Hiring an in-house developer, a freelancer, or a developer from an agency all have a lot in common, which is surprising. Although this article focuses on hiring, gathering a solid dose of needed data from the start will come in handy in various situations.
We’ll show you how to define your future developer, spot them in the crowd, and create a process around it. The result will be the exact gem you required, empowering your team.
Let’s go there together.
Define your hero and find a way to set them apart from the crowd.
Tech skills
Let’s begin by compiling a list of technical skills your future React Native developer will require to effectively augment your team and meet project requirements.
Make a list of the technologies they should be familiar with. Keep in mind to draw a line between the necessary skills and those you are willing to give up if the candidate is promising.
Frontend, backend, full-stack?
What kind of experience are you looking just for your project? Should your next React Native developer be familiar with JavaScript in general, including backend development? Do you require experience with mobile apps as well as web development?
Junior, mid, or senior?
Examine the experience in terms of time and the productivity of your team. Hiring a junior will be more expedient, but they will require a mentor from your team. Hiring a senior takes more time and effort, but they can bring knowledge to your team and quickly take ownership.
Let’s take a closer look at the various levels of seniority.
Junior React Native developers should have the following technical skills.
Junior developers are new to the field and have little or no experience. However, this does not preclude them from gaining knowledge. A junior React Native developer should be well-versed in JavaScript and understand the fundamentals of React Native.
Because juniors frequently lack work experience, you may want to look for someone who has created their portfolio to practice their skills. That’s a promising sign!
A junior React Native developer may be easy to find and hire, but keep in mind that he will need a mentor in a team setting.
Don’t hire them if you don’t have someone to support juniors.
Tech skills for mid-React Native developers
Mid-level React Native developers can work without supervision. They typically have a few years of experience and have worked on a few projects.
Mid-level React Native developers should be able to debug code, optimize performance, and integrate the app with external services, among other things.
Tech skills for senior React Native developers
A senior can manage a team flow, lead a team, and design the architecture. If your team lacks React Native experience, a senior can assist and serve as a mentor.
Senior Reactions Native developers are extremely difficult to find. If you require someone with those skills, you may want to consider team augmentation – developers from a different company can serve as mentors, share knowledge, and even help you improve your processes.
How to check tech knowledge?
Prepare a test task for newer members. It should be tricky, such as using libraries that the candidate is unfamiliar with. You want to assess their level of involvement and their way of thinking.
On a higher level, you can prepare a technical test and pose a few difficult questions to your candidates during the interview.
Soft skills
Many recruiters believe that soft skills are more important than technical skills because they are more difficult to learn.
Some soft skills are similar to personality traits, such as open-mindedness or helpfulness. Others, such as communication skills, can be learned. Consider the necessary skills that cannot be skipped and those you are willing to forego to teach them later.
Soft skills vary according to seniority level as well. Senior React Native developers should have prior team leadership experience, excellent communication skills, problem and conflict resolution abilities, and time management skills.
Establish your list
According to Debbie Foley, the head of global marketing for employer brand and talent attraction at Shell (which places a high value on soft skills), the first step is to know what soft skills you’re looking for. “Do you require people who can form relationships?” Can you persuade people? Create new teams? How do you handle conflict? This will vary depending on the business’s objectives, so being clear on the ideal behaviors of a candidate is critical.”
Analyze your requirements and make a list. To name a few characteristics that may appear there:
- Communication skills
- Teamwork
- Workplace organization
- eagerness to learn
- Open-mindedness
- Helpfulness
- Accountability
- Creativity
- Fluency in English
How to check soft skills?
Interviews are crucial in assessing soft skills. Numerous techniques are available, such as behavioral questions, situational questions, and reading body language.
Request that the candidate solves a problem using their hard skills. Change the constraints and conditions to see how the candidate responds to change.
Work with the candidate to observe the soft skills in action.
Business knowledge
Business knowledge is one of the skills that developers, particularly seniors, should have. However, it is frequently a nice-to-have.
Understanding how products relate to business goals and making decisions based on business vision is a useful skill that sets a developer apart. Still, it’s not very common, and it’s more common among consultants.
It is, however, a good idea to begin familiarizing your development team with business and operational aspects. In the long run, it will break down the barriers between business and technology in your company, allowing you to make better decisions.
Urge to learn and grow
Many employers wish to hire an experienced, knowledgeable, and charismatic developer – a “rockstar.” However, assembling a good rockstar team is extremely difficult. Players are frequently bad teammates. They are extremely good consultants but not so well at teams.
