A good-looking, bug-free mobile app is nowadays a must for every company that operates in any way in the digital world. Thanks to the fact that each of us constantly carries their smartphone in a bag or a pocket, a mobile app allows you to reach your customers nearly throughout the whole day. By sending a notification to them about your offer or special promotions, you can make customers more engaged and updated on the recent developments at your business.
Do you want to establish this kind of smartphone business presence, but don’t know how to develop a mobile app yourself? If that’s the case, you should definitely consider hiring mobile app developers who will handle the coding for you.
But how to find those perfectly fitted to your project? Here is our guide!
Mobile app development services tailored to your business
There are tons of developers around that claim to be experienced engineers, but worked only on simple software that may be way different to what you are planning to have developed. Because of this, it’s important to make sure that the mobile app developers you hire are somehow experienced in your industry.
Remember to always ask about the engineer's or team’s portfolio. See if they worked on any projects that are similar to yours in its scope and the idea behind the app. There are teams and individuals who have years of experience in specific mobile app types, such as e-commerce apps, travel/tourism apps, apps for financial institutions (banks, fintechs), apps for the medtech industry, etc. You will surely find great experts knowledgeable in projects similar to yours!
What skills are needed for mobile app developer?
This depends on the technology you wish to use for your project. Do you want your new mobile app to appear on iOS, Android, or maybe both?
Let’s look first on the iOS option. If you want to hire mobile app developers that will build you software for an Apple device, a crucial skill for them to have is extensive knowledge of Swift and Objective-C - programming languages most often used when it comes to developing an iOS app. Experience with Xcode (Apple’s own and recommended integrated development environment is also a must have. Besides these, you should for mobile app developers with a good knowledge of popular iOS graphic APIs (e.g. Metal, OpenGL) and data management for iOS (SQLite).
On the other hand, what skills are needed for a mobile app developer who will work on an Android app? Mainly: good knowledge of Java (NOT JavaScript) and Kotlin, provable experience with Android Software Development Kit, understanding of XML from an Android dev perspective, as well as being able to manage data for your app with SQL.
When it comes to cross-platform development, you might think of hiring a mobile app developer with experience in React Native, a framework developed at Facebook that allows developers to create mobile apps mostly with the use of JavaScript. When working on React Native, the Android and the iOS version of your app can be developed to some extent simultaneously as they can share big parts of the code. This allows to speed up the development process and cut costs significantly.
The cons of using React Native in comparison to the truly native technologies? Apps that are compute-intensive (e.g. those with lots of different functionalities and/or using high-quality 3D graphics) will run significantly slower when coded in JavaScript in comparison to Swift/Kotlin.
What questions should you ask while hiring a mobile app developer?
Here is our list of the top questions you should ask your potential mobile app developer hire. We use them ourselves to make sure we work only with the best in the field!
- What industry are you especially experienced in?
As we have already mentioned, it’s very important to make sure your new hire has experience with companies similar to yours. Make sure to watch out for people who say things like “I’m experienced in multiple industries”. It might be that they worked only on one project from each industry which may not make them experienced enough to join your mobile app development team.
- What mobile technology have you worked with so far?
Try to get the specifics from them. “I worked with iOS/Android” isn’t enough. They should explicitly mention the exact frameworks/libraries they used.
- Where can I find the apps you’ve developed?
There are lots of young developers who start by creating mock-ups and test apps that are done purely for training purposes. So make sure the developer you hire has in their portfolio an actual company app that appeared on App Store or Google Play Store. You can follow-up this question with “How did you exactly contribute to the development of these apps?”.
- Have you worked in an agile environment? Have any of the teams you worked with used Scrum or Kanban?
All the great app development teams these days are working the Agile Way, often accompanied by specific agile methodologies, such as Scrum or Kanban. Of course, making use of them doesn’t make the software great right away, but it definitely helps in developing products faster and more efficiently.
- What tools have you used for communicating and reporting within and outside your team?
Collaboration is the key to success when it comes to mobile app development. When big projects are run, multiple people handle different features of the software, from coding itself, to UX design, project management, and more. To make sure you are hiring a person that is happy to communicate and collaborate with others, ask about the tools they have used in their previous jobs and their experience with them. Do they use Slack or maybe they found a better alternative? How do they like Jira? Do they go full digital or also use real-world items, such as actual Kanban boards? Make sure you understand their approach to work, so you know if they fit your company.
Run a proper technical interview
Understanding the resume, portfolio, and the work attitude of your candidate is crucial, but you shouldn’t forget about checking the hard skills as well. Some of the good technical questions to ask when you hire mobile app developers are:
- What’s your favourite library for mobile app development?
- MVC vs MVP vs MVVM — what are the differences between the three?
- What are the differences between using native mobile app development solutions and cross-platform frameworks?
- How do you make sure that the user’s data is stored securely?
- CoreData — what is it and when do you use it? [iOS]
- Explain the difference between Map, FlatMap, and CompactMap [iOS]
- minSdk vs targetSdk — what are the differences between the two? [Android]
- RecyclerView vs ListView — define and compare [Android]
Consider remote mobile app development services
Thanks to the power of high-speed internet, engineers don’t have to be in the same room anymore to develop great mobile apps. Remote app development is booming, allowing people to collaborate wherever they are currently based. Can a team consist of people living in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia? Definitely!
Because of all this, you should consider hiring a remote mobile app developer or app development team. You don’t have to make space for them at your office and you can cut costs even more by hiring people from countries where you need less to make a living. Personally, we recommend looking for app development agencies and software houses in Central and Eastern Europe. This region is full of talents who worked on multiple award-winning global projects while staying in their home countries — as one report suggests, 6 of the top 20 countries with best developers are actually countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
How to hire mobile app developers that will fit your team and company culture?
At Ideamotive, we work with numerous professional mobile app developers from all around the world. Thanks to the years of industry experience we have, we are able to get your company in touch with both individual talents as well as ready-to-hire teams that can get all the app development done for you.
We understand that one mobile app developer is not able to run your project by themselves, and that’s why we offer help in finding a whole team of people you might need: from project managers and product owners to graphic designers and UX experts.
