How To Hire the Best Front-End Developers for Your Company

Welcome again! From time to time, every company looks for new employees, and if you are reading this article which is called ‘How To Hire The Best Front-End Developers For Your Company’, then you are interested in hiring experienced and talented specialists.

It is not so easy to assemble a working dream team, therefore, in the digital era, along with the rapid growth of information technology, the need for new methods for finding highly qualified front-end developers is growing.

According to a Stack Overflow study, only 16% of programmers are actively looking for work, while about 60% of surveyed full-time professionals are ready to change their place of work for a more interesting offer.

In this regard, the question arises before employers: where to find these specialists who are ready to consider interesting proposals? Let’s take a look at the best resources for hiring developers. Read on and discover!

Anyone who has ever heard of specialized platforms with employee search will ask why look elsewhere when there are job sites. In fact, job sites are a convenient tool for selection, because there is a flexible search system with a set of filters and a detailed resume for candidates.

But, like any tool, job sites are useful for solving some problems and ineffective for others. Here are their main disadvantages:

Struggle for the attention of candidates. Agencies, recruiters, various intermediaries actively spam on such sites. One and the same developer can receive 20 offers of the same type every day.

He soon gets tired and answers very selectively – for example, only to invitations from well-known companies where he would like to work. If your company does not have a powerful HR brand, then the likelihood of a response is reduced.

When a developer signs up for a job site, they have certain salary expectations. But this is a market dominated by candidates: a strong specialist will receive more and more generous offers. And his financial needs are likely to follow an upward trajectory.

There is a shortage of experienced professionals and experts with unique skills. If you’re looking for junior developers, you can head to Headhunter or Super Job – there are a lot of them.

However, it is better to use other channels to hire senior developers. The fact is that many strong experts simply do not have time to reach job sites – they are intercepted earlier. If they are looking for work, it is on LinkedIn or through acquaintances in general.

As for other professional resources with developers, the following can be highlighted:

LinkedIn is the most popular site. With the updated interface, it became even more convenient to use. It is best to enter keywords in the search bar (for example, front-end), and then select the desired location in the filters.

For introductory letters, I advise candidates to prepare a template in advance and change only the recipient’s name before sending. IT professionals can be found here for middle/senior/team lead levels.

However, LinkedIn restricts views of other people’s profiles and prevents strangers from writing messages. To remove restrictions, you need to purchase a paid account.

On Facebook, it is good to both collect recommendations from HR’s and post short publications in thematic communities (with pictures, hashtags and attractive phrases). Mostly candidates up to the middle level respond to such ads.

GitHub is a very useful resource that many technicians use not only to share experiences and introduce audiences to their repository but also to test the competency of candidates.

Here you can see code examples, programming languages ​​that the user often uses, the number of “stars” that other users put in his repository, sometimes you can see the place of work or the current project in which the developer participates, as well as some of his contact information. in particular, the mail to which the employer can write a letter to the candidate with a job offer, referring to the viewed profile on GitHub.

Professional forums. On the forums, there is an opportunity both to publish vacancies and to correspond with potential candidates who are in discussion on certain technologies. The most effective forums for programmers are also Telegram chats.

You can also contact an HR agency – an organization whose job is to find candidates. They have internal bases, but do not shy away from looking into open sources. They know much more about the labor market than others. They work, as a rule, for a percentage of the rate of the required specialist.

Therefore, the search for an employee for a managerial position will cost more than an independent search. A common practice for HR agencies is a guarantee for a selected employee. This means that if he leaves or is fired within the agreed period, the company undertakes to find a replacement free of charge.

Freelance platforms are also very popular – places where specialists of various professions gather, most often associated with the development and content of sites. The decisive advantage of working with a freelancer is savings. Such a contractor does not need to pay for sick leave and wait from vacation.

Many employers prefer to attend professional conferences, meetings, hackathons. At such events, it becomes possible to communicate with candidates of the desired profile, reach out to those who are not possible to find on the Internet, declare about your company on the market, find yourself among professionals, make useful contacts.

But due to the lack of a resume, it is sometimes quite difficult to determine the professional level and skills of a specific candidate from one conversation.

Now you have the resources to hire and the next question that arises is how to look? The search should be approached strategically: acting at random is ineffective and expensive.

Here are some things to consider when considering your search strategy:

• Analytics on the effectiveness of search sources. You have to predict how many candidates you can get from a particular channel;

• Selection budget;

• Deadlines for closing a vacancy.

Based on this information, you form a set of search channels and decide how you will use them. There is no universal recipe: for a leisurely hiring of a junior, some channels are suitable, for an urgent selection of a middle one – others.

There are special services that automate routine search processes, such as Amazing Hiring, WonderSourcing, Selection.

They collect and glue together information about the candidate from various sources, and then give out his contact information, which they managed to find.

All these services are paid, but they save time on selection. Whether to pay money for automation or collect information manually, but for free – the choice depends on your search strategy.

An important point for an employer is writing a resume. When planning a vacancy, place accents so that those who do not suit you a priori do not take time, and, conversely, the right candidates are interested in cooperation. After selecting some potential front-end developers for your company, conduct a professional interview.

In most cases, another specialist with a high degree of technical competence is invited to conduct the assessment, who, as a rule, does not understand anything about personnel issues and methodologies for collecting information about a person’s personality, and a head-on interrogation of “who knows more” simply begins.

Some interviewers just have a question checklist. Also, many use the practice of a test task, which must be completed before scheduling a face-to-face interview. In general, everyone solves the problem as he can. If we talk about the correct procedure for conducting an interview, then it will be like this:

Start your interview by talking about company values, projects, a tour of the office, and how you value your employees. You need to interest the candidate and show what cool specialists work for you, and that your projects are very interesting.

A candidate who comes for an interview is not yet your employee and it is important for you to interest him. Even if the candidate does not suit you, he will remember your company and when he improves his knowledge, he will remember you.

The worst interview is when a candidate comes for an interview, they put him in a room, say ‘hello’ and immediately ask questions.

After meeting the candidate, you can conduct a logic test, which allows you to determine and understand what probability the developer will join the team and bring benefits to the company.

The technical knowledge test is the most important part of any interview, it should be about 40-50 minutes long. The test contains simple and more difficult questions.

If you cannot decide whether the candidate is right for you or not, then invite him to do his homework, which is determined depending on the grade of the specialist. This approach to interviews allows you to select the most competent front-end developers.

Conclusion

To conclude the article ‘How To Hire The Best Front-End Developers For Your Company’, let’s summarize the above into a short list. Looking at these theses, you will be able to conduct hiring specialists for your company. First, take the trouble to study the labor IT market environment.

It is important first of all for you to understand exactly what level of salary to offer candidates. In case you are of lack of time or desire, hand over the task of recruiting to specialists – the HR agency. Yes, it is more expensive, but the result is worth it. Wish you successful hiring!

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