How to Hire Front end Developer

Have you ever asked yourself what do clients see first when they visit a website for the first time?

It's the user interface (UI) of the website.

In an era where businesses are slowly shifting to the virtual as an offshoot of digital transformation, the UI of your website can either catapult you to digital business success or leave you meandering with the scores of other websites out there. An engaging UI brings aesthetic value and makes the product more comfortable and trustworthy in the user’s eyes. In fact, a well-made user interface can enhance your credibility and increase your website's conversion rate by as much as 200%.

The UI is the brainchild of front-end developers who "front" the backend in a way that makes the virtual experience pleasing for users. It's obvious then that creating a high-quality UI requires you to hire front-end developers with the right skills. Keeping up with growing demand, especially in the current situation, is forcing businesses to hire more web developers. However, the dearth of talent and the high costs of in-house hiring make the option seem much less appealing. In fact, according to a PWC CEO survey report from 2019, 79% of CEOs struggle with finding the right talent onshore. This has caused organizations to redirect their hiring efforts to employing a remote front-end development team that acts as a value-added extension of their in-house team.

How to Hire the Right Front-end Developer

Step

1

Determine Business Needs and Project Scope

Ongoing projects
A small project
A mid-sized or a big project

Step

2

Assess Your Outsourcing Options

Freelancer
In-house developers
Remote teams
What should you choose?

Step

3

Get Answers to the Most Common FAQs

What is the cost of hiring a front-end developer?
Which is the best location to hire a web developer offshore?

Step

4

Conduct Tight Screening Processes

Questions to test soft skills
Hard-skills to check for hiring a front-end developer
Questions to test hard skills
Other useful resources

How to Hire the Right Front-end Developer

Outsourcing your front-end development jobs can help you cut down up to 20% of costs while leading you to save on infrastructure requirements and overheads, while also granting you wider access to intellectual capital. In the guide below, we will look at the steps that businesses, irrespective of their size, should follow to hire the right front-end developers for their dedicated remote team.

Step

1 Determine Business Needs and Project Scope

Before beginning with anything, invest your time in identifying your business needs and the project scope to accurately determine the breadth of services that you are going to need. Break all of your projects into categories and then decide their urgency and the kind of manpower it will take to fulfill them. For all of your projects, you can categorize them into:

Ongoing projects

For ongoing projects, it's better not to change the ownership midway lest you risk derailing its output and delaying its timeline. An in-house team or a remote team would be the right fit for ongoing projects. For small and other larger projects, it would be you to decide the business goals and outcomes before moving to hire the appropriate talent.

A small project

Small projects with relatively easy timelines can be entrusted to freelance front-end developers. Since freelancers are the most affordable hiring model, it makes sense to onboard them for one-time projects with a small scope. However, assess the risks in freelancing before you ink a deal.

A medium-sized or a big project

For projects with a significantly larger scope, you can choose either your in-house team or hire a remote front-end team based on the depth of talent you are going to require.

Step

2 Assess Your Outsourcing Options

Once you have determined your business needs and project scope, you can begin sourcing web development talent. For businesses, there are three main talent avenues, each with their specific pros and cons, doing a cumulative check of which can help them determine which hiring model will fit your needs the best. These three talent avenues are:

Freelancer

For small businesses, hiring a freelancer is the most affordable option. However, increased hiring of freelancers is not an advisable move because working with them often leads to gaps in communication, leading to an ebbed front-end development process.

Benefits of freelance developers

Small hiring rates

A variety of specialists

Suitable for small tasks

The most attractive benefit of freelancers is how affordable they are. Another benefit of freelancers is that you can conduct business with them for only as long as you need their service, post which you can choose to continue or terminate working with them depending upon your needs.

Drawbacks of freelance developers

Irresponsibility

Low quality product

Communication issues

The most major flaw of freelancers is their dependability. Freelancers are often hard to access because they work in different time zones. Furthermore, freelancers are also prone to leaving projects halfway through, and there is nothing businesses can do about it.

