In Praise of Specialists

There is a split in the web industry that you might not be aware of. No, I’m not talking about Mac vs. PC. I’m talking about companies hiring generalists or specialists.

When I say specialist, I mean an employee whose focus is on one particular skillset, eg, flash, copywriting or front-end development. They may have other skills, but the bulk of their training and experience is in a relatively narrow field. Conversely, when I say generalist, I mean an employee whose skillset is more broad, eg, a designer who has experience with flash, has spent some time doing front-end development, and maybe even dabbles in PHP programming. These jacks-of-all-trades delve less deeply into any given aspect of their field, but have (or claim to have) basic experience with everything.

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How to Hire a Front-End Web Developer

The following is an email exchange I had with a friend at another company about a year ago. We were talking about the best way to go about hiring a front-end developer, and I was sharing some tips from our hiring process.

“Hi Scott, we are in need of a CSS expert/ninja. Our company has gone through agencies and the whatnot, but the candidates that have come from that route haven’t exactly knocked our socks off. I’m hoping that since this is what you do you might know some people, have some advice, or know some agencies that specialize in this area.”

I’ll tell you how we found Libby, our other CSS rockstar.

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