Pre employment assessment tests have become a common method in the corporate world now to fine-tune the employee hiring process. Employers can actually find if their prospective candidates actually have the skills that they have claimed to have in their resumes.

So if you are planning to hire some front-end developers who will be worth the investment, then it may be a good idea to conduct a pre-employment assessment on them.

The skills to look for when hiring front-end developers

Front-end developers need to be able to write the front-end code for the creation of application layouts. They should also be able to add responsive elements to the website and also optimize and scale up applications. Some technical skills that they need in order to perform these tasks include

• Knowledge of HTML and CSS – These are absolutely essential for creating any web pages
• Ability to use JavaScript – Javascript is important in order to create responsive websites. A very popular Javascript framework that all front end developers should be able to use is Angular, JQuery and ReactJS are also very useful JavaScript libraries that front-end developers know.
• Knowledge of PHP – PHP is also a popular scripting language used in web development that front end developers should be able to use
• Knowledge of Bootstrap – This CSS open-source framework is also used in many front-end development projects
• Ability to use AJAX – AJAX is a technology that helps web pages connect and share data with servers

Pre employment assessment areas for front-end developers

Once the employer identifies the skills needed in front-end developers they can then conduct pre employment assessment tests on them to prospective hires to see if they are able to implement those skills logically to produce results. Some areas for testing front-end developers include:

• Use of Frameworks – The ability of front-end developers to include and adapt pre-written frameworks into their websites/applications shows their ability to efficiently manage available resources
• Responsive Designs – While many front-end developers claim to have theoretical knowledge of JavaScript due to their educational qualifications, in reality, many struggle to develop actual responsive website designs. So this is a key area in pre-employment assessments.
• Test-Driven Development – Testing is becoming increasingly important as software becomes more and more advanced and complex. The ability of front end developers to run test cases and accordingly solve all issues is very important to test.
• Version Control Systems – In the IT sector version control is an essential task for developers as they have to identify and track changes made to the code over time and save the relevant changes for future testing and improvement.
• Security – As client software becomes more complicated and able to perform more tasks the need for security at the client end is also rising. Front end developers are now also expected to be aware of and implement various security measures into their coding.

Finding the right role for front-end developers:

Once prospective hires are tested on these specific areas in their pre-employment assessment, they will be graded and according to that grading they may be hired if their skill level matches the skills gaps in that organization. But not all hires will be recruited at the same level, depending on their skill level they may be placed in different tiers of the organization:

• Junior Front-End Developers – These are the more cost-effective hires who can be employed in large numbers to work on HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Middle Front-End Developers – These developers have a minimum of 3 years of experience and are chosen because of their ability to understand project requirements quickly
• Senior Front-End Developers – The senior front-end developers have a minimum of 5 years of experience and they are hired to be solutions providers when the application runs into bugs and glitches

Using MeritTrac for front-end developer hiring

MeritTrac is a corporate employee assessment and hiring service. They can conduct pre employment assessment tests for front-end developers to ensure that the company can make faster and more effective hiring decisions. MeritTrac makes corporate KSA matrix maintenance easier than ever before.

Every year hundreds of front-end developers are hired in IT companies. But very few organizations are able to get the proper ROI from this investment. If you want your organization to feature on this short list then MeritTrac is the solution for you to ensure you hire the top talent to meet your business needs.