How to Hire a Ruby on Rails Developer: A Guide for Recruiters

Are you building a product from scratch or expanding your team with Ruby on Rails developers? The ITExpert team knows what candidates you’re looking for and will help you hire them! We’re sharing insights into finding those rare candidates.

Ruby on Rails developer: what the position entails

A Ruby developer is a specialist who uses Ruby object-oriented programming language for backend development. Ruby is easy to learn, and coding is relatively fast, which is why Ruby on Rails developers are especially in demand in startups where it’s critical to release a product on time.

Ruby on Rails (RoR) developers are also hired for a variety of other projects, from eCommerce and social networks to SaaS and task trackers. Tech giants and scale-ups like Shopify, GitLab, Airbnb, Crunchbase, Twitch and Dribbble compete for talent with this stack. Furthermore, IT employers highly value these specialists. According to Stack Overflow’s 2023 data, Ruby ranks as the fourth highest-paying technology worldwide.

Ruby on Rails specialist’s skillset

Before posting a job vacancy on job boards and creating search queries, it’s crucial to analyze the requirements.The necessary skills in a typical job posting for Ruby developers look like this:

• Experience in commercial backend development;
• Deep knowledge of Ruby and the Ruby on Rails framework;
• Knowledge of unit testing tools (RSpec);
• Experience in using SQL (MySQL, PostgreSQL) and noSQL (MongoDB, Redis) databases;
• English language proficiency at Upper-Intermediate level or higher (depending on project needs).

Nick Kliestov

CTO & co-founder at ITExpert

“The hallmarks of strong Ruby developers are experience with microservices and message queues. Such requirements can significantly narrow the pipeline of available candidates, while the talent market is already limited.“

📌 A rare case: finding Ruby developers who do not use the Rails framework. There are virtually no such specialists in Ukraine, and their number is critically low in other local markets. There’s even a joke among those working in the sphere, “Without Rails, Ruby won’t get far.” To find such candidates, you must cleverly use search queries and filters on platforms, specifying Ruby NOT “on Rails”, for instance.

Top 6 tips for attracting Ruby developers to your job opening

When hiring a Ruby on Rails developer, you should consider factors such as experience, salary expectations, location, domain expertise required, and many others. To help you with your search, we’ve compiled information for you on where to find RoR developers and how to filter responses while also building a strong talent pipeline sufficient for making an offer. Let’s dive in!

#1 Choose a targeted recruitment strategy during sourcing

A key difficulty in hiring a Ruby on Rails developer is a particularly limited pool of candidates. It may seem that the entry threshold for development in this language is lower, and therefore it will be easier to hire a specialist. However, this is a misconception. In reality, job postings may attract a lot of irrelevant applications from beginners or developers with experience in developing only simple web applications, while your expectations are much higher.

📌 Did you know? On average, a senior-level job posting on IT job boards receives 22 applications, but only three candidates are interviewed. Most candidates lack the critically important skills required for the project, according to an ITExpert study.

So, what’s the solution? When putting together a sourcing strategy, focus on targeted emails. You may spend more time on the search, but you’ll be able to invite more qualified specialists for technical interviews and save hours filtering through applications.

#2 Experiment with search queries

Identify candidate sourcing platforms and analyze their search rules. LinkedIn offers sourcing via its internal search bar, as well as through specialized filters. By experimenting with search queries, you can discover candidates who have not yet been “spammed” by your competitors in the employers’ market.

Here are some Boolean queries for a Ruby vacancy:

• (Rubу OR “Ruby on rails” OR RoR) NOT (job OR vacancy OR hire)
• (Rubу OR “Ruby on rails” OR RoR) AND (Sidekiq OR RSpec)
• Ruby AND PostgreSQL AND (Elixr OR Elixir)
• Ruby AND RSpec AND (SQL OR MySQL)
• (Rubу OR “Ruby on rails” OR RoR) AND (RSpec OR Capybara OR Cucumber)
• (Rubу OR “Ruby on rails” OR RoR) AND (fullstack OR “full stack” OR full-stack)
• (Rubу OR “Ruby on rails” OR RoR) AND (Vue OR React OR Angular)
• (Rubу OR “Ruby on rails” OR RoR) AND (React OR Reactjs OR Angular OR Angularjs OR Vue OR Vuejs OR JavaScript OR JS)
• Ruby AND (Vue OR React OR Angular) AND (MySQL OR PostgreSQL) AND AWS
• Rubу NOT “on rails” NOT RoR

❗️ Important: In the free version of LinkedIn, there is a limit of up to five operators per query.  In addition, you won’t be able to see the profiles of all the professionals who have the skills you need (the platform simply hides them). To fix this, you need to regularly update your candidate database and/or consider buying LinkedIn Recruiter.

