How to Hire CTO [An In-Depth Guide]

CTO or the Chief Technology Officer is a company’s executive whose primary focus is on technical and scientific peculiarities of the working process. On top of that, CTO is responsible for the cost-effective distribution of finances, scheduling, development team leadership, and other technical workflow concomitants. 

Any start-up, enterprise, and scale-up need a professional chief technical officer to run the business smoothly. The expertise of a CTO implies both confident technical and communication skills, along with the solid ability to cope with challenges and stresses, including unexpected ones. 

There are three options when it comes to hiring a chief technologist. You can either look for a full-time CTO, a freelancer, or go for it through an outsourcing agency. Every option has its pluses and minuses and doesn’t go along with every type of business equally well. Thus, making a decision requires a fair amount of consideration in this case. 

Let’s dive into greater detail and discuss what types of CTO professionals are there, where to look for an eligible professional, and how you know you need one. 

CTO’s Responsibilities 

Not all CTOs have the same duties. Quite the opposite, the chief technical officer’s responsibilities vary according to the gap that he or she closes within the company. Hereby, according to the focus of this specialist, there can be the 2 following types of the CTO: operational and technical. 

Operational leads’ range of duties doesn’t cover the technical side, coping instead with the project management, finance operations, and mentoring.  

If the CTO is a technical lead, they are consequently focused on the technological development of the business. 

Thus, the CTO’s tasks differ depending on the role they play. Let’s take a more detailed look at the exact functions of the CTO based on the specialist’s type.

 Operational CTO: 

• Company strategy development. Deciding on what option makes the best contribution to the company’s development and allocation of spend accordingly
• Team management. Mentorship of a development team while also tracking the team’s performance
• Trends analysis. Keeping permanent track of the market trends & implementing most relevant of them 
• Company’s representative. Speaking for the company at various conferences and similar public occasions

Technical CTO: 

• Tech stack management. Approving technologies for web and mobile development
• Recruitment. Interviewing potential employees and testing their technical skills
• Prototype development. Identification of the MVP features of an app or a website, and control over the MVP’s development 
• Mentoring. Guidance of less experienced members of the development team

Reasons to hire a CTO

A short answer to this question would be as soon as you feel the need for a professional tech specialist to operate the software development process. However, there are also multiple aspects that make this question more complicated. Thus, here are possible reasons for a digital business to look for the CTO. 

• Your practices are outmoded. Integration of modern trends and innovations into your web space is critical for ensuring a flawless work and user experience. In contrast, retarded practices reduce productivity immensely, so if you’ve spotted stagnancy tendencies in your company, it’s time for a technical upgrade. A CTO ensures a comfortable running of technology modernization of any scale to keep your business up to date
• You lack tech expertise. Without a doubt, technical expertise is vital for both the successful management of the development team and the working process control 
• You want to enhance your business. You have already developed a product that brings you a stable income but still would like to enhance your business productivity through further tech modernization? Again, you need a CTO. A decent professional will adjust your processes to the upgraded standards with only the necessary minimum of resources
• Your development team needs guidance. Another crucial gap fulfilled by the CTO is software developers’ mentoring. The CTO should possess profound technical knowledge and share it with other specialists

Hiring a CTO: universal tips 

Finding the right CTO for your business seems to be a tall order if you don’t have tech expertise. However, we’ve singled out a few universal tips to apply when checking your potential CTO’s expertise regardless of your own tech skills. 

• Take heed of social media presence. The interview doesn’t usually cover this part. Instead, it takes place beforehand and implies exploring the potential CTO’s LinkedIn and Facebook accounts. The main criterion of a promising candidate would be an extended network of professional social contacts
• Pay attention to soft skills. Soft skills are just as essential as hard ones for senior positions. The CTO position demands constant communication with other team members and workers. Apart from this, an experienced technical chief officer will know the technical peculiarities of web product creation and other related things, such as app development cost and the latest web design trends. That’s why rendering a sufficient part of the interview for soft skills testing is a wise idea
• Consider the experience. Experience is the most eloquent constituent of the resume. When considering this compound, it’s worth minding not just the type of project but the exact responsibilities fulfilled by the CTO. Besides, you can ask your candidates’ previous employers for feedback to get a broader picture

Of course, the candidates’ technical skills are especially crucial when it comes to choosing a CTO, so checking them comes by default in case you are planning on hiring a chief technical specialist, mainly responsible for the website or app development process. 

3 ways of hiring a CTO

Now let’s discuss what hiring options exist when hiring a chief technology officer and what benefits and drawbacks they bring to your e-business. 

In-House

Hiring an In-House CTO is an option to consider if you already have a stable e-business with a successfully launched product and a solid place on the market. 

Pluses:

• Exclusive engagement in your project
• Shares your vision of business 
• Long-perspective work relationship 

Minuses:

• Long period of search 
• Demands a significant spend 

When to hire an In-House CTO: 

• You’ve already launched the product to the market and got revenue
• You need a full-time product-oriented specialist who would share your vision
• You need a long-term employee and ready to spend a significant amount of time looking for the right person

Outsource

Outsourcing is another widespread option of hiring a CTO due to the reasonable prices, which, however, vary across regions, and constant access to a talent pool. 

Pluses:

• Flexibility and unique experience thanks to working with international clients 
• Time-efficient 
• Cost-efficient 

Minuses:

• Orientation toward the project rather than the product

When to hire an outsourced CTO: 

• You need a short-basis tech consultation from a reliable professional 
• You need regular professional assistance but are not ready to spend time and effort on the search for an in-house CTO
• You would like to enhance your company productivity with the help of the knowledge transfer 

Freelance

Freelance platforms are a popular place to search for a needed specialist. Of course, a CTO can work as a freelancer, too. Let’s consider the pluses and minuses of that scenario of hiring and also when to go for it. 

Pluses: 

• Vast talent pool
• Financial flexibility 
• Minimal amount of time spent on the search 

Minuses: 

• Not vetted applicants 
• Objective testing of skills is a challenge 
• CTO’s engagement in other projects 

When to hire a freelance CTO: 

• You have a young up-and-coming business that does not currently require a full-time technical lead but still needs certain guidance from a CTO (e.g., making an MVP, setting a development strategy) 
• You’re experiencing budget limitations
• You’ve already found a full-time CTO, but they can start in a couple of months 
• Your in-house CTO is temporarily unavailable

Conclusion 

Including a CTO in your team is an indispensable solution for start-ups and large-scale corporations seeking to bring t

heir tech expertise to a new level. An eligible CTO will adjust the workflow to the contemporary standards and trends of the market and optimize the development team’s activities so that all clients’ requests are fulfilled. Of course, there are several paths to go when hiring the CTO, each having its advantages and vice versa. Still, regardless of the hiring option you pitch upon, the CTO will positively contribute to your team, bringing cutting-the-edge technological advances to your fingertips.