Key Considerations to Hire iOS Developers for Your Organization

iOS is one of the most coveted mobile operating systems in the world today.

A market share of 27.73% indicates that there will be an estimated 1.84 billion people with iOS smartphones worldwide in 2024 out of the total 6.8 billion smartphone users.

Given that iOS is so widely used, developing your applications right takes precedence over other projects.

Plus, this operating system is known for its secure environments, operational efficiencies, fluid UI, and a plethora of other performance benchmarks. These make iOS development a process of thorough consideration and exhaustive testing.

Hiring an iOS developer, thus, becomes a complex task where it's essential to ascertain the skills and capabilities of the new recruits. The products they develop must meet the market benchmarks or, even better, surpass them.

If your business is set out to hire iOS developers, this blog will help you align your potential recruits with the organization’s needs.

What Does an iOS Developer Do?

Since iOS is a widely used and accepted operating system, iOS developers perform a wide scope of duties and roles at an organization.

Their primary responsibility is designing, developing, testing, and maintaining applications and software intended to run on iOS.

Developers are involved in the complete development cycle of iOS applications, right from the inception of the concept to launch and support. On a day-to-day basis, an iOS developer performs the following tasks at the minimum:

• Writing code that is clean and efficient for iOS and iPadOS applications.
• Development of Software Development Kits (SDKs) on iOS
• Quality testing and assurance for app performance
• Troubleshooting for bugs in code
• Process efficiency and streamlining by identifying development bottlenecks.
• Teamwork with other professionals on the development team, like UX designers, product managers, backend engineers, UI designers, and more.

In addition to these tasks, iOS developers are responsible for recommending changes or tweaks to applications to improve them. It is also their responsibility to stay abreast of the latest updates and product models.

Skills You Should Test to Hire iOS Developers

An iOS developer needs to have certain technical skills to perform well at work. In a nutshell, ensure that you test your candidates for the following:

• Swift: The programming language that Apple has created for the development of applications for its operating systems. The developer should have good knowledge of the foundational concepts, control statements, types and interfaces, and advanced concepts of this programming language.
• iOS: The developer should be well-versed in the fundamental concepts of iOS and app development using its tools. They should be skilled at using Xcode, auto layout, table views, containers, and storyboards.

In addition to the basic knowledge set discussed above, the candidate should have skills in the following aspects of iOS app development as well:

• Data exchange: The developer should be able to use programming data exchange functions well.
• Git and GitHub: Skills in utilizing Git and GitHub help ensure that all your applications are version controlled and the changes are trackable.
• Spatial reasoning: This capability enables a candidate to visualize objects in the programming language in a three-dimensional space to work with them. It helps build a polished UI and app flow.

Some bonus skill sets include:

• Objective C, C, C++
• Performance and memory tuning
• Core animations
• Cloud platforms
• Layout, UI/UX design

Factors to Consider Before You Hire iOS Developers

Prior to publishing your recruitment ad, it's essential to keep in mind certain factors that will impact the hiring process and utility of your newly acquired employees.

Listed below are a few considerations before you finally decide to hire iOS developers.

• Portfolio relevance: You should check their portfolio to understand the nature of apps and software they have written and whether it is relevant for the niche your business creates apps for.
• Communication: Businesses today hire people remotely, which often creates a language barrier between team members. Check whether the potential employee is comfortable conversing in your language.
• Validate the work: The portfolio they submit should have at least three full-scale working apps. This is the best way you can judge their coding skills.
• Quality of work: No business wishes to put laggy, buggy apps on the market. Check every submission on the portfolio to measure app quality. Also, call every listed reference on the resume to ascertain that it is legit.
• Promptness: If a candidate is taking undue time to respond to calls and emails, they will possibly continue to do so after they are hired as well. It's better to take a step back if this happens too often.
• Request assistance: Ensure you have a professional developer seated on the interview board. It will help you assess the sample code requests and other coding tests more fairly and hire truly capable candidates.

What are iOS Developer Grades?

After giving due consideration to the important aspects prior to hiring, you need to determine the grade of the professional to hire iOS developers. Doing this will guide your salary negotiations and role determination for the professional.

There are typically three grades of professionals, classified broadly:

1. Junior Grade

Span of experience: Up to 2 years

Hiring a junior iOS developer is the best strategy if your business is struggling will overflowing clerical developmental work that is too time-consuming for the senior staff to do.

Junior developers can be trained according to your company culture while managing less complex tasks as they prepare to take on more responsibilities of the higher roles at your enterprise.

2. Middle Grade

Span of experience: Between 2 and 5 years

Middle-grade developers are capable of executing developmental tasks individually. However, advanced projects still remain out of their ambit, and regular supervision is needed to correct their course every once in a while.

You can hire a middle-grade iOS developer to supervise junior staff as well.