Culture fit
Putting together a group of like-minded people with similar values is the first step toward frictionless cooperation and satisfaction. Communication becomes more fluid, and teamwork becomes more efficient when a cultural fit occurs.
Establish your values
If you don’t have your company values written down, do so before beginning any hiring process. They will be your guiding lights.
Describe your ideal fit
Consider your company’s culture. Who are the people who share it? Make a list of character traits.
As an example:
- Engaged
- Passionate
- Eager to learn and grow
- Not averse to accepting responsibility
- Honest
- Helpful
- Excellent teammate
- Proactive
- Prepare questions and tasks to evaluate cultural fit.
Then, plan out the appropriate questions to ask during the interview.
As an example:
Describe a work environment where you would be disappointed.
What characteristics typify the best leaders?
You mentioned that you enjoy learning new things at work. What exactly do you mean?
What have you recently learned at work?
You can also ask the team to help.
Inviting a team member for the culture and team fit-checking interview will be extremely beneficial. Following the conversation, your employee’s perspective will be useful. In addition, look for an instant connection between them. That’s always a positive sign.
- Prepare a process
- Build a hiring funnel
- A hiring funnel is a tool for organizing the steps required to weed out the best candidates from the crowd.
- This is how it looks to us:
- Screening of candidates (job postings, outreach via social media or LinkedIn, brand awareness/marketing)
- The task for testing (sending a task/small app to complete)
- Technical examination (JavaScript quiz with open questions)
- Providing detailed feedback
- Interview (also known as the Team-Fit Test for determining team/culture fit)
- Hired/Not-hired
Let’s take a look at the details of each phase.
1. Candidate screening
Begin filling the pipeline with qualified candidates. Look for people who appear to fit the profile you created earlier. Place job postings in appropriate locations.
2. Test task
The test task is intended to validate technical skills and a person’s way of thinking and engagement. Request that candidates use a tool with which they are unfamiliar. It will assist you in determining whether they can come up with creative solutions.
3. Technical test
It’s time for some React Native and JavaScript questions, as well as some tricky problems to solve.
4. Giving specific feedback
Provide feedback on the test task and the technical test. It’s a good idea to send resources that can help them improve their weakest points.
5. Conduct an interview
You can still ask tech-related questions during the interview, but this is a great time to assess soft skills, cultural fit, and team fit. Prepare questions that will elicit information about the candidate’s values, goals, and attitude. Bring a team member to the interview to better get to know the candidate and assess team fit.
6. Hire/Not-hired
Notify the candidate of your decision. Discuss openly what they need to improve on and the good news, and go over the terms in greater detail.
Why can it be hard to hire React Native developers?
Stack Overflow’s annual Developer Survey 2021 (as with many previous surveys) reveals that JavaScript is the most popular programming language among professional developers once again. It has also been the most widely used programming language for the past nine years in a row.
How does it influence the hiring efforts?
There are a lot of developers on the market
It’s both good and bad news at the same time. With so many JavaScript and React Native developers on the market, you have a lot of potential candidates to choose from. However, the popularity of JavaScript makes it difficult to find true gems among the crowd. Nowadays, almost anyone can learn JavaScript, so you’ll need to find someone who is ambitious, creative, and passionate.
There’s a big competition among employers
Another result of JavaScript’s popularity is that many businesses use it and its various frameworks. The recruitment process becomes more difficult because you must compete with various companies. And some of them are large and appealing to developers. Recruitment efforts are especially difficult in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.
How to overcome the obstacles?
Assume you need to hire a React Native developer with a specific set of skills, such as efficiently analyzing client requirements, collaborating with others flawlessly, and writing readable and maintainable code.
The market is competitive, and it isn’t easy to find the gem among the crowd. How do you overcome these challenges and find the perfect match?
A well-thought-out process, with questions and activities, will act as a well-oiled filter, leading potential candidates to a perfect fit.
Experiment with different solutions. Engage the candidates, conduct research, and screen them. Learn from your errors. It will take a lot of work and not be easy at first, but it will get easier with each candidate.
- Check to see if you know who you’re looking for.
- Improve the process. It must run like a well-oiled machine.
- Make an effort to conduct research and screen candidates.
- Be forthright about your requirements and willing to give up some of them if a candidate shows promise.
- In terms of technology, seek assistance from your CTO.
While assessing culture and team fit, solicit assistance from team members.
