Introducing the new Frontend Mentor Hiring platform!

It's been over two years since I first mentioned our plans to create a Hiring Platform for Frontend Mentor. In hindsight, I announced it way too early in our thinking process, but the response was extremely encouraging. As we started building, we realised Frontend Mentor there was a lot we needed to improve on the main platform, which took priority. But we kept chipping away at it, and today, I'm absolutely delighted to finally announce that we have officially launched our Hiring Platform and are actively finding companies who hire early-career developers to connect them with developers in our community.

Here's our full announcement, which you can also read on our platform 👇

At Frontend Mentor, we firmly believe that project-based learning is a powerful way to grow your skills. Over the years, we've found a place in the web development learning space, helping developers worldwide gain hands-on experience building projects using a professional workflow.

As we've grown, our mission as a company has evolved, with our focus now on helping create equal opportunity for people worldwide to become developers. Our professionally designed projects have already helped many people get hired and become confident front-end developers.

The focus on a professional workflow uniquely positions our community to understand more about the expectations of life as a developer. With over 10,000 solutions submitted each month, we have a lot of project-based data to help companies discover exceptional early-career developers who meet their hiring needs.

So, I am unbelievably excited to announce the next step in our mission with the official launch of the Frontend Mentor Hiring platform!

This project has been in the works for quite a while now, so it feels great to announce it fully. Since we first started planning it, the tech landscape has changed drastically. With many large tech companies laying off employees and the rise of AI tooling raising many questions about what the future of web development will look like, there's been a palpable air of uncertainty in the community.

However, based on our own internal experience and research from companies like GitHub, we are extremely optimistic and feel that the rise of AI tooling only makes early-career developers more hireable and productive than ever. Because everyone now has access to an AI pair programmer, like GitHub Copiliot, or large language model-based chatbots like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude, answers and help are much easier to come by. As we move into the company's next phase, we aim to help our community stand out in the job market as much as possible and create the most hireable early-career developers around.

How our approach helps developers prepare for life as a professional

As I mentioned above, we believe the best way to learn web development is by actually doing it. That's why our platform is all about giving our community realistic projects where they take a professional design, use industry-standard tools and workflows (e.g., VS Code and Git version control), and build portfolio-ready projects.

By working on our challenges, learners get a taste of what it's like to be a professional developer. They learn how to build a design and brief, fix problems, use modern tools and frameworks, and write clean code that others can understand.

A huge part of Frontend Mentor is our community. Developers can share their projects, give and receive feedback, and work with others. All this helps improve their coding skills while developing the soft skills necessary to become a valuable team member.

These are all skills we aim to keep helping our community develop to prepare them for life as a professional developer.

The Hiring Platform: connecting companies with exceptional early-career developers

This brings me to the new Hiring Platform! With thousands of incredibly talented developers in our community, we aim to make discovering and hiring exceptional early-career talent as simple as possible.

The Hiring Platform helps companies:

• Start talking to skilled candidates in minutes: Our Talent Search helps companies find the best developers based on their requirements. They can filter candidates by experience, skills, location, contract type, and more. This will save a lot of time instead of wading through mountains of resumes.
• Access a diverse, skilled, and passionate talent pool: The Frontend Mentor community is global. We have high-quality developers from all backgrounds who hone their coding skills by building projects and giving each other feedback.
• Evaluate proven skills, not self-reported claims: Our project-based developer platform allows companies and recruiters to review candidates' work before making contact. They can evaluate their competency based on completed projects rather than relying on self-reported skills.
• Save time by contacting high-intent candidates: All candidates on our Hiring Platform are actively looking for work. So they are ready and waiting to hear about opportunities. Recruiters can find developers who meet their needs in minutes and start chatting!
• Drastically reduce hiring costs: Our flexible subscription options come with no hidden hiring fees and unlimited hiring, enabling companies to save significantly compared to other talent-sourcing channels. They can hire as many developers as they want with no additional expenses. We also offer a guided hire flat fee service for anyone who needs help discovering and screening high-quality candidates.

We want to help companies cut through the noise and mountains of applications to find the perfect candidates who meet their needs. We already have a massive pool of exceptional talent and aim to grow considerably over the coming years.

So, how does it all work?

For developers

Developers continue completing challenges, engaging with others through feedback, and growing skills on the main platform. When they reach 150 points, they can set themselves as available for work and complete their Talent Profile. This doesn't guarantee anything, but it means they're eligible to appear in searches on the Hiring Platform and receive messages from potential employers.

If you're not already registered, you can sign up to Frontend Mentor here and start taking challenges 🤗

For companies and recruiters

Once signed up on the Hiring Platform, companies can use our Talent Search to find candidates who meet their hiring needs. Clicking through to a candidate takes them to their Talent Profile, where they can review all relevant hiring information, portfolio/GitHub/LinkedIn, and featured projects. If someone stands out, they can send them a direct message and start the conversation!

Here's a preview of what the top half of the Talent Profile looks like:

We also offer our guided hire service for companies that don't have internal hiring processes and need a hand. Nobody knows our community like us, so, for a flat fee, we can help shortlist excellent candidates to save time and minimize hiring risk.

Are you looking to hire exceptional early-career developers?

If you're hiring now or think you might in the future, check out our Hiring Platform. We have so many incredibly talented developers in our community looking for opportunities, and we can't wait to help you hire them.