How to hire a JavaScript developer: the best way to quickly search and hire JS developers in 2023

Need to break down the process of hiring a JavaScript developer is a natural consequence of its popularity.

JavaScript is the number one web programming language. The PYPL Index reports its position as the third most-searched on Google. Statista survey shows that JavaScript, in fact, is the top most popular language in the world, considering that more than 65% of survey respondents use it. So the hopes to see JavaScript replaced by a more advanced and novel solution won’t come true any time soon.

And why would we want any language other than JavaScript for web development if it has come such a long way and by now has libraries for every imaginable purpose?

We are going to share some of the best practices of evaluating JavaScript developers along with our own hands-on advice. How to hire a JavaScript programmer, where to find them, how to integrate them into the core team?

First, let us go through the basics real quick.

Who is a JavaScript developer?

Software development engineers who specialize in JavaScript development are, correspondingly, JavaScript developers.

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript (often referred to as JS in writing) is a weakly-typed scripting language widely used in web development. It is so far the most popular language interpreted by Internet browsers, with no competition in sight. Perhaps its popularity owes to the fact that it is the only language that is natively supported across all browsers and the fact that, being also fairly old, it has tons of legacy code that needs improvement or revision.

Complex websites and web apps necessarily use JavaScript. It is fairly popular in non-web applications as well.

It is easy to associate JS with the Java programming language by mistake, given the name similarity. These languages are not historically or syntactically related. The name conundrum is recognized as a marketing move. So, if you intend to hire JS developers, make sure you type in the right search query, without an extra space. No such specialty as a “Java script programmer” exists.

How do you know that JavaScript is fit for your product?

An interactive, engaging website will obligatorily use JavaScript as one of its languages, beside HTML and CSS. Therefore, you’d need to hire a JavaScript developer to build a custom website with unique user interface functions.

Highly loaded websites and web applications also use JS-based frameworks to process data at the server side. So, a “JavaScript developer” qualification might actually imply that a specialist is proficient in Node.JS, Angular.JS, Vue.JS, or React.JS.

JavaScript is not the primary language for desktop and mobile platforms because these two already have their native languages and respective frameworks that provide maximum flexibility and performance.

Nonetheless, it is often favored in cross-platform mobile development, including hybrid apps. To be specific, React.JS and Ionic are the top two cross-platform mobile development frameworks that absolutely dominate the niche (competing with Flutter and Xamarin).

JavaScript pros and cons side-by-side

✅ JS is lousy by nature. It has easy syntax and does not require compilation.

✅ On the hand, tons of user-created libraries make it extremely diverse, not unlike Python.

✅ JS community rapidly develops is several direction at once. A handful of powerful corporation-backed open-source frameworks are JS-based and are in a state of perpetual evolution.

❌ No strict declaration of variable types in convenient but leads to subtle dangers in code: these concern security and performance.

❌ Client-side execution opens up opportunities for security breaches.

❌ Different browsers might interpret JS differently, introducing even more design and security challenges.

Before you set on to hire a JavaScript developer, define their specialization. The nature of the product itself is going to narrow down the choice.

JS developers work on the user-facing frontend part, the backend, or both.

JavaScript frontend developers design vibrant, interactive user interfaces. Their position has nothing to do with graphic design though – they deal with layouts, buttons (and other responsive elements), and business logic.

Overburdening a web application with client-side code will slow it down and cause lag, which is why most of the computation should be carried out on a server, no matter if it is a cloud-hosted or local one.

JavaScript backend developers focus on the application’s server-side code, and, finally, full stack JavaScript developers handle both the user interface and an app’s backend. Given enough time, they can singlehandedly finish an app from scratch.

Before we jump to the minimum general proficiencies and qualities that every JS dev must possess and technical interview questions, let us decide on the preferable engagement model.

There is no single success strategy that unambiguously prescribes hiring in-house JavaScript developers against freelancers or remote teams. Public opinion sometimes slips into the radical points of view, for example, that in-house teams are either a luxury or an unnecessary burden.

Thus the general tendency is, outsource whenever possible, insource when strictly necessary.

In-house Javascript Developer Pros and Cons

The in-house cooperation model fits those business owners who enjoy handpicking and nourishing employees. It goes without saying that an in-house team requires office space. Even in the time of lockdown, professional teams were reluctant to leave their cutting-edge office hardware and sacrifice productive eye-to-eye cooperation for the coziness of work from home.

The necessary social support packages must be in place: sick leaves, paid vacation, insurance, education, and recreation bonuses. Otherwise, a talented individual might just accept a counteroffer and join a competitor company across the street.

