--- title: "How to Assess for 3 Critical Soft Skills in Front-End Developers | CoderPad" description: "Successful front-end devs need to know more than how to build beautiful interfaces. Soft skills are essential in interviews, and this article discusses assessing three critical soft skills when hiring front-end developers." canonical: "https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/top-3-soft-skills-front-end-developers/" last_modified: "2023-05-28 14:35:40" --- [Back to blog](https://coderpad.io/blog/) # How to Assess for 3 Critical Soft Skills in Front-End Developers August 2, 2022 5 Minute Read By Ken Swearengen [Interviewing](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/) Would you hire an engineer who could create beautiful websites but who was constantly arguing with their teammates? What about a developer who is extremely productive, but doesn’t adhere to industry and team standards? Depending on how desperate you are, you might take your chances with candidates like these – but be warned, you risk a lot of wasted time, frustration, and reduced team morale having these kinds of people on your team. That’s why taking the time to assess soft skills is essential. More than just a buzzword, these skills can encompass just about everything other than coding in an IDE. There are tons of soft skills you can evaluate for – creativity, leadership, time management, work ethic, interpersonal skills – the list goes on and on. Ultimately you will have to be the one to determine which soft skills to focus on when hiring new members for your team—but figuring out where to start looking can be difficult. While most soft skills are valuable to have for engineers of any type, there are nuances in how you assess them during a a front-end focused interview. To help you out, here are three soft skills that we’ve found to be essential for successful front-end developer candidates, and how you can look out for them during the interview. ## Ready to start interviewing? [Get a demo](https://coderpad.io/sales/) ## Critical thinking Front-end coding can be messy. With lots of moving parts like design considerations, API calls to a backend, and state management, it’s easy for even senior developers to gloss over error-causing issues. Will they predict where HTML elements may clash? If not, are they able to think of ways to fix them? Additionally, can they think through various states of an application’s UI or how to handle race conditions between API calls? Can they brainstorm ways to handle those sorts of problems? Just as importantly, you want to ensure your future employees are able to think outside the immediate scope of the problem and suggest enhancements when appropriate. Good critical-thinkers know when to push back (politely but forcefully) when they notice something wrong or have an idea of improving something. Not only will you catch more mistakes and improve your product that way, but by empowering employees to speak their minds constructively, you’ll improve their morale and keep them around a bit longer. ### How to assess for critical thinking There are a couple of ways you can assess for critical thinking during interviews with front-end candidates: 1. Give them a technical question with not-very-well-written code. This can be code with errors or just written in a non-optimized way. Watch how they work through it. You can easily see if they’re only worrying about superficial issues or tackling the issues that require deeper thinking. 2. Encourage them to ask questions and listen to the questions they’re asking you. Are they asking questions clarifying business logic and design decisions? Are they taking action on the answers they get from those questions? These are both signs they’re thinking critically about their development decisions. Keeping an open dialogue here is key to being able to assess not just critical thinking but also the other two soft skills below. You can’t read minds, so getting candidates to open up to you will be crucial for assessing their soft skill set. ## Time management and the ability to prioritize Front-end candidates will come to you with a variety of strengths and weaknesses. Some will be better at design, some will be better at optimization of things like memory and render performance, and some will be better at writing clean code. But no matter their strengths, they should know how to prioritize their time on different aspects of their front-end programming. For example, suppose you have a barely functional page and your new developer tasked with completing the functionality is spending all their time trying to make the left nav menu look like the Mona Lisa. In that case, you will have some severe productivity problems. Likewise, suppose your team is working on an almost-finished project that will be passed on to another team for maintenance. In that case, you may want to ensure your developers prioritize code documentation over things like memory allocation optimization. ### How to assess for prioritization Make sure any technical questions you ask involve multiple aspects of front-end programming – like styling in CSS, structuring with HTML, and coding with JavaScript (or [your front-end framework of choice](https://coderpad.io/languages/frontend-frameworks/)). Then, look at where they’re spending time coding. Alternatively, give them scenarios that require them to think about their priorities. If they have a looming deadline, is it okay to sacrifice a little bit of the functionality to meet the product manager’s design requirements? Is it okay to focus on code optimization by paying less attention to documenting the code? There are always nuances and complexities to answers to these questions, so don’t forget to have the candidate explain the reasoning behind their answers. ## Communication Despite the common stereotype, most developers do not exist in isolation. They’re almost always a part of a team, and being a part of a successful social unit like this involves communication. While verbal communication is essential, it’s not the only way to get the message across – especially in these days of remote and hybrid work environments. Code commenting, emails, and instant messages are other common ways developers get their thoughts and concerns across to their teammates and receive ideas and concerns from their fellow developers, QA testers, product managers, etc. ### How to assess communication skills Many developers are not naturally talkative on the best of days, even more so during stressful experiences like interviews. Therefore it’s up to you to set the tone of the communication for the interview. At the beginning of the interview, encourage them to talk as much as they’re comfortable with about their