Frontend Mentor April 2022 review
Hello! I hope you had an excellent April. In the UK, we’ve had quite a few bank holidays, which has meant work has been a little more stop-start than usual. However, relaxing and seeing family has been extremely fun and provided welcome opportunities to recharge a little. As we grow Frontend Mentor (and hopefully the team!), we always want to ensure everyone isn’t overworked and has plenty of time and opportunities to take breaks and pursue interests outside of work. So, even though it’s only Mike and myself working full-time on Frontend Mentor at the moment, we try to stay true to how we want to run the company and allow ourselves time off. It would be way too easy to work ourselves into the ground and burn out. In fact, as I’m writing this, Mike is in the middle of a two-week rail trip around Europe with his partner!
I’m excited to talk more about how the Hiring Platform is coming along. I’ll use a slightly different structure for this month’s review to dive into more detail about what it will look like and how it will function! I’ve talked about it a lot, but it will be nice for you to see it and get a feel for it.
Before I do that, I’d like to welcome the 16,894 new members who registered on the Frontend Mentor site and the 7,000+ people who joined our Slack community! It’s fantastic to have you all as part of the Frontend Mentor community! 👋
Features & Updates
The Hiring Platform
I’ll use a different structure for the review this month, as I mentioned above. I want to give you a glimpse of how the Hiring Platform will function and what to expect. We’re at a point where we’ve built pretty much all the pages and got most of the functionality working. We will need some time to refine and test all the main customer journeys before launching our beta version.
To give you an idea of how it will work, I’ll use the design templates of our main pages instead of screenshots from our staging environment. Don’t worry about the written content in the designs, as it’s all dummy content. The main thing to focus on will be the intended functionality and the overall presentation of the content.
Talent Search
“Talent Search” will be the primary feature in version one of the Hiring Platform. This will allow recruiters to proactively search for developers within the Frontend Mentor community who meet their criteria. Being able to search for developers rather than simply waiting for applicants to come to you will be extremely helpful in reducing the time to find strong candidates.
Recruiters will be able to filter candidates using options like contract type, location, and desired workplace, among others. Our search functionality will display the top developers on our platform who meet their needs based on their criteria. At first, developers will be sorted by Mentor Score. But, as we evolve the platform, we’ll undoubtedly refine the search algorithm to improve the relevance of the results.
Profile
The profile pages on the Hiring Platform will look slightly different to the ones on the Learning Platform. We’ll provide an overview of all the information each developer adds to their work preferences form (accessed by clicking the briefcase icon on the Learning Platform). Alongside that, we’ll show a developer’s top comments that they’ve made on other people’s projects. This will help recruiters gain an understanding of a developer’s knowledge and communication style. At the bottom, the recruiter will be able to browse the various projects a developer has completed to assess their skill level.
Note that we’re still testing the layout of this page, so it might change before we launch. We’re going to test switching the “Latest comments” and “Projects” to place more emphasis on the projects section. We’re also going to test using equal-height preview images to create an aligned grid instead of a masonry layout to make it easier to view the projects.
Project
When reviewing a developer’s projects, a recruiter can get a glimpse of the solution using the design comparison slider. They can also click the links to preview the site and view the code, much like the Learning Platform. The project page will also include Brief, Accessibility Report, and HTML Validation Report tabs so a recruiter can summarise the project requirements and get initial insights into whether there might be issues with the code.
Summary
As you can see, we’re keeping the first version very simple. Recruiters will be able to search for developers, view their profiles, review their projects, and then message them if they seem like suitable candidates. As we start to bring on customers, we’ll add more features based on customer needs and insights.
As a developer, all you need to do to show up on the Hiring Platform when it launches is set yourself as available for work using the work preferences form. Beyond that, continue to complete challenges and help others by giving helpful feedback, and you could get scouted by a recruiter looking for a developer just like you!
We’d still recommend applying for jobs using traditional channels if you're looking for a job. However, this will hopefully add a way for you to get hired while improving your skills by building projects and helping others!
This coming month
- Hiring Platform refinements — As I mentioned above, our primary focus this month is pulling everything together to start preparing for launch. This will include finishing the last bits of functionality, integrating our subscription management service (we use Chargebee), and testing everything ready for our first customers. We haven’t got a firm launch date yet for the beta, but we’re aiming for June, so we’re not far away now! The goal will be to have a firm launch date set by the end of this month.
- Launch planning — Beyond the development work that Mike and Josh will complete, I’ll do plenty of launch planning. Launching a new product is always an exciting time, but there’s a lot to be done to get as many eyeballs on the product as possible to get the first customers using the service. The more people we can get on the platform, the higher the chance people in the Frontend Mentor community will find roles and get hired. So, I want to get it in front of many people looking to hire front-end developers.
- Finalise planning for home/dashboard merge — Merging the home feed and dashboard pages are what we’ll work on as soon as the Hiring Platform goes live. So I’ve been doing lots of planning, testing, and refining work to get the designs right and lined up for when we can shift focus to that. I’ll give some previews once we get closer to working on that. It’s a change that I think will significantly improve what we have!
Wall of Fame
Mentors of the Month
Congratulations to Kamasah-Dickson for finishing in the top spot on the Wall of Fame for March! Also, a big congratulations to Ivan and Shashree Samuel for finishing 2nd and 3rd, respectively. You’ve all got lovely shiny new Mentor of the Month badges on your profiles!
As always, a big thanks to everyone who gave feedback and support to other community members throughout the past month. Giving code reviews is not only a great help to other people and a brilliant way to meet other community members, but it’s also incredible for your own learning.
Reading other people’s code, analysing it, and giving constructive feedback will really help boost your skills and reinforce your knowledge. Giving code reviews is a crucial part of being a professional developer, so reviewing other people’s solutions is a perfect place to practise giving helpful feedback to others!
With the Hiring Platform on the horizon, it’s also worth noting that the code reviews you give to others on the platform will play a big part in where you appear on the developer search results. Your code reviews for other people will be an incredible way to display your knowledge. This will help hiring managers get a detailed insight into you as a developer by reviewing your solutions and reading your code reviews.
Airdrop Raffle winner
Congratulations to Fazza Razaq Amiarso for winning our monthly Airdrop Raffle! Enjoy using your free premium challenge credit to take on one of our premium challenges!
Each week and month, we randomly pick someone to win a design credit (weekly) or a premium challenge credit (monthly). Every week or month you finish on the Wall of Fame, you’ll be in with a chance of winning! 🎉
Feedback and ideas welcome
If you’ve got any feedback or ideas for Frontend Mentor, please let me know. I love hearing how you’re using the platform. The best place to message me would be to DM in the Slack community.
I hope you have a great month ahead! 🙂