On the bright side, insourcing gives a unique opportunity to retain and promote talent, to train personnel on the spot, and build highly technological facilities or expert communities, especially in rare research-heavy niches.

For that reason, you’d notice large companies resort to a compromise: they outsource development to their own teams and offices in offshore countries. Japanese GlobalLogic outsourcing to Ukraine is one such example.

We might have given an impression that in-house JS development is obligatorily expensive and rather punishing than rewarding. Cheer up, if you hire a solo JavaScript developer and invite them over to your house, that’s still considered in-house development.

Freelance Javascript Developer Pros and Cons

The budgets vary but so do the time restrictions. One can stretch out development for five years, investing tiny portions of time and money into it, and still nail it. The same job could be handled by a professional offshore team in about a month, which gives an ultimate speed-to-market advantage, but for a substantially larger price.

Freelance JavaScript developers require careful screening so that one can be absolutely sure they will tackle the task at hand. There is no software development outsourcing company behind their back to vouch for them. The cooperation will either be built on trust and loyalty or strict agreements, possibly observed by a third party (an escrow service).

Before hiring a freelance JavaScript developer, one should definitely give their portfolio and testimonials a look. If you are a software development specialist yourself, browse their projects on open software repositories.

JavaScript freelancers will always work slower than teams even though their level of problem-solving, library knowledge, and development tools mastery might be extremely high compared to the industry’s average.

Nonetheless, JavaScript freelancers are great for simple projects that are easy to break into tiny deliverables, so that any other JavaScript coder is able to pick it up where the previous one left it.

Javascript Developer Outstaffing: Pros and Cons

Certain software development companies specialize particularly in JavaScript development outsourcing and are ready to offer a whole well-built team in a matter of days.

Nearshore and offshore development outsourcing will invariably imply a more or less inconvenient time difference, cultural gap, or, more importantly, the coding style and methodology.

The apps that process sensitive user data must comply with the international data protection regulations, and the remote JavaScript developer team must be aware of them and possess the respective certificates. This applies to every law-regulated niche.

You’ll rarely have an opportunity to talk to all remote JavaScript developers in person and micromanage the processes: the communication will mostly commence via the Account Manager or Tech Lead of a given team. Contrastingly, one can literally walk two doors and see any individual from their team, if they share the same office space. There are exceptions to the rule though. For example, Voypost sets up direct communication between their developers the product owner’s team when providing team augmentation services or dedicated teams.

The top reason to hire JS developers via nearshore or offshore software development companies is the price attractiveness. The top-2 reason is overall flexibility and organization of remote teams: the scale up and down at product owner’s will, easy to start working with and as easy to cease cooperation. Finally, one might highly value the vast experience in a certain niche of a given company and hire JS developers solely for that reason. The competition on the global IT market is so intense that indeed only the best service providers survive.

The process of hiring a JS developer has a lot of challenges and stumble stones, especially for small businesses or startups. Developers often resign from short-term projects as in-house offers and, to add to that, there are many more jobs than specialists on the market in 2023. To hire a high-quality specialist with relevant experience, you will have to spend a lot of budgets. 

But if you choose to cooperate with a staff augmentation company such as Voypost, you can cut costs and gain profits by mitigating all the risks. JS developers from our talent pool will join your team for a short- or long-term project, engaging with the same productivity as your in-house team would.

So, check out the IT outstaffing and tech employment benefits for your company and start your digital transformation today. Contact us, and we will help you hire the best 5% of JS developers.

Quick search and hire

IT outstaffing model allows companies to quickly find the needed specialists, expand internal teams, and control the development process. This model also allows you to search for specialists from different regions and countries. The hiring process can take from 3 days to 2 weeks.

Lower expenses

Hiring JS developers for example from Ukraine is approximately 40% more cost-efficient than hiring a developer of the same stack and expertise in Europe or the US. Consider that you also don’t have to overspend on workspace organization, medical insurance, and taxes.

Easy to cooperate

Many countries have strict employment policies like paid days off, taxes, and resignation rules. Since the development phase lasts from 3 to 12 months, not a lot of specialists would join an in-house team knowing that they’ll be fired afterward. IT outstaffing models allow cooperating with specialists for any terms.

Trusted developers

Voypost Talent Pool allows you to hire the best 5% remote developers from around the world. All our remote developers which are open for hiring undergo multistep interviewing. First, the human resource department screens the soft skills of the expert, then tests assignments, and technical interviews with live coding. We’ve created a special methodology for the evaluation of developers' skills, which allows us to better assess the proficiency of the candidates. To make the assessment correlate with the IT realities, Voypost’s specialists check the developers’ skills in real-life conditions by allowing them to engage in testing projects. Generally, we test for 60+ skills, data structures, algorithms, systems design, software specializations, and frameworks. We also check your potential specialist’s soft skills like English level and communication.

