Did you know that 98% of web pages are written in JavaScript (JS) language? According to estimates done by the Assistant Professor of Physics at Brock University, there are 5 zettabytes of data. If we convert them in binary code and print out the code on paper sheets, we will get a book that has one side on the Earth surface and the other on the edge of the Solar system (so-called the Oort Cloud).
Yeah, the book will be this large
Even though these estimates are very rough, they can give you an understanding why businesses lack talent for JavaScript projects that badly: these guys are very, VERY in demand. This information may calm you down a little, but the skills gap is still unfilled in your team, while competitors won’t wait and launch a similar product faster than you.
The JatApp team has been assisting businesses with software development since 2015, so we know well how having relevant tech specialists can be important to a timely product release. In this article, we’re going to share with you some of the important ideas you should know to hire a JavaScript developer.
JavaScript developers — the native speakers of true Internet language
We already know that JavaScript is the most common programming language for building websites and the most prominent programming language in general, as 67.9% of professional developers use it. That’s why the definition is somewhat plain: JavaScript is a programming language used for front-end development of websites and web apps.
And you need a person who can use JavaScript well enough to speed up development of your web product. So, what does your JS candidate have to know? There are nine primary JavaScript skills your developer must have:
- A strong command of HTML and CSS. Web pages are created with Hyper Text Markup Language, which is why knowing how to use it is essential to any front end developer in general, and JS developers are no exception here. At the same time, CSS is used for a web page structure, colors, format, and overall style. If your JavaScript programmer isn’t familiar with HTML and CSS, a successful launch of your web product is next to impossible.
- Ability to recognize data structures and algorithms. Knowing how to structure data within your product as well as applying different algorithms to make it work in the most optimal way are the other core skills you should expect from your JavaScript candidate.
- A good command of Document Object Model (DOM). The use of DOM is crucial for JS developers as this tool enables them to structure HTML and CSS on a web page. Taking care of how each page works and looks is one of JavaScript developer responsibilities.
- Source control management. Aside from writing code, your candidate should be able to store it and switch between code’s earlier and later versions if necessary. You have to make sure that your candidate is capable of working with Git, Mercurial, SVN, or any similar source control systems.
- Having basic testing debugging skills. You may think that testing isn’t what a JS developer has to do, since quality assurance engineers are responsible for that. Your statement certainly holds true, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that a software developer shouldn’t be able to review their own code and make corrections.
- Knowledge of Web Performance Optimization (WPO). WPO is necessary for fixing website problems related to loading speed, so your JS developer must be able to deal with such kind of issues.
- Being no stranger to encryption and cryptography. Your web product surely involves sensitive information, and software developers have to to ensure impeccable security. Understanding encryption algorithms, user authentication process and cryptography techniques are an absolute must for your candidate.
- Having basic design skills. Needless to say, JavaScript developers aren’t designers, but working with the front end of a website means that your candidate is expected to follow basic design principles, sense product’s user-friendliness, and have a good aesthetic taste. In case design skills aren’t a strong suit of your JS developer, you’re likely to get a product that will make your customers feel nauseous.
A reaction to a web app done by JS developer with poor design skills
Locations and hourly rates
You can hire JavaScript developers in the United States, and you’ll surely get a highly qualified professional. However, we have to warn you that the US JavaScript developer hourly rate starts from 70$ per hour. We understand that it can be quite expensive, especially when you can find JavaScript developers in other countries, who are as skillful as their American colleagues.
For instance, you can hire a good JS developer in Brazil for $30-35 per hour. But Brazil has a little secret that makes many businesses refrain from hiring software engineers there. Complex and strict legal regulations are a roadblock that many companies simply don’t want to bother with, plus Brazil isn’t the last country where you can find a skilled and trustworthy JavaScript developer.
For that reason, India can be another option where you can look for a JavaScript developer. Indian software engineers have a good command of hard skills and can deliver you a quality product, while JavaScript developer salary will be $20-25 per hour.
Nevertheless, working with Indian software engineers can be a challenge, once a cultural gap with Western companies is big enough to create various misunderstandings, while English proficiency of Indian developers leaves much to be desired. In addition, the time zone difference is another problem that will prevent you from effective communication and timely updates on your project.
That is why we would like to slant hiring JavaScript developers from Ukraine instead. Ukraine is the biggest contributor to the global research & development, and the local IT sector employs 187,000 tech professionals that bring $5 billion of annual industry earnings.
Today, hourly rates aren’t that low as they used to be, as Ukrainian JavaScript developer salary is around $50-55 per hour. On top of that, Ukrainian JS developers share the same work culture as Europeans and speak English fluently.
You’re obviously aware that Ukraine is facing military aggression by russia. The war does affect the Ukrainian IT sector, but the majority of companies manage to operate at full scale and even create a government-controlled IT army that takes action towards defending Ukraine in cyberspace.
Besides, local tech businesses support humanitarian aid missions while many IT workers volunteer to provide material support to civilians and the Armed Forces. Ukrainian IT companies successfully relocated to safe regions of the country and opened offices in various countries across Europe to arrange their work in the same way they did before the massive invasion of russian troops.
It would be unfair to say that there are no risks to hire a JavaScript developer from Ukraine. At the same time, the local IT industry successfully coped with uncertainties caused by the war, which means you can still count on Ukrainian software development vendors.
Moreover, your collaboration with Ukrainian IT business means a serious contribution to the local economy that requires support at the moment. Stand with Ukraine to defend the whole civilized democratic world.
