Hiring React JS Developers: Where, Skills to Look For, The Process

The pandemic has led to a voluntary mass exodus from the workplace. Some call it the Great Resignation or Great Reshuffle. A record 47 million Americans have quit jobs voluntarily in the pandemic time. The Healthcare and technological sector witnessed the greatest resignation. 

Quitting software developers opted to be independent contractors or freelancers. As a result, the independent developers’ population jumped from 9.5% to 11.2% during the Great Resignation. 

Their reasons varied a lot: unfair pay, bad managers, or lack of professional growth on work. You may face a considerable challenge recruiting React.js developers for your team or project. 

This guide will teach you how to overcome these challenges without hassle. It covers everything you may need to know about them: who they are, what skills they have depending on the expertise level, cases when they can bring significant benefits, what sources for searching exist, and gives answers to several issues about hiring strategies. 

Let’s dive in. 

Who Is a React.js Developer? 

We begin with the technology definition to have common ground in the topic. React.js is an open-source JavaScript framework for building interactive engaging user interfaces with a truly large community that backs it. Two most-loved features of the framework are:

1. hot reloading when data on pages is updated without reloading the page. 
2. Virtual DOM – an extremely powerful tool that boosts apps performance. 

But since the technology is in demand, the best React.js developer gems aren’t easy to come by. So it’s a good starting point to decide if you need to look for the best react.js developers. 

Why You May Need React.js Developers?

There are several reasons why you may find React.js appealing: it provides great app scalability, it’s cost-effective, and it facilitates rapid development. Let’s examine benefits for businesses of different sizes in more detail. 

• Startups: The framework offers reusable components that you can share among other development projects. So, startups can save money by reducing the amount of working hours required. Also as a startup, you benefit from React-based projects’ scalability and maintainability since the framework provides a bunch of tools to build well-structured code. 

• Medium-size businesses: for medium-size companies it’s essential to keep the online presence through a quality website. Where “quality” implies simple clean interfaces, well-conceived customer journey, great user experience, great value to customers. React.js enhances customer experience and simplifies the integration with third-party services.
  
  One more positive point to consider for medium-size businesses is that React.js is a stable and growing technology. The Facebook team supports and improves the framework possibilities.

• Large enterprises: React.js doesn’t stop here and can make a huge contribution to big organizations as well. Large firms like Netflix, Airbnb, and Instagram also use this framework for their apps. They reap such benefits like fast render and scalability.  

Outsourcing vs. In-house: Which Hiring Strategy IS Better

Before jumping into the discussion of outsourcing vs in-house hiring strategy, you should clearly define what competence and skill set you are seeking for. There are three-level of expertise: 

Junior React.js Developer

Main characteristics of this type are only about 1 year of practical experience and basic knowledge of the React.js framework. Other skills may include:

• HTML5 (HyperText Markup Language)
• CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets) including its superset SASS (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets). 
• JavaScript 
• RxJS (Reactive Extensions for JavaScript)
• Git
• Level of English intermediate and above 

Knowledge of Angular and Node.js can be a plus in certain projects.

Optional skills include:

• A basic understanding of quality assurance processes like remote debugging. 
• Server-side rendering (SSR)
• Software design models MVC (model-view-controller) and MVVM (model-view-ViewModel). 

Middle React.js Engineer

Middle developers come more experienced with 2+ years of practice. They demonstrate a deeper understanding of the technologies listed on the previous level and may possess additional skills in: 

• Redux, for state management 
• JavaScript (ES6), which provides web pages interactivity
• Mobile applications development
• Integration through APIs
• English – upper intermediate and above

PHP and Node.js skills are optional but could become a plus.

Senior React.js Engineer

The senior developer has 5+ years of practice. They have deep expertise in the technologies mentioned at both previous levels. 

Senior React.js engineers can work with JS frameworks like Vue and Angular and have an English level of advanced+. 

Since such engineers are experts, the required supervision is low compared to other levels of specialists. But they are not easy to come by. Or you can hire specialists with less experience and help them grow within your company and become seniors. But this strategy also has its pitfalls. 