thought process. Encourage them to ask questions. Let them know code commenting will help when it comes to reviewing the candidate’s performance. Additionally, ask them questions about the communication experience: - What’s their preferred mode of communication, and why? - What’s a time they were challenged with miscommunication, and how did they resolve it? - How do they minimize communication errors in an asynchronous environment? Again, tailor the specific questions to how your own organization operates. For example, if you use Slack as the primary means of communication, ask the candidate how they’d convey a question or report a bug through that medium. ## More hiring resources Soft skills assessments are just one part of creating an excellent engineering interview process. To make the most out of the short time you have with candidates, we also recommend the following resources: - [How to Interview Front-end Developers](https://coderpad.io/interview-front-end-developers/) - [How to Run Front-End Developer Interviews That Don’t Suck](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/5-tips-for-interviewing-frontend/) - [A Holistic Guide to Diversity and Inclusion in the Technical Hiring Process](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/a-holistic-guide-to-diversity-and-inclusion-in-the-technical-hiring-process/) - [The #1 Best Anti-Cheat Interview Question Ever](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/the-1-best-anti-cheat-interview-question-ever/) - [Returning to the Office? Don’t Bring These Bad Technical Interview Elements With You](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/returning-to-the-office-dont-bring-these-bad-technical-interview-elements-with-you/) Happy hiring! ## Subscribe for more CoderPad insights ## Trending Articles Previous slide Next slide [Interviewing ## 5 Skills of the Future Developer: A Framework for Evaluating AI Fluency According to CoderPad’s State of Tech Hiring 2026 report, 82% of developers now find GenAI useful — up from 76% just a year ago. More telling: 54% of developers would experience a measurable productivity drop if AI tools were removed tomorrow. AI isn’t a productivity booster anymore. It’s infrastructure. With this shift, it’s no surprise […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/5-skills-of-the-future-developer-a-framework-for-evaluating-ai-fluency/) [Hiring Developers ## Q&A: Musings of a CEO on Tech Interviews, Cheating and AI In this Q&A session on cheating and AI in tech interviews, Amanda Richardson emphasizes the importance of trust and effective interview design. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/qa-musings-of-a-ceo-on-tech-interviews-cheating-and-ai/) [Engineering Management ## How To Use CoderPad To Interview Software Architects Software architects are the masterminds behind the design and structure of software systems, ensuring that projects are scalable, maintainable, and aligned with business goals. Unlike more hands-on engineering and development roles, assessing architect skills in an interview relies much less on watching them code and more on their ability to drive software design principles and […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/how-to-use-coderpad-to-interview-software-architects/) [Hiring Developers ## “Don’t Expect Candidates to Have Everything Memorized”, the Dos and Don’ts of Cheating Prevention With Nathan Sutter Sure, you want to prevent cheating. But you also want to feel good about your hiring process. So how do you do that? Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/dos-and-donts-cheating-prevention-nathan-sutter/) [Interviewing ## Crafting Effective Technical Interview Questions: A 4-Step Guide Writing great technical interview questions can be hard. We're here to help. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/crafting-effective-technical-interview-questions-a-4-step-guide/) [Interviewing ## Viral TikTok Layoff Videos: What You Need to Know So, you’ve heard about these viral TikTok layoff videos, but you’re unsure how concerned you should be? Read about what you can learn from this content, and how it should impact your company’s HR practices. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/viral-tiktok-layoff-videos-what-you-need-to-know/) [Interviewing ## 8 Steps Recruiters Can Take to Instill Inclusivity in Tech Interviews As TA professionals, you have the power to create an inclusive interview environment for your interviewers and interviewees. Want to know how? This guide will help you. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/inclustive-technical-interview-guide/) [Engineering Management ## These 9 Red Flags Are Scaring Away Candidates During Interviews Don't let your name be dragged into a bad Glassdoor review. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/engineering-management/these-9-red-flags-are-scaring-away-candidates-during-interviews/) [Interviewing ## Best Platforms for Remote Interviews Discover how the modern employment landscape is embracing remote work and virtual interviews. Dive into the capabilities of platforms like Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meets for general use, and explore specialized options like HireVue, Codility, and CoderPad for technical hiring. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/best-platforms-for-remote-interviews/) [Interviewing ## Why One-Way Video Interviews Don’t Work and What You Should Do Instead Read about why one-way interviews are less promising than they seem and explore alternative methods that offer a fairer, more realistic approach to hiring. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/why-one-way-video-interviews-dont-work-and-what-you-should-do-instead/) [Interviewing ## 2 Interview Questions to Assess Your Next Intermediate Backend Engineer Looking for guidance in evaluating your intermediate backend developers? We've got the perfect solution with these two insightful questions. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/2-interview-questions-to-assess-your-next-intermediate-backend-engineer/) [Interviewing ## 3 Tips To Introduce ChatGPT Into Your Technical Interviews Integrating ChatGPT into technical interviews involves setting clear expectations, demonstrating its practical use, and acknowledging its limitations, creating a fair and realistic assessment environment that aligns with the evolving landscape of software development Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/interviewing/3-tips-to-introduce-chatgpt-into-your-technical-interviews/) ## Hire with confidence. See why engineering teams trust CoderPad to evaluate developers with realistic, AI-ready hiring workflows. [Request a demo](https://coderpad.io/sales/)