Depending on your background, two different approaches exist: you either look for fellow JavaScript developers for hire at programming forums, communities, and chatrooms as an insider and expert or you rely on the reputation of international job platforms and IT service provider testimonials without being able to truly evaluate them yourself.

In the latter case you are also probably not sure about the final design and capabilities of your future product, which puts you in need of a JavaScript consultant of some kind. Luckily, the representatives of a given JS development company will help you shape out the vision of your product – if they are proactive and genuinely interested in your venture.

Look around specialized IT service outsourcing platforms (e.g., Clutch).

There is also a quite straightforward and simple way to find JavaScript developers for hire: type in your case in the search bar and a handful of relevant IT outsourcing agencies will pop up. 

Voypost Talent Pool - is an online platform for searching and hiring remote developers. It allows you to find the best 5% of vetted developers via user-friendly search options with detailed information about each specialist.

User-friendly search

To ensure that you quickly find the most suitable developer for your needs, Voypost team has created a user-friendly search bar. You may filter the results by various criteria (stack, industry, types of IT projects, experience, and types of development with separate category for javascript developers). With a few clicks, you can hire a dream team.

Detailed information

By clicking on the developer of your preference, you get all the details you are looking for (nickname, intro, education, experience, primary & secondary stacks, and even language proficiency). It is how you find that perfect developer you have a 100% match with.

24/7 consultation

We consult you on how to hire the best developers. You can choose the most comfortable communication channel (email, chat, google-meet).

JavaScript programmer salary varies across the world, which is the primary reason why outsourcing exists, obviously.

Clients are after the lowest possible prices, looking to strike balance between expenditures and the end result.

The natural conclusion that comes to many of them in the process is that hiring a programmer with more than five years of experience (Senior level) for a trivial task, such as application or website design, is an overkill. They are then not only looking to hire a JavaScript developer in the most financially attractive region of the world but also the one at Middle or even Junior experience level, who are still able to close the said tasks and demonstrate fairly high quality. Yet their salary could be one tenth of a Senior’s.

Here’s an approach that Voypost recently adopted to optimize the balance between quality, prices, and task complexity. We hire the best Junior JavaScript engineers we come across and train them to manage a certain task (if necessary), so that they basically become a part of the client’s team. It takes a few weeks, at most, for them to familiarize themselves with any project and keep working on it confidently, with a steady pace. In half a year, these professionals are ready to fully integrate into your team, including relocation.

Of course, we pick up high-level tasks as well, which is proved by the case history.

You could pay a JavaScript expert about $10,000 a month, on average, or you could cut the price by 50%. What if you could cut it 80% without risking the loss of quality soever?

How to Hire a JavaScript Developer: Technical Recruiter Tips

JavaScript developers are expected to be both technically proficient and emotionally mature, as well as their interviewers and direct managers. A good interview and subsequent onboarding process set the right tone for fruitful cooperation for the month and years to come.

Skills to look for in a JavaScript Developer

Soft skills are recognized as important as hard skills.

No special test is required to see that a JavaScript developer is an easy-going, communicative person, honest, capable of self-criticism but confident in their knowledge at the same time.

How does high emotional intelligence and just “being sweet” improve performance? It is not obvious at first. But think of it this way: talkativeness facilitates the flow of information and transparency of work processes, while good humor boosts creativity and certainly makes a workplace more comfortable. Comfort is directly related to performance, and performance can be measured. In fact, it has been measured many times before, giving rise to the conclusion that soft skills matter a great deal. 

A candidate who admits that they are unable to solve a given task is more valuable than an overconfident one who picks a task and fails to accomplish it in time.

One could also explicitly ask a candidate to recall a situation that demonstrates how they apply the said soft skills.

Analytical thinking and problem solving are soft skills as well. Indubitably, a JavaScript developer who faces an extraordinary task needs these to implement a function that has not yet been included in the existing libraries.

A candidate might be asked to solve a logical puzzle or an impossible task so that they showcase their thinking capabilities. They might be even asked a philosophical question merely so that an interviewer could see how they argue their point and structure their speech.

Technical Interview with JavaScript Developer

Hard Skills are gained through education and training; they are related to specific tools and are never inherent to a person.

A Human Resource manager usually addresses the soft skills, and when they find a candidate JS developer fit, the latter may proceed to the next stage, the technical interview that deals exactly with concrete JS tools.

Those who are passionate and enthusiastic about a certain language, will surely know its history, the variety of available libraries, the related testing and debugging tools, the products developed with it, the behavior difference across various browsers, and so on.

