People have been asking me lately how I assess the problem-solving skills of the developers I bring to my clients. As a business owner making technical hiring decisions, your developer selection directly impacts your bottom line.
The most important skill of a developer is his capability to solve problems. But this is a platitude, right? Let me give you some examples of problems: User Experience (UX), Computer Requirements (because, you know, developing a program to run in a x386 and a Titan Pro X are two different things), Bugs, Scalability, Deadlines, Teamwork, Communication with the Stakeholders, Testing and Validation… just to name a few and that excludes the coding part.
A developer with poor problem-solving skills will be the bottleneck for the project, and a developer with a ninja-level problem-solving skills will have everything done while eating breakfast. According to HackerRank’s Developer Skills Report 2023, nearly 91% of employers rank problem-solving skills as one of the most critical competencies when hiring software developers—even more important than mastery of specific programming languages.
Which one of them values their weight in gold?
It is no wonder that every good company wants to hire one of them.
I am going to explain in detail what problem-solving is and what it entails, which abilities show problem-solving skills in a senior developer, and the best techniques in an interview to assess their problem-solving capabilities.
Let’s get started!
What is Problem-Solving?
Problem-solving is a high-level thinking skill that always involves:
- Identification of the problem
- Deconstruction of the problem in smaller parts
- Elaboration of potential solutions and approaches
Problem-solving is a skill that identifies problems, deconstructs them, and finds a list of suitable solutions. It is a very important soft skill. In short, programming is solving problems through coding.
Do you wish to calculate your finances or maybe scientific probabilities? You may use a programming language to set a special calculator. Do you wish for a software to record all the daily tasks inside your company? You take all the numbers, tasks, and metrics and store them inside a special program coded by you to suit all your needs.
Of course, coding has its own set of problems. A programmer or a team will inevitably commit small mistakes here and there.
This only makes problem-solving even more important. The devs will hunt bugs and glitches so the program runs smoothly.
It is important to tell you that a problem-solver won’t create a solution from nothing. The best of the kind will do tons of research to solve problems through others’ solutions first. Think about Isaac Newton. That guy remodeled our vision of physics forever, and yet he said that:
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” which means “I was only able to do that because I learned so much from others”.
Finally, problem-solving is also related to receiving feedback from others, especially stakeholders. Problem-solvers have to add new variables every day to the project
In short, problem-solving ability is not just a technical skill for a programmer but a mindset. A developer is a problem-solver; programming is about solving people’s problems through coding. A senior developer with problem-solving abilities is far more than a “Bug Fixer”; this developer turns challenges into functional and efficient solutions.
How to Spot the Problem-Solving Skills in a Candidate
Nice, so what are we looking for in a developer to assess his problem-solving skills? A good problem solver has several complementary skills that enhance their ability to deal with challenges effectively. You need to discern those skills to assess the quality of your developer.
You will notice that many of the skills of the developer are not related to his intellect or brain power. A programmer needs strong interpersonal skills to communicate to the stakeholders everything about the project (like features in the program or obstacles during the development). Let`s not forget that the best problem-solvers do not solve their problems alone. Even Brain used to have Pinky around, although you may want your developer to have better social skills than him.
Check on your candidate the following key skills:
| Skill | Why It’s Important |
| Teamwork | Collaboration, feedback handling, and active listening improve problem-solving. |
| Communication | Essential for explaining technical solutions to different stakeholders. |
| Brainstorming | Encourages creative thinking and better technical solutions. |
| Analysis | Strategy, evaluate metrics, identify problems and potential solutions |
| Parallel Thinking | Multitasking, boost execution, improve productivity, time saving |
| Decomposition | Breaking tasks into smaller tasks |
| Debugging | Identifying and solving bugs, glitches, and errors |
| Test and Validation | Test different solutions and approaches to validate the best path |
| Creativity | When the available solutions are not enough, the developer must create one from scratch |
In addition to these skills, a willingness to learn is essential to staying current with technological advances. The ability to quickly learn and adapt to new technologies and tools is crucial in the ever-evolving technology industry.
In short, a good problem solver knows how to solve problems in a group, together with the team and the stakeholders.
I know it is obvious. I just had to explain what problem-solving entails in programming. A dev not only possesses strong analytical and technical skills but demonstrates creativity as well. The developer also has critical thinking, excellent communication and collaboration skills, and an open mindset to learn and adapt. Identifying these skills is key to knowing if your developer has strong problem-solving skills or if he or she lacks them.
