Outsourcing Tycoon

**EditFast** · 12-20-2012, 12:45 AM

I have had some bad luck and bad experiences hiring programmers in the past and I want to find a couple of top notch programmers to work full-time on my sites over the next year or longer. I came up with the idea of sending out a small task to a number of candidates and allow them to work on the same task and then see who comes up with the best solution. Now I need to find a small task and I was hoping people here might assess the situation and let me know what to send out. I have a site that is being developed from the ground up and it will be database driven and the search function will be the core of it all. The site provides access to freelancer profiles that clients can contact and send projects to. My idea is to send out the search function as a task but I'm not too sure that is possible. Any ideas?

**ronoc** · 12-26-2012, 02:48 PM

I think that's a great idea. You could do that or maybe you could also just hire someone from a job site that picks out only those exceptional programmers. Yes, there is such a thing. I've hired skilled but affordable full time Designers and Programmers from this reliable site and I'm very happy with the output they've been giving me. I hope you'd also find it helpful. Let me know how it turns out.

**vangogh** · 12-26-2012, 03:59 PM

Your general idea is good, but I think the approach could be better. It's not really fair to expect people to complete some task for free. Unless your project and budget is large enough I don't see a lot of people spending the time to complete even a simple task. Anyone good enough, who you'd be hoping to find through this task, likely has enough clients already and doesn't need to jump through any hoops.

A client of mine does something I think works better. Start your search for a programmer as you always have. Hire the person you choose for a small project. You should learn enough on that small project to know if the person is worth hiring for me and since it's a small project it won't cost you much. It'll minimize your risk, while being fair to any programmer who accepts.

**ODT** · 12-27-2012, 01:58 AM

I agree with vangogh. If you want to ask potential workers to do a test, it should not be a work on a part of the task you want to hire them for. Maybe you should think about creating the test in a way it proves the quality of the worker but does not require them to spend a lot of time on it and do a free work for you. It might be a good idea to allow them more options. For example, either to send you a piece of code they already coded that present their ability to work with the technologies you need OR to work the test task. In either case you should be interested in the code itself, it tells a lot about its author. Then ask questions about the code to verify the author is really that person you are dealing with.

**chrishirst** · 12-27-2012, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Small Task to Test Programmers?

Unless you WERE/ARE a programmer yourself, how would you know if the 'code' was "well written" or not.