In-house developers

The traditional method of procuring talent, in-house teams are preferred for their working effectiveness. In-house teams also give you greater control with regards to hiring the right resources, and they are also less likely to leave you, unlike freelancers.

Benefits of in-house team

Superb communication

Outstanding teamwork

Control over the project

Having front-end developers on payroll in a well-equipped workplace motivates them and makes them a part of the company's long-term goals and mission. They also act as the company's extension and take the brand experience forward.

Drawbacks of freelance developers

Overpriced services

Additional expenses

Hiring issues

Employing web developers on company payroll is often very expensive. Not to mention that the asking price of decent developers is skyrocketing. This, when coupled with other miscellaneous benefits to bring the candidate on-board, leaves businesses to deal with eye-watering salaries just to acquire the right talent.

Remote Teams

With outsourcing options rapidly gaining popularity among decision makers, the remote team model has become a mainstay at many organizations. Under this model, an offshore agency provides you with remote professionals and resources, along with administrative services and the required infrastructure to work exclusively on your projects.

Benefits of remote team

Reasonable price

Preassembled team

Control over the project

Easy to scale team size

No retention hassle

Access to global talent

You can do away with the extra cost of hiring talent, maintaining them on the company payroll, and infrastructure requirements. Additionally, outsourcing allows you to change and reorient your team structure to handle scaling needs as demands grow. Moreover, if you hire front-end developers under the dedicated resource model, you will have full control over their tasks and productivity.

Drawbacks of remote team

Lack of face-to-face communication

Not an ideal fit for small projects

Remote teams are slightly pricier when compared to freelancers. Also, offshore web developers may work in different time zones, which can lead to communication gaps. However, most front-end development companies have evolved to make your offshore development experiences seamless.

What Should You Choose?

Feature	Freelancers	In-House Teams	Remote Teams
Pricing	Project basis	Payroll basis	Contract basis
Security	Low	High	High
Output	While the output of freelancers depends upon their capability, their responsibility is over as soon as they turn their work in	In-house teams understand the nuances of the project and you can expect satisfactory output from them at all times	Remote teams act as an extension of your in-house team, and you can expect the same output from them
Timeline	Not reliable; freelancers often have many other clients to work for	Reliable; in-house teams are dedicated to projects that are assigned to them, and you can expect them to follow timeline schedules	Reliable; same as in-house teams, they too are dedicated to your project, and you can expect timeline discipline from them

Step

3 Get Answers to the Most Common FAQs

What is the Cost of Hiring a Front-end Developer?

As you assess the hiring options, the first question that would flicker in your mind is – ‘What is the cost to hire a front-end developer?’ We’ve got you covered.

The average salary of a competent front-end developer in the US is $119,224, as of 2020. Simultaneously, the hourly rate of hiring a developer in the US ranges between US$ 81-100. This rate steps down to US$ 41-60 when you choose to outsource to promising web development centres in Asia, without offsetting the required expertise.

According to Glassdoor, the average hourly rate of hiring a competent front-end developer in India ranges between US$ 20-70.

Here is our Extensive Research on Front-end Developers Salaries across the Globe

Which is the Best Location to Hire a Web Developer Offshore?

One could dwindle the added expenses of in-house hiring by hiring remote front-end developers from promising IT outsourcing locations. But, which is the best country to hire web developers?

Do you know, 50% of the Fortune 500 companies outsource their web development requirements to India? On the other hand, China is progressively centred as a preferred IT outsourcing destination, following India.
The Top 5 Countries to Hire Web Developers include – India, China, Poland, Philippines, and Ukraine.

