How to Hire the Best Front End Developer for Your Project
The world has been developing very dynamically and unpredictably during the recent decade, and 2020 has shown this, like probably no year before! And while it is hardly possible to make any solid forecasts for the next decenia, it is clear that business models should be flexible and dynamic in order to correspond to the current challenges. While it is yet unclear what 2021 will bring, it is fair to say that the need for agile and adapting projects on the web remains.

We have been monitoring the recent trends in the field of web developers’ recruitment. In this article, we collected tips on how to hire frontend developers in Ukraine and in the world in general.
To begin with, we will explain what front-end developers are and what skills they have at different seniority levels. Then we will describe the benefits of hiring a front-end developer for your company. Lastly, we will guide you through the recruitment of a programmer offshore, tips, and tricks for the interview process, front end developer salary expectations.
Figuring out the right time to engage a front-end developer is essential to a company’s digital success. This becomes necessary when an organization needs to:
A front-end developer help optimizes performance, creates intuitive interfaces, integrates external resources seamlessly, and uses modern techniques to ensure a rich user experience. Their contributions elevate the company’s digital presence and deliver exceptional user experiences. A company’s digital presence is enhanced when it has qualified and dedicated front-end developers on its team, allowing the organization to deliver exceptional customer service online.
A front-end developer is responsible for designing all the elements you can see visually on a webpage or interface. In general, the front end uses three basic technologies such as HTML for structure, CSS for style, and JavaScript for logic. While there are lots of skills and technologies front-end programmers should have, you can find a list of the basic ones:
A programmer with good front-end skills is capable of creating beautiful-looking websites that are agile and snappy. So if you check programmers’ portfolios and fancy design of their products, as well as the speed of their websites, you can make a conclusion about their front-end competencies.
The front end is probably the most important component of web development. Why? Because it is the first thing your customers notice visiting a website for the first time. Your clients look at a user interface (UI) and if the UI is flawless and appealing, it attracts users for visual pleasure. UI creates an image of a product: a good-looking UI promises a reliable product and guarantees the best user experience (UX). Needless to say that it also features the individuality of a brand and gears the website to be positively accepted by a certain target audience.
In addition to creating meaningful UI/UX, a front-end developer will help your company to:
The set of skills of front-end developers has often depended on their seniority. In accordance with competencies and experience, front-end programmers in Ukraine are divided into junior, middle, senior, and lead. We have prepared an overview of the skills that developers usually have at different seniority stages.
At the beginning of their career, developers have a basic knowledge of IT, software, and hardware. They know one programming language or framework and have basic code-writing skills. With this range of technologies and skill level, juniors can fulfill easy tasks. They can repair minor, less significant errors or bugs in the software. In a perfect world, junior front-end developers are capable of building a stable app that will carry out most of the functions it’s intended to.
Yet in reality, juniors are less independent at work and often need help from their senior colleagues. Therefore, juniors work slower to fill their knowledge gap and might be unable to make an app corresponding to all of the set requirements. So think twice before you engage a front end web developer for hire of this level.
Experience: up to 1 year
Middles are fully productive members on their own and a part of a development team. As developers gain seniority, they obtain command of building apps and tailoring them to corresponding business logic.
More experienced developers can better evaluate the requirements of your project and provide the technical skills to meet your expectations. They are able to choose the most suitable technologies to build the product after analyzing your business aims and budget.
Experience: 3-5 years
Senior programmers undertake tasks that no one else would do and manage to solve them. Seniors have a high level of knowledge of IT, from software to hardware context, computer programming, programming languages, codes, frameworks, IDE, and API.
Thanks to years of hands-on experience, they know exactly what they should and shouldn’t do, what code to change, and what should remain unchanged. A senior developer can also propose to you several alternative ways to solve a problem and explain the benefits of choosing each one in simple language. Afterward, seniors can foresee the consequences of implementing each scheme.
Experience: 5+ years
There are several ways of hiring front-end developers for example as freelancers, in-house employees, or offshore-based development teams. The choice here mainly depends on the needs of your company, development goals, and employment type (full-time, part-time, project basis).
Admittedly, it is up to you which way to choose. However, in reality, it can turn out that software engineers at your location, like in the US, are unavailable or too costly. In that case, you should turn your gaze to countries with a large pool of web developers, such as Ukraine. You can collaborate with an outstaffing or an IT staff augmentation company which will save you time and facilitate your communication with the developers.
In Ukraine, you can recruit experienced and affordable front-end developers for different tasks with the help of outstaffing partners such as Newxel.
Here at Newxel, we can help you to create an R&D office offshore and to hire front end developer team in addition to your in-house workforce. We will carefully listen to your needs and goals and search for the best local specialists for your projects.
It is extremely necessary to set clear requirements for a product when planning to hire a front end engineer. This is to prevent any misunderstanding between the customer and the сontractor and to avoid unnecessary time and money losses.
Making project specifications is definitely not an easy task so outsourcing companies often offer their help in carrying it out.
It is essential to bear in mind that if you start to cooperate with the programmers offshore, you might have a different mentality and culture-specific way of working.
Therefore you should consult your IT outstaffing partner and include this topic in your interview process when setting out to hire a front end developer.
Before you start out with the recruitment process you should consider that your main goal is to find front end developers who are not only technically qualified to solve the required tasks. It is geared towards finding people you will be comfortable working with as a team and who will find collaborating with you conveniently and agreeable in their turn. It means that your staff should be both highly skilled and motivated to do needed tasks.
If during the hiring process, only professional qualities and technical skills are taken into account, it could lead to ineffective hires and frustration.
That is why our recruitment team carries out HR screening at the very beginning of the hiring process, even before a candidate is presented to you. This helps us to get a full picture, not only a CV. We provide an HR summary that includes a brief overview of the experience, top skills, personal qualities, English skills, availability, salary expectations, etc.
Our interview process is defined by two main features like speed and quality. There is always a market for talented front end developers for hire, so we need to be swift with the decisions and steps of the process. In general, we follow the three stages of an interview:
There are lots of typical questions to test the hard skills of your candidates, and here we listed some of them:
If you’re seeking to hire a front end web developer team of dedicated professionals and do not want to overpay, don’t hesitate to contact us. We know how to find a skilled front-end coder in Ukraine to satisfy your needs and scale your development team in just a few weeks.
If you hire front end programmers, in collaboration with Newxel, an experienced outstaffing company with plenty of resources, you will enjoy the following:
Once you hire front end developers and they deliver good results and fit well into your team, you should think of retaining them. Needless to say that high staff turnover does not contribute to the efficiency of your business. High turnover can lead to loss of valuable knowledge and experience and loss of belief in the team`s competence and ability to perform.
If you want to prevent turnover, you should understand that the corporate culture, engagement, and workplace environment are the keys to the retention of talented and dedicated IT specialists.