Why Is It Challenging to Hire Good React JS Developers?
React JS developers can bring a ton of efficiency and flexibility to your development environment. However, as most recruiters would tell you, it is not easy to hire good React developers. After all, you will be competing with over 9,000 companies who use React and are practically targeting the same skill-market.
The size of these companies further deepens the challenge. And as a result, you are competing with tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, Amazon, and several others – who are eyeing the same React talent as you. Since these companies are ready to pay in multiples of average market compensation for React development skills, the talent market becomes more expensive.
That is an outside-in perspective. When you start recruiting at the ground-level, you discover that the technology hiring cycles have become longer. You cannot merely call someone for an interview, conduct a coding test, and release an appointment letter. Between a preliminary test, technical test, aptitude test, cultural fit test, interview, and the negotiation for salary – you are organizing at least 5-6 levels of tests, interviews, and other measures per applicant to ensure you get the right human capital into your business. While it does help in the long run since it helps you control training costs and attrition, it makes the recruitment process more difficult.
Finally, when you start evaluating the candidates into a shortlist, you have to make sure that they stand tall to their resume claims. Many developers would claim to be 'JavaScript experts.' Testing their expertise or competence would reveal the actual baseline skill they possess.
While the challenges continue to exist, companies are still hiring React developers. Let’s take a look at what should be the ideal road map to hire a top React JS developer and how you can streamline the process.
How to Hire a Top React JS Developer?
Here are two key areas you can focus on to ensure that you get access to the right React developers who will add value to your development process:
Evaluate this Inventory of Skills
The ideal React JS developer should:
1. Have a good command of JavaScript or TypeScript, as well as HTML5 and CSS3.
React is primarily used for front-end development. Working on the frontend without using any HTML5 or CSS3 would be quite challenging for any programmer. HTML helps you in designing better front-end UI elements along with the content placements. CSS3 is essential for adding stylistic elements to your UX. JavaScript is the programming language that brings it all together.
2. Have tangible experience of using Angular and Vue.js
While you might be looking for a more tangible experience of having using React, some knowledge of having worked with Vue.js or Angular can also come in handy. Angular is great for more sophisticated applications that carry several modules and functionalities, while Vue is good for rapid-prototyping.
3. Have proficiency in using development tools like ESLint, Prettier, etc.
Code reviews can become a resource-draining process if your team is not using ESLint or Prettier. These tools ensure your entire team operates on the same standards for stylistic elements in the code, syntax, structure, and semantics. Prettier will automatically scan your entire code and make changes to ensure consistency in formatting. ESLint will highlight the critical errors in semantics and syntaxes. A React developer who is about to join your project should have a good experience of having used at least one of the two, preferably ESLint.
4. Have experience working with REST APIs, responsive design elements, and using Jest.
Application Programming Interfaces help otherwise unrelated programs communicate with each other. Broadly, the client can quickly request information from your database. REST APIs are a set of rules that a programmer should be used to create a structured approach for designing how the API functions.
The other set of skills focuses on working with responsive design elements and testing. Most of the frontend elements are responsive to give each user a tailored experience. However, the front-end developer has to ensure this tailored experience is not extensively resource-consuming. It will make the product inefficient and can even result in sub-optimal performance. Thus, some knowledge of having engineered responsive designs would be an excellent skill to have.
Testing with platforms like Jest makes testing relatively easy and efficient. Jest is a testing framework used for organized and efficient testing that does not require configurations. Since it supports most JavaScript projects, you can use it for React as well.
5. Have experience in continuous integration/continuous deployment.
Commonly referred to as CI/CD, these are skills related to having worked in continuous integration, delivery, and deployment environments. Having a good CI/CD pipeline experience ensures that the prospective React developer uses standard practices that will streamline automated sharing to the code repository, work with automated testing tools, and pass on the updated code to the production process.
While this may seem like a standalone skill set, it augments your DevOps efficiencies and helps you control development costs.
6. Possess strong communication skills.
A lot of programming is dependent on the inherent understanding of the business and the problem statement. In terms of React development, this helps in converting a business problem into a UI/UX or frontend problem.
Practical communication skills help the developer understand the context and provide the right set of information in response. For instance, something as necessary as good documentation can help the entire team expedite the development process.
Build a Hiring Funnel
If you are in a consumer-facing industry, you must be already aware of the sales or conversion funnel that takes a visitor and converts it into a lead, a customer, and eventually a brand advocate. You have to follow the same principle for attracting and retaining talent. Here is the right hiring funnel for you to build on:
1. Attract: Use university recruitment programs for getting a broad set of potential hires in one place. Moreover, use your corporate and personal brand to get the message out on social media and job boards. Websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, AngelList, Monster, etc., can help you get more leads. Make sure you maintain parity between the job descriptions and expectations across all platforms. You can also use freelancing portals like Upwork and Toptal.
2. Convert: Use preliminary screening tools like CoderByte, CoderPad, HackerRank, Codility, and Codesignal to get a good idea about the prospect's technical skills. These tools can help you conduct remote coding tests at scale without engaging your HR Team or hiring manager directly for each prospect.
3. Close: Finally, as you move through the further rounds of screening on Skype and Zoom for video interviews, make sure you have a good idea about the on-going rates of the set of skills you seek. Platforms like Glassdoor or Payscale are a great way to benchmark salaries for the particular position you want to fill.
4. Retain: Make sure you have a training and development program in place to help your newly recruited React JS developers learn new skills, tool operations, and frameworks that make your collective human capital more valuable.
In Conclusion
Over 1 million websites using React JS including some popular brands like PayPal, Amazon, and Discord, making it one of the most globally used JavaScript frameworks. Hence, unless all these websites suddenly decide to move to an alternative framework, the React JS talent-market will keep growing with experience and trained programmers. Now that you have a hiring funnel in place, you can use remote testing platforms to screen more prospects for the technical skills, with each test gauging deeper insights about their potential.
You might even consider hiring a recruitment agency to help you get access to better talent. The general parameter to decide whether you should hire a recruitment consultant or not is the cost-to-company. The actual metric should be the value-add of having the right talent in the development team.
Defining this will help you establish a more tangible expectation from the skill level and give you a concise mandate to the recruitment partner. You might not need a recruitment consultant if you have an in-house HR Team, and you seek only one or two developers who would be paid annually around the industry average for an entry to mid-level position in the first place.
