15 Tools And Methods For Ensuring A Good Front-End Developer Hire

Innovation 15 Tools And Methods For Ensuring A Good Front-End Developer Hire Expert Panel® Forbes Councils Member Forbes Technology Council COUNCIL POST Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based) Oct 12, 2022, 01:15pm EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin It’s a common refrain in today’s marketplace: Qualified tech professionals have a lot of choices when it comes to their careers, and the competition for securing top tech talent keeps getting tougher and tougher.

With this truth constantly top of mind, it can be tempting for a tech leader to hire a promising individual quickly to avoid missing out, especially when a company is filling a front-end developer role. However, it’s as important as ever to carefully prescreen candidates. If a manager allows a fear of missing out to lead them into a hasty hiring decision, it may result in such a poor fit that the relationship doesn’t last and the process has to start all over again.

Here, 15 members of Forbes Technology Council share the tools and methods they rely on for ensuring a good front-end developer hire. Members of Forbes Technology Council recommend tools and methods for ensuring a good front-end developer hire. Photos courtesy of the individual members.

Not pictured: Sandeep Kuttiyatur. 1. Test For Knowledge Of The Required Work Prescreening assessments are very efficient.

When it comes to a very technical role, such as a front-end developer, it is important to test the candidate on their knowledge of the work required for the position. By administering this examination, you filter out those who can execute on your company goals from those who are inexperienced and applying for the sake of earning a paycheck. – Sandy Fliderman , Industry FinTech Inc.

2. Ask Questions To Discover Their ‘Why’ Culture supersedes everything else. We can know a candidate is talented, but we also want to know if they will give it their all when they join us.

We prescreen candidates with questions that help us understand why they do what they do and what they wish to be known for during the time they’re working with us. – Vignesh Wadarajan , NinjaOS Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? MORE FOR YOU Hiring Refugees: How One Big Factory Did It Kanye West Social Media Restrictions: Here’s Where Ye’s Still Posting After Lockout For Antisemitic Posts Malls Have Taken A Fall.

Caruso Launches A Loyalty Program To Keeps Shoppers Coming Back. 3. Find Out Their Views On Javascript Frameworks My favorite question: “Name two Javascript frameworks you like to use,” followed by, “What are the advantages/disadvantages of using Javascript frameworks?” Their answer will let you see if they like to do things “quickly” or if they see Javascript as an object-oriented language.

If they mention “strong typing ability” as a strength of the framework they chose, that’s a developer you want to hire! – Ana Codallo , Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) 4. Have A Videoconference That Includes Relevant Team Members For us, having a videoconference with the candidate has been a very useful prescreening exercise and very effective in helping us hire the right individual for the job. Through video conferencing, the executives, HR staff and/or the technical team get to see the body language, mannerisms and general demeanor of the candidate they are interviewing.

– Sandeep Kuttiyatur , eComchain Inc. 5. Administer A Code Test Administer a code test—it can be a more comprehensive test that assesses a developer’s abilities to create responsive designs, use front-end frameworks and work with code versioning tools.

Code tests are a good way to assess a developer’s skills because they can be customized to assess specific knowledge and abilities. They are also a good way to compare developers’ skills against each other. – Andres Zunino , ZirconTech 6.

Check Their GitHub We prescreen front-end developers by checking their GitHub. Git repositories give a lot of insight into how someone works because that’s where developers store their code and that’s where they might have a history of file changes. – Alex Circei , Waydev 7.

Leverage ATS Software Tools that use high-level algorithms can help you assess a developer’s qualifications as well as their fit. Sophisticated applicant tracking system software, for example, allows companies to prescreen candidates based on factors such as experience level and specific characteristics, helping you find developers who not only possess the right technical skills but also the experiences and soft skills for your organization. – Nacho De Marco , BairesDev 8.

Test For Cognitive And Technical Skills It can be tempting to take shortcuts and hire quickly, but hiring “right” is most important. There’s no single path, but rigorous prescreening that includes testing for cognitive and technical skills will help recruiters select the best fit. Crucially, a consistent whiteboard coding exercise will reveal a candidate’s exact experience level and help in making comparisons, with an HR interview revealing motivation.

– Natalia Mila , Upstream 9. Have The Candidate Be Interviewed By People From At Least Three Different Departments We make sure that every candidate is interviewed by people from at least three different departments to reduce bias in the hiring process. A candidate might blow away the engineering lead but present some red flags to the operations manager.

By setting up a few short interviews with people who have different levels of insight into the organization, you ensure alignment throughout the process. – Lewis Wynne-Jones , ThinkData Works 10. Look For Passion For Creating A Great UI/UX Even though front-end development is an engineering role, this is the front line of interacting with users, so it’s critical to ensure the candidate is absolutely passionate about crafting a delightful user interface and user experience.

Beyond technological competence, I recommend involving product design and project managers in the process as they’ll be working closely together to (hopefully) build great products that users love. – Maya Mandel , Helios 11. Evaluate Their Responses To Real-World Scenarios It is very critical to evaluate a front-end developer’s ability to design a solution from the user’s perspective.

It’s also important to assess their ability to shape interfaces based on high-level requirements without detailed specs. This can be done by devising simple real-world scenarios for both related and unrelated domains. Focus on sharing requirements and scenarios in simple language.

– Nitesh Sinha , Sacumen 12. Delve Into The Details Of Their Work Through A Coding Challenge In addition to references, HR checks and background checks, having a good front-end coding challenge/test is critical. Good coding challenges will show details on time and plagiarism, if they left the tabs to look up the information, and the quality of their code.

Along with these challenges, we also suggest having detailed technical questions relative to your unique technology environment. – Steve Taplin , Sonatafy Technology 13. Have An Online Proctored Assessment Having an online proctored technical assessment exam has been an efficient way of testing individuals for authenticity and skills.

There are many online assessment tools that also add additional checks and balances, including plagiarism. I believe combining technology and a live person provides a data-driven approach that is both methodical and human at the same time. – Osborn Gomes , NIOSolutions Inc.

14. Bring In An Outside Perspective Using someone external to the company during interviews—someone who doesn’t have any bias in terms of working with the person—has helped us gain major insights. This person, of course, needs to have serious expertise in hiring developers.

At Aument, we’ve found this can give us new perspectives on candidates and help us decide more objectively. – Reynier Matos Padilla , Aument. io 15.

Hold An In-Person Interview And A ‘By-The-Numbers’ Review First, a prerequisite before any hire is a face-to-face interview. No video interview can replace quality in-person time. Second is a simple equation.

Divide the great things about a candidate by ten and multiply the shortcomings by ten. This helps you balance your excitement and gives a realistic perspective on whether the candidate is a fit. – Jun Pei , Cepton Check out my website .

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