How to assess the problem-solving skills of a programmer
There are several effective strategies for assessing developers’ problem-solving skills during the hiring process. Here is how I do it:
1. Review of previous work and projects
At this step, you will analyze portfolios, GitHub repositories, Stack Overflow participation, and contributions to open source projects. This can provide valuable insight into a developer’s coding style, the complexity of projects they can tackle, and their problem-solving mindset.
It seems like tons of work, but it allows you to assess your candidate’s code organization, documentation, and consistency in coding practices. Participation in Stack Overflow can demonstrate technical knowledge and communication skills. Involvement in open source projects can indicate the ability to tackle a variety of coding challenges and collaborate in a community-driven environment.
2. Be a Dungeon Master and Ask the Right Questions
Yes, be like a Dungeon Master and not an interrogator or an interviewer. You will encourage a bit of roleplaying. Scenario-based exercises can show how the candidate applies their problem-solving skills to practical situations.
You will conduct the interviews with behavioral questions, presenting the developers with real-world problems (“what would you do if…”). It will help you to assess how your candidates would approach and solve these challenges in your business.
These questions can reveal how the candidate has handled past situations related to teamwork, conflict, and their approach to problem-solving. Examples of questions include: describing a time when they overcame a challenge with team dynamics, how they managed a high-pressure task, or how they independently fixed a bug.
Of course, that is assuming that you know coding well enough to develop these questions.
3. Offer Your Candidates A Real Challenge
Coding challenges are a practical way to assess a developer’s ability to find the best possible solution to a given problem.
Platforms like HackerRank, Codility, or LeetCode can be used to create custom coding tasks.
Examples of challenges include:
- algorithm optimization,
- feature development,
- debugging exercises,
- system design.
Live coding sessions provide a real-time look at a candidate’s thought process, showing how they approach problems, make decisions, and adapt under pressure. Pair programming, where the candidate works with a company software engineer, can assess teamwork skills as the candidate thinks, writes, reads, tests, and debugs code in real time.
In other words, just test the developers’ skills and measure both their proficiency and teamwork capabilities.
4. Comprehensive assessments of interpersonal skills and cultural fit
Assessing soft skills is vital to a developer’s overall assessment. Questions focused on effective communication, teamwork, willingness to learn, and deadline estimation can provide insight into these skills.
Additionally, assessing a developer’s alignment with the company’s culture, vision, and work environment can lead to greater workplace harmony and improved collaboration.
In short, companies can hire exceptional senior developers with a strong problem-solving mindset if they implement a comprehensive assessment process.
Chef’s Secret: Triple Approval Process
If you ask me, I don’t think it is enough to evaluate a candidate’s skills alone. While that is very important, my secret ingredient for hiring a senior developer is a method that I developed with my team. We call it the Triple Approval Process.
DistantJob’s “Triple Approval Process” is a three-step procedure our company uses to ensure the quality of candidates presented to clients. The main goal of this process is to save the client time by performing rigorous vetting of candidates.
The process involves the following steps:
- First stage: Sourcing Team. Sourcing specialists select profiles that may match the client’s needs and contact them. After an initial assessment, successful candidates are forwarded to the recruitment team.
- Second stage: Recruitment Team. Recruiters evaluate and confirm whether candidates continue in the process. Those who qualify are interviewed for an hour, where technical and interpersonal skills are assessed, with cultural fit being crucial. Candidates who pass this interview are sent to Account Managers..
- Final Stage: Account Management Team. Account managers are in constant contact with the client from the very beginning. They are the first to understand the client’s needs and the last to evaluate candidates against those requirements. They review the scores and evaluations of both earlier teams. If they find the candidates worthy, they share the evaluation summary and resume with the client.
This intensive process ensures that only one or two candidates are approved per week from a large number of profiles reviewed. We invest time and energy into this process so that our clients don’t have to. 60% of its clients hire after the first resume is submitted and 80% after the second because of this process. Additionally, we spend an extra hour vetting candidates already qualified within this process to minimize the client’s time spent.
And that is how sausage gets made.
Yes, it is time-consuming and tons of work. But if you want to assess you have the very best problem-solving developer, here is how you do it.
There is an easier option, and you know what I am talking about. You can get rid of all the work and just get the remote developer of your dreams. I will do the hard stuff for you.
Contact me now, and we will find the best fit for your company and your project!
