – SQL. It is one of the prominent languages used to manipulate the data in a database and to query the database. If a developer is well-skilled in SQL, he or she can easily adapt to MySQL.

Design And Test Database Plans

A database developer you hire must know about how to perform regular tests to identify ways to solve database usage issues and malfunctions. Additionally, a database developer should make sure that when modifying the database structure, he or she does not break current applications and use the new structures properly.

Secure Your Database

As data protection and security are essential for the continuity of business, a database developer must have experience in designing and executing secure design options. Plus, a developer needs to ensure that data integrity is maintained over time and is secure from unauthorized changes or theft.

The bottom line is simple – be intentional. Make the right decision about your technical hiring, and carefully plan and execute every hiring procedure to emphasize each individual’s strengths.

Follow the above steps carefully, and you will never fail to onboard the right talent which caters to your company’s requirement.

Happy hiring!!