Online presence has become a must for enterprises of every scale. A website is the bare minimum requirement for operating a successful business and a well-built website or an app will make sure your customers engage with it. Most customers abandon a site if the user experience is not good. So if your website is not aesthetically built and has a complex user experience, you will end up losing customers and revenue. In this article, we will talk about the developers who make your website look good. Yes, we are referring to front-end developers. Most businesses today outsource their website development and hire remote front-end developers to make their website or app look good. In this article, we will share the key tips for hiring remote front-end developers, the technical and soft skills you should assess during the process.
Role of a Front-End Developer
Before we get into discussing the best practices of hiring remote front-end developers, let’s briefly understand what the role of a front-end developer entails.
Front-end developers are responsible for developing the looks of a website, but they do more than that. Front-end development is an important aspect of the entire development process.
Besides knowing the front-end technologies and frameworks they should also have a fair idea of Agile and scrum development process, TDD (Test Driven Development), project management, collaboration tools, and more.
While hiring remote front-end developers it will be critical to learn about the skills a good front-end developer should possess to complement your product development team. So, in the next section, we will look at how to ensure that you hire remote front-end developers who are best-in-class.
Tips to Hire Remote Front-end developers – Best Practices
Entrepreneurs are realizing the benefits that remote product development can offer. More and more enterprises will move to hiring remote teams rather than working with in-house ones for the cost and time benefit that it can offer. Front-end developers are a crucial part of the product development team and in recent years it has been a skill that has been extremely in demand. Why not? a front-end developer is the one who will make sure that the user has a good experience while navigating your website or app.
So what are the technical skills that you should look for while hiring a remote front-end team? Let’s find out.
Technical Skills to Look for While Hiring Remote Front-end Developers
1. Technologies and Development Tools Proficiency
Usually, mobile app development requires full-stack development. In this case, IDEs (integrated development environments) and programming languages are optimized so that developers can work on both front-end and back-end development.
However, in the case of website development, the scenario is different. For web development tech-stacks comprising different languages and software development tools including front-end development, back-end development, and a database language. So, depending on whether you want to hire a front-end developer for a website or mobile app development the skills you will assess will differ.
2. Coding Language Proficiency
Most popular front-end languages include React, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Angular, Swift, Vue, jQuery, Elm, etc. So, depending on the tech stack that the product development team decides on and the kind of website or mobile app you are planning to build – the language you will use differs. While hiring remote front-end developers ensure that they are proficient in the language which your project demands.
Further, if you are developing a mobile app, it will be critical that they are proficient in front-end languages for both Android and iOS. Another important factor to evaluate will be how updated the developer is with the trends and versions of these languages.
3. TDD (Test-Driven Development)
A front-end developer’s job doesn’t end at developing a great-looking website or app. They have to ensure that it is error-free, loads fast, and functions without any glitches. For this, they must be proficient in Test-Driven Development or TDD. TDD is an Agile development approach where developers write tests before getting into writing actual codes. If the codes pass the test, they use it. If not they keep writing it until the code passes the test. This approach ensures that only the best quality code makes it to the development table and this results in minimum errors in the final codes. In addition to that, it saves time and effort for the whole team.
4. Knowledge of Version Control or Git
During the front-end development process a code can go through multiple changes. It is critical that front-end developers have a fair idea of storing and tracking the codes on Git. Hence, they don’t have to start over every time a change is needed on the code. Git is an open-source platform where all the versions of a code can be stored, tracked, and shared. It will be critical to hire remote front-end developers who have proficiency in using version control tools like Git.
5. Testing and Debugging
Error-free codes are the foundation of a website or app that is robust and offers a great user experience. In an ideal situation, we would want the codes to be 100% error-free and work absolutely fine in the first go itself. While that might seem to be too idealistic, a good front-end developer will be able to drastically minimize the number of bugs, and the speed at which these are resolved. Precisely why while hiring a remote front-end developer assessing their testing and debugging skills would be crucial.
6. Responsive Development
Today consumers access a website or an app on multiple platforms. Sometimes they start exploring a website on a laptop and might continue with their search on mobile and again make a final purchase on a laptop. The customer journeys today are complex and definitely not linear. In that context, it becomes extremely critical to offer a great experience to customers irrespective of which platform they are on. Hence, it is crucial that the front-end developer must be proficient in responsive website development.
7. Browser Development Tools
Nowadays, most browsers give developers the option to test how their website will look on a particular browser and device. Whether it is Chrome, Safari, or Edge. The tools available within the browser allow developers to adjust the design according to the browser. Even though the tools vary, they will definitely have an inspector and a JavaScript console to enable them to design and make adjustments to the website as per individual browsers. While hiring a remote front-end developer it will be critical to check their proficiency with such tools.
8. Web Performance Tools
While aesthetics of a website or app is critical how much time it takes to load, how fast the images or interactive elements appear, are the few responsible factors that can make or break a user’s engagement with the platform. Precisely why, while hiring a remote front-end developer it will be critical to assess them on their knowledge of website performance optimization.
Soft Skills to Look for While Hiring Remote Front-end Developers
Assessing the soft skills of the developers is as important as assessing the technical skills, if not more. Why?
It is because product development will not happen in siloes. A front-end developer will have to work with the project manager, back-end developers, testing team, and more. Effective collaboration can save time and cost. Hence assessing soft skills become critical, while hiring remote front-end developers. So here are some soft skills that you must look for in remote front-end developers;
1. Understanding of Design
A front-end developer is responsible for making your website or app look good. Hence, it is critical that they have a great sense of design. The cherry on the cake will be if they have an understanding of basic UI design and graphic design principles.
2. Collaboration
As mentioned before, a front-end developer will have to work with various teams. Collaboration will be the key to getting the job done on time and with high quality, more so in a remote working model.
3. Communication
Effective communication can save your project from big mishaps and ensure work gets done efficiently. Especially while working with remote teams, written and verbal communication will play a critical role in the successful completion of the project.
4. Attention to Detail
In the software world missing out on small details can cost a lot, in terms of both time and money. Especially when it comes to front-end development. Since the front-end of your platform is the first thing a potential customer will see. Hence it will be important that the front-end developers have impeccable attention to detail skills.
Portfolio, Price, and References
While hiring a remote front-end developer you must look at their portfolio and experience. The kind of apps or websites they would have created in the past, have they done anything related to your domain, the quality of work, etc.
These factors will be critical to assess before you decide to onboard front-end developers. Also, vetting the references in the portfolio will be critical. Last but one of the most important factors will be the cost involved. Especially, if your budgets are limited.
Wrapping Up
In the digital world, for businesses to thrive, an online presence is a must. A robust back-end and a beautiful and user-friendly front-end are hallmarks of a successful website or an app. A good front-end developer will ensure that visitors engage with the website or an app. With remote working picking up pace, the demand for front-end developers has also gone up.
At EngineerBabu we help enterprises of every scale hire remote front-end developers within a week. We ensure that you get the highest quality front-end developers armed with the best technical and soft skills. The best thing is hiring remote front-end developers is not just time-efficient but cost-efficient too. If you want to hire a remote front-end team for your project connect with us.