Where‌ ‌To‌ ‌Hire‌ ‌A‌ ‌Freelance‌ ‌Front‌ ‌End‌ ‌Developer‌?

Welcome to the IT world! Nowadays more and more customers are turning to freelance to find talented developers and thereby reduce the cost of project execution. After all, everyone knows that freelancers can develop a website or application for a very nice price and fast lines. Thus, freelance exchanges attract customers. Now freelancing is becoming a new trend in times of unpredictable situations in the global economy.

And since many customers are beginning to look closely to such specialists, the first question that arises is: Where To Hire A Freelance Front End Developer.

Therefore, I wrote this article – a guide to resources (from general-purpose to highly specialized) where you can find freelancers.

Read on and discover!

Frontend developers are quite common specialists in the IT market. Having surveyed more than 49,000 IT professionals from around the world, the Stackoverflow team concluded: Frontend developers are in the TOP 3 of the most popular IT professions (data from 2020). Fronted developers create those things that a person will directly contact with, that is, they focus on the appearance of the product.

Frontend developers are central to the development chain, so it is very important to understand what exactly their work consists of. The main thing to remember is that fronted is not the most important level, as is the backend. A website or application needs three things – a GUI (graphical interface), business logic, and a Data Store. No project will work if at least one of the listed components is missing.

The graphical interface allows users to interact with the IT system. However, they do not need special knowledge or coding skills. When you open an app as a user, you don’t see a horde of cryptic lines of code because you don’t need it. You just click on a menu or some icon and you get the desired function. 

Now that you know what a front-end developer should be doing, you can start hiring such specialists.

Also Read: 3 Great IDEs for Your Web Development Project

There are three approaches to hiring freelancers:

The first approach is when a freelancer was recommended to you by your colleagues/friends/acquaintances. The upside of this approach is that you know this freelancer probably did his job well – otherwise he wouldn’t be recommended. The downsides are clear – what a freelancer did well to your friend does not mean that he will suit your task.

Projects in IT and marketing differ in labor costs and complexity. There is an understandable amount of work, then everything is, in principle, simple. And sometimes there are projects with a search for a solution, and then everything can drag on for a very long time and not always the freelancer’s fault.

There are some tips for this approach:

– check that the freelancer is still suitable for your task;
– if he is suitable, then check with the person who recommends him, what are the features of working with him, what motivates him, how the work took place, what needs to be done in order to achieve results on time.
– you need to understand that in any case, when ordering a project, the responsibility lies between the customer and the contractor, and therefore it will never be bad if you read articles on the topic, delve into the subject area where you place an order, look at blog posts and you will better understand what you order. Then the results will always be better than just hoping that you will find a high-level professional who will do well and it will lead to good results.

The second option is to use a freelance exchange with an oral agreement, i.e. find a developer there and then negotiate with him somewhere outside: in Skype, in Telegram, in the mail, and so on. Experienced freelance clients compare candidates according to some parameters – reviews of the freelancer, whether he had previous experience, price, terms, a portfolio with completed projects.

And the third option, the best one, is to work directly with convenient, high-quality freelance platforms. Many point out the Upwork.com platform as the best one. What are the advantages of Upwork? The first big plus is the opportunity to ask the so-called Screening Questions or questions that a freelancer must answer before applying for your project.

You can add 2-3 questions and get better-quality applications, already with the understanding that the person at least read the description of your project, instead of receiving these applications from candidates, with whom they will communicate in PM for a long time and find out, in general, they can decide whether they do it or not. An example of such questions might be: What similar project did you do?

How does it look like? Ask the candidate why you should choose him, such a question is focused on self-presentation, on a reference to previous experience, on the fact that the person is motivated and what he promises. Ask if the developer has any suggestions for the project to go well so that the problem is solved.

You can see where you can improve the solution to the problem, whether the freelancer thought about it or he just formally wrote that everything is fine, there are no improvements, no ideas, and he will do exactly as described, and will not offer any better solutions to this task. By the way, when creating a project on Upwork, you can immediately choose the availability of the desired technologies and the location of freelancers.

For example, if you want a freelancer from Europe or the USA then freelancers from India will drop down the list of applications since they do not fit all your criteria. In the same way, you can sketch out other criteria there: by technology, by how much time he worked at Upwork, how much money he earned, what his rating is, and so on.

Accordingly, you can carry out just such a filtering and pay attention first of all to those applications that meet all your criteria. Also on Upwork, sending invitations to freelancers is absolutely free and there are a bunch of filters. If there are few responses to your task, you find people who fit it, you can immediately filter out only cheap, medium, expensive and send them personally a specific invitation to which they most often respond.

The system encourages that if you answer on time and quickly, then you will receive more orders. If you answer slowly or do not answer, you receive orders less often and show you less in search results. The second big advantage is that on Upwork you can pay for a project according to 2 models. The first model is Fixed-Price with specific points.

And the second option is the hourly pay for the job. During hourly work, the special Upwork software monitors how the freelancer works, makes screenshots, records the amount of activity, mouse movement, keystrokes, and then shows this in simple, clear, and transparent reports, from which pricing is built.

Also, freelancers on Upwork are really afraid of bad reviews, because bad reviews can lead, at least, to a decrease in the number of orders, he can get a refund, or, for example, he will be banned in the system and he will stop receiving many good orders.

Accordingly, they really worry about their rating, the rating is constantly recalculated, it takes into account many factors, and this leads to the fact that they are more responsible for such orders on Upwork. We can conclude that Upwork is the optimal platform for recruiting freelancers.

Also Read: The Top 5 Economic Megatrends That Defined The Last Decade

Conclusion

After reading this article, you know three ways to hire talented front-end developers. Some customers also turn to freelance communities, as through them you can get more recommendations and advice.

There are also companies that work with freelancers and bring them together. Certain companies work closely with freelancers or have products and services that help the customer in finding a specialist.

I want to remind you that when working with freelance platforms, you need to be able to correctly set all the criteria for finding a developer and know what you want from a future candidate.

Thanks for reading the article ‘Where To Hire A Freelance Front End Developer. Wish you successful hiring!