A resume full of technologies is only a starting point. The goal is to determine whether a developer can understand the system, make sound decisions and work reliably within your delivery process.
An individual contractor can be flexible but places more management and continuity risk on the client. A dedicated developer through a provider may add HR and replacement support. A managed team shifts more delivery responsibility to the vendor.
Decide who owns architecture, backlog management, QA and deployment before choosing the model.
For a small Canadian company without technical leadership, hiring several inexpensive developers directly may create more management work than expected.
A technical interview should resemble the decisions the person will make on the job. For an existing application, discuss a realistic bug, API integration, database problem or frontend component rather than relying entirely on trivia questions. Ask how the candidate would investigate the problem, what information is missing and how the solution would be tested.
The less technical management the client can provide, the more important experienced delivery leadership becomes.
Ask candidates to explain work similar to your project, including tradeoffs, debugging and architecture decisions. Generic algorithm tests may not reveal whether someone can maintain a production business system.
For .NET, Angular, Java, Python, mobile or other stacks, focus questions on the versions and patterns actually used in the project.
A small paid trial can be useful when it resembles real work and does not ask candidates to build free production features.
References and sample work need context. A developer may have contributed only one component to a large product shown in a portfolio. Ask what the candidate personally built, which technologies were used and who made the architectural decisions. Where confidentiality prevents showing source code, a detailed technical discussion can still reveal the depth of involvement.
A strong candidate can explain why an approach was chosen, what could fail and how they would verify the result.
Use repositories and issue trackers controlled appropriately by the client or governed by clear contractual arrangements. Agree on intellectual-property ownership and third-party code use.
Require meaningful documentation and peer review for critical components.
Keep build, deployment and environment knowledge accessible beyond one person.
Replacement policies deserve attention when hiring through an agency or dedicated-team provider. Understand what happens if a developer resigns, performs poorly or becomes unavailable. A replacement is useful only if knowledge, repositories and documentation allow the new person to become productive without effectively restarting the project.
Ask what would happen if the lead developer were unavailable tomorrow. The answer reveals how much knowledge is actually shared.
Track completed, accepted work and quality rather than hours alone. Review estimates against outcomes and investigate recurring rework.
Code reviews, demonstrations and automated tests provide more evidence than screenshots or status messages.
Communication is part of technical performance. Developers should surface blockers and uncertainty early rather than waiting until a deadline.