How can a non-techie hire UI developers

Everyone in the industry doesn’t code. If you have ever worked in a technology company and had a taste of interviewing engineers, you know what you see on their resume is not what you get (WYSRIWYG). And when you are a non-developer and have a responsibility to hire a UI developer, things get worse.

This article has no intention of forcing you to do hiring this particular way but to examine what this mess is actually about and how can you overcome them. So let’s start fresh and look what are the different front-end technologies that can come across while hiring.

Here are few front-end languages HTML, Javascript, CSS, Actionscript, CoffeeScript (compiled to Javascript), XML-based languages (X3D, SMIL, SVG, DITA, some interpreted by the browser, others transformed using XSL), VBScript, Silverlight, Java (applets). Of all these, JavaScript (JS) rules over and can be used as a framework to build beautiful applications. AngularJS, ReactJS, EmberJS, MeteorJS are some of very popular JS frameworks right now.

Well! Above must have made it complex for you. Now let’s look at the definition of a UI Developer — This guy essentially takes care of the user interface and style of an application or website.

How do I evaluate them?

Check their work:

An easy thing that is possible here is that you can see and use the actual work of a UI developer. Ask them for their portfolio and live projects, if any.

Assess:

Give them a small test to build a simple product. Example use Instagram API to fetch pictures and create a gallery, news feed or a mini blog. These can help you get an insight on their thought process towards user interface. On DoSelect we enable you to do an assessment based on few functional parameters that can depict their performance.

Outsource vetting of talent:

I would consider this as the last option because there comes a lot of deliverability issues and the quality can’t be guaranteed. An outsource partner may not fully understand your requirement , resulting in wasting huge money and time.

The whole process boils down to only one thing — are you validating their work before hiring? Make sure that you verify their core competencies and skill sets.

Note: I haven’t covered on how to hire a UX developer because it requires different parameters to assess upon. I know the above problem is evident to the industry and we work towards solving. Will be happy to help with any questions on front-end hiring, ping me at rohit[at]doselect[dot]com