Hiring a web developer or tech; what not to do!

Hiring a web developer (tech) or technical staff (tech) has the potential for you to waste $20,000.00 to $35,000.00 a year as well as damages done to your business in lost sale conversions and SEO damage. It would be just as good if you took the money and maybe even your business and burned it. Why? Simple… if you hire someone who is not a truly experienced tech, they cannot justify the pay. In all my years experience in dealing with technical staff, I have seen all sorts.

A good tech is a self starter. A person who can figure out all technical aspects on their own. Someone that has live examples on the web of their SEO capabilities as well as their programming capabilities. You have to realize that most ticket brokers don’t have a technical bone in their body. This may or may not be the case for you, but if it is you can very easily be throwing your money away. If you are not technically inclined, a tech can do even the most mundane task that takes literally minutes and make it seem like it took hours or even days. What you don’t realize is even if they are stealing your money when it comes to the quality and quantity of work done, they can also do unlimited monetary damages to your business by developing a poorly designed website and search engine optimization for your business.

The best thing you can do is know how to hire an awsome tech but if it’s too late for that and you already hired a tech, it’s actually simple to determine if you’re wasting your money on him/her.
Micromanagement is typically thought to be a bad thing and in many cases it is but in a small business atmosphere when you have a tech, you have to stay on top of what he/she is doing. Because once the tech realizes that you have no idea what he is doing except the occasional adding of text or images to your website, he loses all interest and motivation for your business.

So here’s a simple check list I recommend you review before hiring tech

1. Is the tech proud they graduated a tech school such as ITT Tech, MTI or similar?

Tech schools do nothing more than take a know-nothing person into a call center jockey. In my 20 years of being in business I have have hired many techs and every single tech worth their weight has taught themselves the programming, how to work with computers, etc. Now I’m not saying colleges are useless to techs, I’m just saying tech schools are. Being a tech is something they have to love to be good at it because it means if something new comes along they are going to teach it to themselves.

2. Make sure they have live examples of websites that they have programmed and designed that you like as well as search engine optimization and placement that they have done for other websites.

Without live examples, don’t even call them in for an interview. How can they say they are going to help your business when they haven’t helped anyone else?

How can you tell if a live example of search engine placement is good? Have them show you a website and the correlating key word that pulls it up into Google and make sure that site ranks in the top 20 out of more than ten million results. If they show you a website that has top placement out of 100,000 results, it’s worthless because all ticket broker key words have millions of results for top placement.

3. Never hire foreign freelancers!

Why? Besides the fact that you will have a language barrier and time zone differences and they will never truely understand anything you say, they do not use th same standards of programming and it never seems to work right. So even though you may get them at a fraction of the price that american labor would cost, by the time you finally get past the language barrier and have them fix the issues they created you’ll end up paying them many times the price american labor would have originally cost. Many times in my past my fellow business owners have hired foreign freelancers and got the work started and maybe even got it completed but when they tried to make them finish it or fix it, the foreign tech disappeared. On top of all this, what if they just take your money and never do the work or complete it or even cause your business damage, what legal recourse do you have?

4. Ask the prospective tech what programming tools and languages they use.

Windows Operating Systems, Microsoft FrontPage or Dreamweaver are amatuer tools that high school kids use. If your prospective tech uses these tools do not hire them.

Mac, Coda, CSS Edit or hand coding are excellant and professional tools used by the pros.

PHP, MYSQL, CSS and JavaScript are key and most know languages.

.Net, ASP, ColdFusion, Python or any other languages are good to know but more of expensive programming languages to develop a full site in unless you have a lot of money to fund the project. Not to mention .NET/ASP run on Windows operating systems goes without saying are more expensive and full of security holes.

5. Ask the prospective tech what design skills they have.

While design/artist skills aren’t key it’s like the cherry on top of the cake and will help you in many ways. Keep in mind that it is alwasy easier to outsource design/artist work than it is programming work. A good tech will know how to find and help you freelance the design work.

How can you determine if your current tech is worth keeping or worth their current salary rate? Really just run through the above points and see if he or she fits into what makes a good tech. Obviously with any type of employment position, it’s never good to hire friends or family and don’t let loyalty make you waste money on someone who isn’t a good employee. If it came down to it and that employee was offered more money elsewhere, they’d leave you. Don’t waste your money if you’re not getting what you’re paying for.