Skills Checklist Builder
Interactive checklists to evaluate candidates or audit your job requirements. Select your hiring need below to get a customizable checklist.
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Skills Checklist for: React
11 skills to evaluate candidates
JSX, components, props, state—the building blocks. Any React dev should explain component lifecycle clearly.
useState, useEffect, useContext, custom hooks. This is how modern React works (since 2019).
Redux OR Zustand OR TanStack Query. They need experience with ONE approach to shared state, not all of them.
ES6+, async/await, destructuring, array methods. React IS JavaScript—weak JS skills mean weak React skills.
Tailwind OR CSS-in-JS OR CSS Modules. They should be able to turn a design into responsive UI.
Branching, merging, pull requests. Essential for any team environment.
Server-side rendering, file-based routing. Increasingly standard for production apps (Airbnb, TripAdvisor use Next.js).
Static typing for JavaScript. Standard at companies like Stripe, Booking.com, and most startups founded after 2020.
React Testing Library, Vitest/Jest, Playwright. Shows they care about code quality and maintainability.
React DevTools profiling, memoization, bundle analysis. Critical for apps with many users (like Booking.com's search).
WCAG compliance, screen readers, keyboard navigation. Increasingly required and a sign of experienced developers.
These requirements often appear in job descriptions but can alienate great developers:
React Hooks came out in 2019. Someone with 3 years of modern React often outperforms someone with 6 years who learned on class components. Quality over quantity.
This signals you don't know your own stack. Pick one. A good developer learns a new state library in a weekend. Stripe, Airbnb, and LinkedIn don't require all of them.
Many excellent React developers are self-taught or bootcamp grads. Focus on portfolio, problem-solving ability, and communication skills instead.
FAANG experience can be valuable but isn't required for most React roles. A developer who built a startup from scratch may have broader skills than someone who worked on one small feature at Google.
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