Country	Outsourcing Rates
India	- Has economical and competitive outsourcing rates. - A perferred destination in terms of cost of outsourcing. - Average cost of hiring web developers in India is $18-$35/hour as compared to the beginner $60/hour cost in the US.
China	- China has lower outsourcing costs and wide range of developers. - The cost of employability of developers in Chaina is far lower than Europe and America - Outsourcing to China can decrease your total development cost by 30 to 50 percent.
Poland	- Poland caters to be a prudent choice for superior quality web development. - According to the ABSL (Association of Business Leaders) an experienced Polish developer changes around $3000 - $5000 per month.
Philippines	- The Philippines outsourcing industry has been the biggest contributor in its GDP (Gross Domestic Product). The total GDP of the Philippines was $355.5 billion in 2019. - Philippines’ wage rate is about 50% lower as compared to the developed economies. - The average rate of hiring developers in Philippines is $20 - $40 per hour.
Poland	- Poland caters to be a prudent choice for superior quality web development. - According to the ABSL (Association of Business Leaders) an experienced Polish developer changes around $3000 - $5000 per month.
Ukraine	- Offshore development rate in Ukraine is higher as compared to the Asian coun tries (India, China, Philippines) - The development rates in Ukraine falls between $30 - $60 per hour.

To compare the cost of outsourcing, time-zone difference, limitations, and innovation index for each country, click here.

Other Common FAQs related to hiring front-end developers offshore-

Step

4 Conduct Tight Screening Processes

There are many candidates who might fit some part of the bill that you are looking for in a potential hire. That is why it is necessary to conduct tight screening processes and check how adept they are at both necessary soft skills and hard skills. Here, we will take a look at some essential skills that you should look for in both segments while hiring a front-end developer.

Questions to test soft skills

Required soft skills

Stress management

Time management

Motivation

Sociability

Can you provide an instance of when you successfully led a team of front-end developers through a difficult situation?
How do you rank your tasks when there are multiple deadlines to meet?
Describe the most significant problem you have ever solved in the workplace?
Can you provide an instance of when results went against expectations, and how did you adapt to it?
What are your actions if the employees or project managers disagree with you?
What are your three most important considerations when working for someone?
When have you performed a task without any relevant prior experience?

Hard-skills to Check for Hiring a Front-end Developer

Someone with 3-5 years of experience in front-end development is likely to know

HTML5 and CSS3
GIT Version Controlling Tool
PHP and JavaScript
Best Browser Developer Tools
jQuery
Best Module Bundlers and Task Runners
Preprocessors for CSS
Testing/Debugging in IDE
2D and 3D Graphic Implementation
Web Template System
Networking Protocols
Front-end Security Best Practices
Modular JS Frameworks (Angular, React, and Vue.JS)
Bootstrap and Foundation

To know more about these skills in detail, click here.

Questions to test hard skills

Required hard skills

Programming languages

Frameworks

Programming tools

What would be the biggest motivation to use the latest standards of HTML5 and CSS3?
What are the basic steps to optimize the 'perceived performance' of a website?
What according to you is the best way for rapid prototyping and development of a web application?
What is the importance or need of a CSS preprocessor?
What is your approach to handling code testing?
What is the difference between Get and Post?
Have you ever encountered a cross-browser compatibility issue? Which has been your hardest experience with the same?

To check the expected answers to the above questions, click here.

Other Useful Resources:

Why Hire Front-end Developers from Uplers

The front-end development services that Uplers provide can be segmented by skills needed to deliver the service. From initial rounds of designing to integrations with backend, the developers at Uplers deliver a seamless front-end development experience so you can grow your core business.

Offering high-performance front-end development teams to businesses over 7+ years, Uplers repertoire includes:

10,000+
web projects managed across 52 nations
200+
strong front-end developer team
500+
specialized websites created in under 60 months
150+
web projects delivered monthly

Uplers has been scripting successful websites and growth stories for its clients and ushering them in a global playing field. Creating seamless offshore web development experiences, Uplers has enabled the creation of better digital ecosystems.

Hire Front-end Developers Today

The Ultimate Guide to Hire a Front-end Developer

Table of Contents

How to Hire the Right Front-end Developer

1

Determine Business Needs and Project Scope