Of course, they will also demonstrate how they apply theory to practice. Technical interview tasks vary in scope. It could be a problem from a competitive programmer’s handbook or a request to build a login form with SQL integration. It could be a massive task, comparable in scope to a milestone of a real project.

Team Leaders want to see the coding conventions their potential future teammates use. How fast they code, if they are able to learn on the go, if they ask the right questions when noticing inconsistencies in tasks, do they reach out for help when stuck, etc.

Hiring a software developer, technical interviewers commonly ask to write a function without the help of any libraries. An aspiring JavaScript freelancer might be asked, for example, to bubble-sort an array using exclusively vanilla JS.

12 JavaScript Developer Interview Questions To Ask

Of course, every developer has their own interviewing style. They have their personal set of the professional aspects that they deem important, and there is no single right way to perform technical interviews.

Besides, different projects have drastically different scopes, tools, and complexity levels.

The following is merely an example list of questions that could be used to evaluate an in-house or remote JavScript developer before hiring them.

1. How to empty an Array in JavaScript?
2. What is the significance of, and reason for, wrapping the entire content of a JavaScript source file in a function block?
3. Which is faster between JavaScript and an ASP script?
4. What is negative Infinity?
5. What would be the result of 3+2+”7″?
6. What is the use of Void (0)?
7. What is event bubbling?
8. What is the difference between Attributes and Property?
9. What is the difference between Call & Apply?
10. How closures work in JavaScript?
11. Why you should not use innerHTML in JavaScript?
12. What is JavaScript Unit Testing, and what are the challenges in JavaScript Unit Testing

JavaScript Programmer Onboarding Checklist

The process of onboarding a new JavaScript developer works in two directions; it protects and employee from the discomfort they may face later in work when they discover a practice or tool they are uncomfortable with, to protect them from causing damage to the company, and to settle healthy, acceptable boundaries between Team Leaders and their subordinates.

The company, in turn, seeks to protect itself from reputational damage, property damage, information leaks, and so on. The process is mutually beneficial because if the company has organized workspace in such a way that a newcomer employee cannot cause massive irreversible damage then there is no chance the said employee will be accused of such.

Have you heard of the story of a Junior who accidentally deleted a production database on their first day? It is so unbelievable it could be a good joke. Alas, it is not, and the interesting fact is that the programming community put about half of the blame on the Chief Technical Officer of the said company.

Why so?

The CTO has allowed this situation, which speaks badly of their ability as a highest-ranking manager.

Situations like this (and the less dramatic ones) must obviously be avoided at all costs.

First impressions matter. Not only to avoid a possible disaster but create the most comfortable conditions for a new employee and alleviate the stress of entering a collective of complete strangers. Where do we start?

• A welcoming gift, as a sign of good faith, would be nice. It does not necessarily have to be a mainstream branded mug or a hoodie.

• Perhaps a friendly handshake of a CEO and a personal introduction to the company values, mission, and the spirit in general?

• Point out a person they can address with ANY question. It could be their Team Lead who also plays the role of a mentor/life coach.

• Show around the office, if any. Introduce a remote JavaScript developer to their teammates and make sure to add them into all the necessary chatrooms in the chosen means of communication.

• By the way, make it clear which means of communication are used and when. Is it appropriate to write to someone during the off hours or weekends concerning the job-related issues?

• Define their working schedule, the tasks for the first week, and the person who would assign more tasks in future.

• On the technical side of things, agree on the tech stack and the coding conventions. For one last time, make sure that the knowledge of certain libraries, or certain documentation formats, or target browsers, is present, etc.

• If there is a funny onboarding brochure laying around somewhere, handle it to them. A PDF will do as well.

• The work equipment. Could include a personal encrypted laptop, for example.

• Company account credentials and access the necessary software via that account.

• Apply maximum effort to make the paperwork painless.

From that point, gradually increase the complexity and importance of tasks, make sure they make friends (if they want to), and always have a buddy Team Lead to watch their back.

It goes without saying that everyone loves cookies — even the remote JavaScript developers.

Wrapping Up

Onboarding is stressful but is the process of hiring a JavaScript developer. Why not contact a company that has already selected and hired dozens of them so that they could pick the one who’s best fit for the task you have in mind?

Voypost focuses on hiring the top JavaScript developers. It takes just about one to three days to find and prepare the right one. Ready when you are!

Recommended Readings:

• Software development team: structures, approaches, and characteristics

• TOP front end technologies in 2022: choose the right one for your digital product

• What is IT outsourcing? Quick overview 2022

• Outstaffing vs Outsourcing: which to choose?