With this knowledge, refer to hiring strategies. 

Outsourcing vs In-house Strategies

These strategies have their pros and cons. For example, in-house teams are easier to manage and control, but their hiring costs are higher. Dealing with IT project outsourcing leads to the reverse effect. Moreover, with outsourcing you also shouldn’t address tax and regulatory compliance issues. 

Outsourcing is gaining traction. According to Statista, global IT outsourcing will jump from about US$ 400 billion to over half a trillion dollars by 2027. In the same period, the application outsourcing market value will increase from $116 billion to $145 billion. 

Outsourcing is not slowing down its growth pace any time soon. Cheaper rates and the access to the global talent pool are undeniable advantages it brings.

An average React.js developer in the US costs $57,500 annually. The same level developer costs $15,000, $12,500 and $22,000 in East Europe, Africa, and East Asia, respectively. That makes outsourcing a cost-effective strategy. 

From the other side, time zone differences, remote team management, and legal challenges can undermine your productivity. But, HR can handle legal challenges, while collaboration tools like Slack and Trello can help managing outsourcing specialists. 

So, outsourcing is a good option if you wish to cut project development costs. But, an in-house team can work perfectly if you prefer to stay in full control of the team. 

Once strategies are explained, time to address the next issue: where to search for a React.js developer? 

Where to Hire React.js Developers?

1. Internal employee referral system. Start with your inner team. A well-conceived internal employee referral system encourages in-house developers to share vacancies with their friends and circles. 

2. Job boards. Indeed, Glassdoor, and Monster provide an opportunity to list developer vacancies. Some job listing sites have millions of unique visitors monthly, so the audience is huge. And pay attention to the boards, tech job listing sites are more effective than others that target all job pots. 

3. Freelance marketplaces. Upwork, Fiverr, or other platforms gained extreme popularity thanks to providing great specialists for short-term projects that take less than eight weeks.

4. Social media platforms. LinkedIn is, perhaps, the most popular source of specialists. 

As a result, you will get many applicants. Screening each of them can be a challenging task. So, we prepared a checklist to get top-quality picks easy. 

What Skills the Best React.js Developers Have

Clues to spot a top engineer are: 

• Reviews and satisfaction rate among colleagues. For example, LinkedIn provides such information like candidates’ reviews, professional experiences, and accomplishments. 

• Customer recommendations. Verified reviews from customers bring insights on how well-skilled the engineer is. Moreover, reviews allow us to identify if the developer is a team player or a lone ranger. 

• Portfolio. It facilitates you to get a general picture of the developer’s expertise. An extensive portfolio demonstrates vast experience with React.js. 

How to Hire React.js Developers in 2024 

1. Understand Your Ideal Candidate Profile 

Each project varies in complexity and aesthetics that may need a specific level of experience. So, create a perfect React.js developer profile with technical skills fitting the needs of your project. Also, don’t forget to talk with HR about soft skills since even a good technical specialist with poor soft skills brings more harm to your team than benefits. 

It’s like creating an ideal customer profile for effective market targeting, only for a developer candidate. 

2. Know Your Budget and Compare Salaries

Next is understanding how much you’re willing to pay for quality delivery. 

For freelancers, you will save on office maintenance. You will also save on other overhead costs of managing an in-house team. Remote management challenges include time zone differences. 

The best part of an in-house team is faster communication and easier management. But, hiring quality freelancers, especially in offshore countries with low living costs, is relatively cheaper. 

A React JS website cost will vary depending on its complexity. For hourly talent rates, the average rate is $20-$150, according to Upwork. However, the cost can be higher for senior roles and regions like the US and Europe. But, talent in East Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa are equally quality and relatively cheaper. 

