How to Hire a React Native Developer
React Native has created a revolution in mobile app developments that is hard to comprehend. It allows JavaScript and TypeScript developers to create feature-rich mobile applications for iOS and Android using the same code base, making it an excellent platform for building your mobile apps.
React Native is incredibly dynamic, allowing you to create any application for your business needs. Furthermore, the similarity to React, the most popular web front-end framework, means you can quickly introduce Native to your existing team to help grow your organization.
This guide will explain how to hire amazing React Native developers and ensure that they are the right fit for your team. We’ll review some of the key aspects of a good React Native developer and how you can spot them. We’ll look at how to assess these skills, how to make sure they’re the right fit for your company, and how you can make sure that they’ll make an impact from day one. We’ll also provide you with some sample technical interview questions to help you quickly and efficiently screen candidates.
Table Of Contents
Why Hire a React Native Developer?
Mobile app development capabilities provide your company with an incredible opportunity to reach the billions of devices in people’s hands worldwide. Generally, building this kind of capability requires developers who are familiar with mobile platforms development, their specific tools, frameworks, and in some cases, even particular programming languages.
As this market quickly changes, it can be difficult to find people who are up to date on the relevant technologies and provide the functionality you need across different devices. React Native solves this by abstracting away the specifics that tie the framework to any one platform. It gives the ability to write one single code base, and then deploy it to several app stores. This can be incredibly powerful, as it significantly reduces costs and allows you to hire half the number of developers required for traditional mobile app development.
To compete within the modern world of mobile software development, you need to use a technology that others are using to deliver world-class mobile experiences. Through the power of reusability that React Native provides, you can hire developers that will have a massive impact on productivity and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, using this guide, you’ll understand what makes a good React Native developer, how to spot those that’ll make a great addition to your team, and how you can help foster a development environment that’ll ensure your clients and customers are delighted.
Non-Technical Skills to Assess in React Native Developers
Working Within a Team
Every developer should know how to work within a tight-knit development team. Usually, teams are composed of a designer, product owner, several React Native developers, and at least one person responsible for quality assurance. Although this varies from business to business, the ability for any React Native developers you hire to work in these close-knit teams is essential to their success. They should know at which stage of the development process they need to involve the designers, how to communicate progress with the product owner, and how to communicate effectively with the other developers.
Client Relationships
Another crucial skill to look out for is experience working directly with clients, whether through previous projects or in very small teams. These developers will have developed experience in understanding what customers care about, especially if their experience is relevant to your industry. It’ll also provide your team with potential internal leadership, helping drive internal improvements to projects towards the path of customer satisfaction. This directly ties into searching for an understanding of the impact that mobile applications can have.
Search for React Native developers who have seen the end-to-end development for their application: from concept, design, release, and post-launch management. This will provide your company with incredible insights and experience that will be beneficial to any project.
Release Processes
Speaking of experience, it’s paramount that you search for engineers with demonstrable knowledge of releasing applications to your relevant platforms. This means asking them for examples of applications they have worked on that are publicly available. Ask what features they worked on and what improvements they would make. This will allow you to understand what they’ve learned in their previous roles and how they can apply this to your organization. It also allows you to verify their competency and demonstrate their end-to-end experience in releasing software in an industry with many moving parts. They should be familiar with the application review process and what specific platforms require for your application to be approved for the public.
An Eye for Design
A passion for design and usability is vital to the success of any React Native developer. Mobile apps need to be easy to use, well designed and usable for various people. This means that you should be searching for React Native developers who know how to implement designs through various tools, such as Sketch or Figma. Furthermore, they should understand how to make sound decisions regarding designs if a dedicated designer is not available. This extends into accessibility. Many mobile devices provide several accessibility tools, such as screen readers, color modes and others. As part of the application review process, many app stores require that your mobile app supports these modes, so it’s essential that any developer you hire knows how to integrate this into their projects.
Technical Skills to Assess in React Native Developers
React and React Native
When hiring strong React Native developers, you must look for specific technical skills. These will help you identify whether they’ll hit the ground running when joining your projects so they can immediately start making an impact. Look for a solid modern Javascript experience. The questions below can help you identify this.
You should also look for experience within the React ecosystem, not only with React Native, but also React.js. Knowledge of this would show that the candidate will effectively navigate your React Native projects; they’ll know how component life cycles work and how to manage application state.
Typescript Knowledge
Another key skill to search for, especially when hiring developers for modern projects, is to look for a solid understanding of Typescript, as it can significantly impact your project’s reliability.
Continuing with modern React Native development, any React Native developer you hire must be familiar with React hooks, component life cycles, and creating reusable components across your mobile applications. Knowledge of this will also tie into the optimization of mobile applications, which is crucial to application performance and to make sure they are approved on certain app stores. The candidate should know how to manage to render calls effectively, how efficient their components are, and how to work with external data in conjunction with this.
State Management
You should be looking for a strong foundation in state management when hiring any React Native developer. Whether that’s from Redux or MobX, they need to be familiar with managing mobile application state effectively. You can use several of the questions specified below to gauge this. Also, look for adequate knowledge of using the React Native navigation and its accompanying transitions. This will help your mobile applications feel smooth, and it’s a basic tenant of any good React Native developer. You can combine this with checking for strong fundamental React knowledge, such as JSX and working with the virtual DOM, as these are key for any work in React applications.
Testing and Debugging
Testing and debugging are critical to the development of React Native mobile applications. Therefore, you should verify that the candidate has knowledge of Enzyme for component testing and Jest for unit testing. These technologies will prove invaluable to your organization as they’ll drastically improve the reliability of your mobile apps and help ensure you’re delivering high-quality software. Along with this, it’s important that developers know how to debug applications when working with React.
Despite the tools that React Native provides, it’s useful for candidates to be familiar with the code it compiles down to, namely Swift for iOS, and Java for Android. It allows them to debug complex issues and possibly implement custom functionality within the React ecosystem. Finally, it’s a huge advantage for candidates to have a thorough knowledge of analyzing applications once they’ve been released and installed. You can ask candidates how they’ve dealt with issues, such as an update for a React Native app being released and it causing some users to reinstall. These kinds of questions will allow you to probe how well they navigate issues that may appear once development is complete and your mobile apps are finally released to the public.
Wrap Up
As we’ve seen, hiring a React Native developer without a clear plan and guide can be a difficult task. Many factors are unique to mobile developers that can often be overlooked, so it’s important to know what you’re searching for before interviewing candidates.
There are several technical aspects to hiring React Native developers, making it a challenging position to hire for. Be aware of their skills outside of programming and how this will contribute to your business. Hiring great React Native developers can be an incredible advantage, and allow you to set yourself apart from competitors, so always be on the lookout for anyone that catches your eye.