3. Senior Grade

Span of experience: More than 5 years

Senior iOS developers can handle a diverse range of tasks at your organization. They are ideally hired to lead the entire department, handle advanced tasks, coordinate with other departments for project development, and more.

Key Skills and Knowledge Required for iOS Developers

Before you hire iOS developers, you need to conduct a detailed assessment of their skill set. The following three distinct skillsets will give you a holistic picture of how good a fit the candidate is for the role, for challenges, and for your enterprise:

• Technical expertise
• Prior experience
• Soft skills

1. Technical Expertise

For the technical part, shortlist candidates who have a good command of Swift and Objective-C. Furthermore, they should be skilled at working with Apple’s integrated programming environment, Xcode.

The candidate must also know If and Switch statements, interoperability, syntax, and inheritances.

2. Prior Experience

When you're hiring for middle or senior-grade positions, the candidate’s prior experience becomes pivotal. In order for them to be a good fit for your company:

• Their prior experience should be as relevant as possible for the current role
• The applications and software they showcase should be based on coding best practices and should not be problematic from a developer’s perspective

3. Soft Skills

Soft skills determine how a candidate would adapt to the working environment and gel with team members at your company. These skills determine:

• How effective a leader the candidate would be in senior roles
• How well a candidate will adhere to company culture
• The communication and interpersonal skills of the candidate, which help in liaising and developing good client relationships
  

4. Cognitive Skills

Cognitive skills are crucial for developers because it enables them to think critically, solve problems, and make decisions. Strong cognitive skills enable iOS developers to think out of the box, tackle complex problems, and develop innovative solutions. These skills include critical thinking, problem-solving, attention to detail, decision-making, and creativity.

A platform like iMocha can map the cognitive competencies of a candidate to specific job roles based on the cognitive competency framework. This mapping can help identify the best fit for job roles and highlight areas for development and training.

Here's an example of how cognitive competencies and job roles can be mapped:

5-Step Hiring Strategy for iOS Developers

Whether you are hiring only one iOS developer or attempting to fulfill a departmental requirement, it's essential to put a strategy in place.

The five-step hiring strategy discussed below helps you streamline the hiring process and negotiate efficient salaries for candidates.

1. Conducting Needs-Analysis

Every strategy achieves a goal and fulfills a need. The first step in initiating a hiring process, therefore, is to determine the needs of the company.

You need to outline what kind of roles need to be filled in your development department. This will help you understand whether you require junior, mid-level, or senior staff.

2. Creating Accurate Job Descriptions

To attract the best candidates for the job, the description you create should be reflective of the position that they would be expected to fill. A good job description contains the following:

• Title of the job and its purpose
• Duties and responsibilities
• Mandatory and preferable qualifications
• Working hours and conditions
• Whether or not the salary is negotiable
• Possibility or frequency of overtime

Take a look at this comprehensive iOS developer job description, which will assist you in crafting a precise and informative description for the role.

3. Achieving Good Outreach

When creating a job listing, don't limit yourself to a single source. A plethora of talent sources are available through the internet – utilize as many as you can.

This helps you expand the outreach of your job listing and attract more candidates. You can choose between job boards, social media, talent portals, talent agencies, and head-hunters, for instance.

4. Determine the Salary Range

One of the most important aspects of the hiring strategy is to have a range of salaries decided prior to entertaining interviews.

It helps the board with negotiating a salary package that is justified for the niche, is competitive, and remains within budget.

Conducting competitor research on salaries would help you tremendously in attracting senior-level talent.

5. Local or Remote

Both remote and local talents have their own pros and cons.

While remote talent proves to be more economical in ad-hoc mode, it may not be workable for a long-term engagement. On the other hand, local talent costs more but offers a more stable engagement.

In the end, it boils down to whether you are looking for long-term or short-term engagement or a contractual/project-based engagement.

Accessing the Talent Pool

While earlier, there was little a business could do in terms of creating an iOS development team, today, there are a variety of ways to get the right professionals on board.

1. Hiring Freelancers

Hiring networks like Upwork and GitHub are excellent sources to find freelance talent when you wish to hire iOS developers.

This method is most suitable when you are only looking for project-based or contract-based talent recruitment for a particular short-term duration.

2. Partnering with a Talent Agency

The second method is to partner with a talent scout agency that can help you connect with the right professionals for the requirements you provide them.

Most enterprises go this way to hire iOS developers because it helps them receive more relevant applications for the part.

3. Outsourcing Your iOS Development

If you find that full-fledged in-house recruitment is not working for your enterprise, you can consider outsourcing your iOS development department to another company.

These professionals take on the full scope of development work – design, tech stack, active support, quality tracking, maintenance, redesigns, etc.

The best part is that after explaining your requirements to them, your enterprise merely needs to set expectations and receive the deliverables. You can check out these Top 12 best sourcing tools for recruiters to hire for specific positions.