Resume of a perfect JavaScript candidate
Once you’re going to hire a reliable JavaScript developer, you need to have a deep understanding of what a perfect candidate should look like. Below, you can see a good example.
Freelancer, in-house, or outsourcing?
There are three ways you can hire a JavaScript programmer: freelancers, hire in-house, and outsourcing. There are different advantages and pitfalls for each way. Let’s discuss them to decide what’s best for your project.
Freelancer
Hiring a freelancer is fine for a JavaScript project in case you have a little task to complete within a short term. Under any other circumstances, hiring a freelancer isn’t your story.
You don’t want to hazard a guess by picking up a stranger who won’t be that devoted to your project. To keep your project’s success at bay, shun freelancers and go for hiring one only when you have some small job to do.
Still, if hiring a freelancer fits your project, we recommend looking for freelancers at Upwork and Toptal, where tech talents undergo a vetting process that guarantees you don’t hire a scammer. Nonetheless, you can’t really expect that even a professional freelance JavaScript developer will fall in love with your project for the rest of their life.
In-house
Speaking about hiring a JavaScript developer in-house, you have to be sure that your project is long enough to justify all overhead expenses like recruitment, onboarding, training, sick leaves, holidays, and employee benefits.
In-house recruitment does the trick when your project is long-term or you have some other web products to develop in the future. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of resources that don’t outweigh a contribution your JavaScript developer makes into your business.
Additionally, when the JavaScript project is over and your worker has nothing else to do, you’ll pay them just for being a nice person. Additionally, in case you say that the project won’t last for a year at least, a rare developer would agree to work in your team full-time and then start looking for a job all over again after a couple of months.
Outsourcing
When hiring a freelancer or in-house JS developer are both enough of a mixed bag, outsourcing can be your go-to solution.
Augmenting your team with an outsourced JavaScript developer from a software development agency overseas means you don’t need to usher in recruitment and onboarding, as your outsourcing provider will do everything for you. Coming to an interview with a candidate and choosing the one who will work on your web product is the heaviest effort you need to take in this respect.
You’ll be able to manage an outsourced software engineer as if they’re your in-house employee. Needless to say, there is no chance you can keep your JS developer in the line of sight, which is why some risk of miscommunication is present.
Anyway, the majority of respected IT vendors assemble remote teams that are motivated, enthusiastic, and diligent enough to focus on projects rather than refreshing news feeds in their social media during the working hours.
Make sure you hire a skilled and trustworthy person
There are dozens of ways you can vet your JavaScript developer, but we would like to share with you a vetting process we use in JatApp. Everything starts with resume screening. Apart from criteria we’ve shown you in a perfect resume section, our recruiters sort out candidates with insufficient experience in working on commercial JavaScript projects and low English proficiency.
We also strongly recommend you pay attention to so-called job jumpers: candidates that switch companies way too often (something like every 6-9 months). There is a high probability that this person will be hard to deal with even though you manage to retain them for working on your project.
As soon as we have resumes of potentially relevant candidates in front of us, our recruiters run soft skills interviews with each candidate. Typically, we talk with candidates about the following issues:
- Experience in JavaScript development. There is nothing to comment on as we just strive for hunting the most experienced and skilled software engineers.
- English proficiency. Our recruiters switch to the English language and start talking to a candidate. JatApp works with clients all over the world, and being fluent in English is a must for our employees.
- Motivation. That is an essential component you should look for amongst your candidates. We strongly believe that a motivation to create a product rather than write hundreds of pages of code is a hallmark of a professional tech expert who is passionate enough to focus on the end result.
- Presence of basic soft skills. You need to determine whether your candidate is a good team player, how they make decisions, react to stressful situations, and such. Whatever hard skills your JavaScript developer has, having an egocentric and toxic fool in your team can ruin the whole project. That’s the reason we check for soft skills before testing hard ones!
- Reasons for leaving previous company. This tricky question has several purposes. First, you make sure that your candidate isn’t a nasty piece of work once again. Second, you reveal the needs and motivations of your candidate to be able to address them and keep this employee retained with your company.
- Examples of code written by the candidate. Talking about experience and skills is an essential part of the hiring process, but you need to also see what your candidate has already accomplished to prove their qualification.
And then, we arrange a hard skills interview, where our team leads ask such questions as:
- How do you manage hosting with JavaScript?
- What do var, let, and const do?
- How would you create an incremental variable in the general scope?
- Explain how arrow and bind functions are used?
- Describe the process of getting an argument with a bind function.
- Create an algorithm that accepts an input text massive and delivers output massives with unique elements that are allocated according to a particular characteristic (for example, it can be a text massive with different fruits that a candidate should make sort according to their size).
- How do you write a function that accepts a massive of different numbers and brings back each number multiplied by two.
- How do you write a sum function?
- How do you write a basic calculate function?
- How does CORS work?
- What is HTTP request with Options type?
- What is CDN?
Run your web development project with JatApp
JatApp can provide you with highly skilled JavaScript developers, and we tend to believe it’s true, since 99% of our clients leave positive feedback. Our company offers you three engagement models of cooperating with us.
Team augmentation/extension is a good way to hire our JavaScript developer if you need an extra workforce to fill the skills gap on your current project. Our software engineer will work as if you hired them in-house.
If you run a project, but you don’t have a tech team to start development, JatApp can provide you with a dedicated team. Our people will focus solely on your project and you’ll be able to manage them as your own team.
And of course, you can outsource the whole project to JatApp. Our project managers will care for every aspect of your project while you’ll get timely updates on its progress.
Hire a JavaScript developer at JatApp. Tell us about your project, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