3. Create A Compelling Job Description

You must craft a compelling and winning job description to hire the best React.js developers. So, include the following abstracts to ensure candidates understand what you expect from them:

• Technical skills: The candidates should thoroughly understand the React.js and related technologies. They should also be conversant with databases (NoSQL, MySQL), cloud computing (AWS, Azure), version control systems (Git), To assess technical skills, you can use react.js assessment to evaluate your candidate’s react.js coding skills. etc. 

• Extra skills that give you leverage: Remember, no candidate knows everything. So, ensure the nice-to-have abilities do not come across as mandatory. Some can even be technical, like proficiency in Docker or other cloud services. 

• Soft skills: Software development is moving towards teams and collaboration like DevOps. Depending on your project, highlight soft critical skills required like team collaboration, time management (for time zone differences), etc. 

With a well-crafted job description, advertise the job widely across relative platforms. From freelance marketplaces like Upwork to job boards like Indeed.com. You should also consider niche job boards specializing in tech recruitment. 

But, sourcing, attracting, and tracking applicants can be tedious, long, and challenging. In fact, you can receive numerous unqualified applicants that can just waste your precious time and resources. That will reduce your turnaround time and can undermine the effectiveness. 

Using applicant software simplifies the entire process. It can handle job posting, sourcing, and applicant tracking. Candidate performance reporting at the mature in the recruitment phase also makes the tool very crucial. 

4. Ensure The Interview Process Is Well-established

The primary goal of any interview is to reveal the real hard and soft skills of the candidate. This is the crucial step in the hiring process since all activities would be in vain without a well-established interview process. 

All the interviews should be connected to your recruitment management software. It will enable faster performance reporting on interview results to gauge which candidates best fit your role(s). 

You can do remote interviews to save on costs too. But, ensure your interviews are not widely spaced if you have two or more follow-up interviews. Using smart recruitment services like applicant software can give you instant performance reports to schedule follow-up interviews faster. 

5. Partner With a Tech Recruiter 

The alternative to the long process described above is a collaboration with a tech recruiter. This method is very useful with the absence of technical background you have. So, as a non-technical manager, your recruitment partner can address all the tech issues. 

Tech recruiters have extensive experience sourcing for freelance and in-house teams around the globe. With their state-of-the-art tech stack, they use smart recruitment services to get you the best possible talent pool for your project. 

Smart recruitment services help you source and hire React JS developers faster at a fraction of the cost. 

Hiring the Best React.js with SumatoSoft Staff Augmentation Services Is as Easy as Never Before

SumatoSoft is a reliable outsourcing software company. We work with all outsourcing types and with all engagement models. 

Speaking about staff augmentation, we have ready-to-go and a custom-hired team of software engineers, Scrum Masters, Designers, and QA specialists that are ready to extend the capacity of any team. 

Our developers built more than 150 successful projects in various industries like eCommerce, Elearning, Finance, Real Estate, Transport, Travel, and more.  

• 10 years on the market of software development. 
• Long-term and short-term cooperation
• We work honestly and openly for fair rates. 
• No communication barrier, since all specialists speak English well.
• 150+ custom software solutions.
• 27 countries we worked with.

Final Takeaway 

React.js is a framework for the development of user interfaces for the web. There are a lot of benefits it brings to the development, two of them are hot reloading and Virtual DOM. 

The demand for React.js developers is high, but the COVID pandemic resulted in the so-called Great Resignation when the number of independent developers increased by 2%. However, hiring the best React.js developer is still a challenging task. 

Two major strategies of recruitment are in-house recruitment and outsourcing. Despite the chosen strategy, there are 4 good tactics to find the best talents: build working internal employee referral systems, classic job boards, browsing freelance marketplaces, and leveraging social media platforms like LinkedIn. 

You can also look for candidates on your own or by partnering with tech recruiting agencies. Looking on your own requires making several important steps: 

• Understand an ideal candidate profile
• Understand the budget and timelines of the project
• Create a compelling job description
• Ensure The Interview Process Is Well-established

Collaborating with agencies, in turn, is more simple since all technical and processual issues are solved by another party. Whatever road you choose, we are sure that if you follow these guides, hiring the best React.js developer will be a breeze.