#3 Make your job posting stand out

Bureaucratic language, clichés, and dry descriptions are ineffective in attracting Middle+ developers. Craft your job description with a focus on the factors that truly matter to candidates.

Based on the experience of ITExpert recruiters, candidates pay most attention to project descriptions and technology stacks. Highlight how your product helps people and showcase your company’s achievements. Don’t forget to emphasize other strengths as well. One of these advantages could be a quick recruitment process, such as if only one round of interviews is required.

#4 Strengthen your employer brand

According to LinkedIn Employer Brand Research, a strong employer brand decreases hiring costs and speeds up recruitment by twofold. Also, it directly affects the ease of the recruitment process. Don’t miss the red flags: lack of responses to job postings, low response rates to recruiter emails (below 20–30%) and candidate disinterest.

To develop an employer brand, pay attention to:

• presence and activity of the company on niche resources;
• cooperation with universities and specialized courses;
• organisation of internal events — hackathons, webinars or thematic hiring days.

You need to remember that working on your employer brand on the candidate market is a long-term investment. It will bring results months later, and sometimes it can take years to develop your company’s brand image.

#5 Organize internal training

Open an in-house Ruby training school. Sometimes, the market is too limited; when a company needs to actively scale up by hiring many Ruby developers, they are bound to encounter difficulties. Establishing in-house courses allows you to select quality talent, adjust training activities based on hiring needs, and train potential employees in the tools and approaches that are relevant to the work you do. For the most talented students, you are going to make a job offer to join the team.

Of course, this advice is relevant for the long term. If you need candidates “yesterday,” it is better to give preference to other channels of attracting specialists.

#6 Engage external experts

Sometimes, the internal recruiting team’s capabilities are insufficient: the candidate database and tools are limited, and advanced resources are costly. IT recruitment agencies and external experts can find new approaches and enhance hiring efforts. They will free up your time for important strategic and creative tasks.

Additionally, working with an agency has the following benefits:

• In-depth market analytics and insights. Even before you start, agency specialists can provide guidance on market constraints, ideas for optimizing requirements, competitive salaries, benefits packages, and much more. These insights are based on the experience gained from working with hundreds of companies.
• Access to a wide range of candidate sourcing channels. The agency aggregates various resources for candidate sourcing — from Djinni to GitHub — and conducts the initial screening. This way, you’ll only get relevant resumes without spending time and money on all sorts of hiring platforms.
• A personal account manager who will organize the hiring process. You will not need to manage the work of multiple freelancers or engage in micromanagement if the conversion rate is too low, as the agency account manager will handle all of these responsibilities.
• An easily scalable recruitment process. The agency can adapt to the seasonality of open positions at your company, quickly scaling the process from one to 10+ positions.

Screening questions for Ruby on Rails developers

How should you filter candidates in the initial stages of recruitment in order to conduct technical interviews with only the most experienced Ruby on Rails developers? Create succinct yet precise screening questions for the recruiter.

The following screening questions can be helpful:

• What is your experience with Ruby on Rails? How many years of commercial application do you have, and on what projects?
• Do you have experience working as a full-stack developer? How long? What frontend frameworks do you use?
• Do you cover your code with unit tests? What framework do you use for this?
• Do you have any experience with message queues? If yes, what message brokers have you used?
• Please describe your experience with SQL. Have you ever dealt with database performance optimization issues?
• Have you used cloud technology in a previous project? If so, which ones?

In addition to hard skills, soft skills are equally important for a Ruby developer, such as effective communication, time management, problem-solving, adaptability, and attention to detail. Here are some questions to help you assess them:

• How do you change your schedule if something unplanned happens?
• What do you do when a job can’t be finished on time?
• Imagine a client requests corrections two days before the release. How would you react?
• Describe how you would convey complex or specialized information to someone without expertise in that field.
• What would you do if your coworker ignored teamwork rules?
• What do you do to avoid mistakes in your work?
• How do you handle disagreements in the workplace?
• What was the most difficult decision you had to make at work? Can you share more details about it?

❗️ Important: These are sample Ruby Developer screening interview questions. However, the best source of candidate portrait information is your hiring manager. Confirm the details and agree on screening questions with them for effective results.

Searching for a  Ruby on Rails Developer with ITExpert recruitment agency

Looking to hire a Ruby on Rails developer? This is no mean feat, but we’ll help you with it! Since 2015, ITExpert IT recruitment agency has been hiring IT specialists for companies in Ukraine and around the world, from the USA to Israel. Our clients include Sony, Deloitte and Depositphotos.

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We will take care of forming the job requirements, assessing the market, and setting up an accurate search for specialists. We will conduct initial selection and English testing, technical screening, as well as support during the onboarding of IT specialists and adaptation of IT staff within the team.

You’re just one click away from finding skilled Ruby specialists for your team — contact us to start your search!