* ensure that the person can acknowledge mistakes and handles criticism/feedback in a positive manner. obviously that needs to be communicated in a fair and responsible manner
* do you want to have a beer/coffee/social interaction with the person outside of work? does not mean you will but you will need to build a relationship with the person
* make sure you know what you are expecting from the hire, write that down, not in MBA speak but in a way that you will be able to review the list in 3/6/12 months
* know you are going to make mistakes, be honest about it with the team and keep on improving. it never ends but it is such an awesome journey.
I have not found a definitive source as yet and depending on the requirements of the task/project/client I have found the following sources excellent guidelines:
Interest does not mean shit, turnover is the only important indicator. The difference to gt somebody to go from excited to hand over money is day and night.
Nobody cares about how cool the code is. Nobody cares about how pretty the application is. Those are side issues, does it solve a problem that people are willing to pay to get solved. Excel solves many problems and people are already paying for it.
Your application/idea is not as unique as you think it is.
Disruption and innovation are words that have little meaning these days, most of the time one is trying to improve a process or business, that does not equate disruption/innovation only improvement. Improvement is a good thing.
There are going to be hard days, acknowledge those. Know that everyone who is trying it on their own has those days. Most people don't show them to the outside world it does not mean they don't have them.
One of the best pieces of advice that I ever came across regarding email was "If you are replying to someones reply pick up the the phone/go talk to the person or let it go."
Working on a few large projects I have realized that a system is never perfect, but a crappy business always has a crappy system. Happy company = happy system.
My 2 cents an most probably said by someone before me.
Considering expanding the service for REST endpoints.