Assessing Candidate Skills Effectively

Assessing your candidates for the right skills is easier when you have a medium that helps you measure their performance in ways you can comprehend easily.

iMocha is a comprehensive recruitment solution that equips you with tools to make assessments quicker, more efficient, and more insightful.

A. Coding Simulators

iMocha’s coding simulator comes equipped with over 1,500 problems covering frontend, backend, scripting, mobility, and more in over 35 programming languages.

This tool is specifically developed for hiring top talent by evaluating their coding skills in real-life coding environments. Intelligent analytics provide you with reports that highlight code correctness, plagiarism issues, code quality, replay, and more.

B. Live Coding Interview

Live coding interviews give you a glimpse of the thought process and the approach that candidates apply to a coding problem.

You can deliver a real-time assessment experience through coding interviews and eliminate written feedback which is time-consuming. It can help you drastically reduce the time-to-hire while ensuring you onboard only high-quality coders.

C. AI-LogicBox

iOS development isn’t just about handling programming. AI-LogicBox is iMocha’s patented pseudo-coding module through which you can measure developer performance pertaining to:

• SAP, Salesforce
• UiPath
• AWS, Azure
• DevSecOps, GCP

It helps you compile a holistic profile for each candidate before you commit to hiring anyone.

Challenges in Hiring iOS Developers

If you want to hire iOS developers that are a great fit for your enterprise, you would need to navigate certain challenges:

1. Talent Shortage:

According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, the software development niche is expected to grow by 25% between 2021 and 2031, which is higher than any other industry.

They also reported that 2020 saw software development jobs in excess of 1 million, whereas only 400,000 professionals were available to fill the positions. Talent shortage could certainly be an impediment to your hiring process.

2. Skill Shortage:

Not all development roles are the same. The skills required for each role are unique, especially today, where technological advancements have heightened the need for AI-based applications.

Professionals who can display good skills in the rapidly evolving landscape aren’t increasing in proportion with the job listings for those skills.

In order to find the right candidate for the job, you may need to scour the market longer. It may sometimes take months to find the right professional.

3. Working with Legacies:

Customer expectations keep evolving, and tech products that are catered to them must evolve in tandem. This creates a necessity for iOS developers to quickly adapt to the new requirements and change their code.

Sometimes, working with legacy codes becomes difficult and inefficient. It's hard to find candidates that are adaptable to changing coding requirements.

Accelerate Hiring with iMocha

It's understandable to encounter a few challenges when you set out to hire iOS developers. The need to fill a position with the most deserving and suitable candidate requires solutions that resonate with industry trends and patterns.

To that end, iMocha can help your enterprise with assessing skills effectively:

1. iMocha iOS Tests:

The iOS Swift Test has been designed to assess various aspects of coding in Swift, including memory management, working with RESTful APIs, good UI design skills, Cocoa APIs, and so much more.

The module allows you to customize the tests by setting their difficulty level, combining multiple skills into a single test or breaking them up, and adding your own questions to the test.

2. Campus Hiring Solutions:

iMocha also provides you with campus hiring solutions that enable you to screen thousands of candidates at the same time, reducing the hiring time drastically.

You can hire at scale and reach out to countless universities with iMocha’s campus hiring solution.

3. Technical Evaluations:

iMocha features a full library of technical quantitative aptitude tests that let you assess the candidates’ capacities in:

• Quantitative aptitude
• Basic C language
• Analytical thought process

...and much more. You can customize this test for difficulty and skills and add your own questions as well.

iMocha is a comprehensive solution that utilizes technology to offer best-in-class hiring tools. Empower your organization by hiring the right talent with iMocha.

FAQs:

1. How do I recruit an iOS developer?

The best way to hire an iOS developer is to search for the right profiles on LinkedIn or enter a job listing on web portals.

You can also consider adopting a solution like iMocha to streamline the whole process and hire directly from universities or other talent pools.

How much does it cost to hire an iOS developer?

According to Upwork, the average cost of an iOS developer is $25 per hour. Add to that the expenses of HR, interview sessions, empty job positions, and paperwork/formalities.

Effectively, recruitment is costly; you can adopt hiring solutions like iMocha to help streamline the process to reduce hiring time and expenses.

Extra Read: Discover the ultimate guide to mastering the art of hiring top tech talent with these 25 invaluable tips.

2. What is the best way to hire iOS developers in India?

In India, the best way to hire iOS developers is to post a job listing on the most popular web portals. If you would rather work with freelancers, you can look at Upwork or GitHub to find the right talent.

Consider using iMocha for streamlining candidate assessment to ensure you hire the right hands for the job.

3. What is the best way to hire iOS developers in the US?

Job listings on LinkedIn are a great way to find the right talent for the empty positions at your enterprise in the US. You can consider posting to other social media or publishing a job vacancy on job boards.

Alternatively, you can leverage solutions like iMocha to streamline the hiring process and/or hire directly from diverse talent pools.