I have more than four years of experience with React and Next.js, plus experience with Node.js, React Native, Three.js, and WebGL. Most of my work has involved building websites and products from scratch, launching them, and then moving on to new projects. Because I have not spent years maintaining one large production application, I often hear that companies are looking for someone more senior or with long-term production experience.
I have written technical articles about some of the features I built, and I am open to learning new technologies or working with another stack. However, my job search has not been producing much. I have tried several job boards, contacted founders directly, and looked for remote opportunities, but many companies are not hiring or never respond.
I am also based outside the United States and am willing to work remotely for less than a US-based salary. How can I present my experience more effectively, and are there other platforms, referral strategies, or approaches that could help me find a suitable role?
4 Answers
Try to determine whether this feedback is coming from interviews or whether recruiters are rejecting your résumé before speaking with you. If it is mostly résumé screening, adjust the document for each role and make the production aspects obvious. Highlight deployment, monitoring, testing, authentication, databases, CI/CD, collaboration, maintenance, and incidents rather than only listing frameworks. A portfolio project can also demonstrate production practices if it includes a live deployment, automated tests, documentation, error tracking, and a clear explanation of the tradeoffs you made.
Do not assume that building another unrelated demo will solve the experience gap. A stronger project would show sustained ownership: release it, gather feedback, improve it over several months, document decisions, and explain how you handled failures or changing requirements. That gives you useful stories for interviews and makes your experience look closer to maintaining a real product. Also apply to mid-level roles that value shipping ability rather than only targeting positions labeled senior.
The problem may be less about your actual experience and more about how it is being presented. Instead of saying you built projects and then moved on, describe the complete product lifecycle: designing features, making technical decisions, launching the application, handling deployment, fixing issues, and measuring results. For example, you could say that you shipped several production applications and owned them from initial idea through release. Include concrete details such as users, traffic, performance improvements, integrations, uptime, or business outcomes whenever possible. Many candidates have similar React portfolios, so evidence that your work had real users and real constraints can help you stand out.
The market is unusually crowded, especially for general React roles, so applying through job boards alone can be slow. Focus on a narrower profile where your combination of skills is useful, such as interactive data tools, visualizations, 3D interfaces, creative technology, or full-stack product development. Contact engineering managers and developers with a short, specific note about the kind of problems you can solve instead of sending a generic job request. Referrals, small agencies, contract-to-hire work, and companies hiring internationally may be more accessible than large general-purpose applicant pools.
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