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Industry insights

What South African employers actually look for in junior tech hires

We surveyed 47 hiring managers across Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. The results challenge what most bootcamps still teach.

LJ
Larreth Jimu
Co-founder & CEO · Apr 14, 2026 · 9 min read
What South African employers actually look for in junior tech hires

Every quarter we sit down with hiring managers from companies that employ our alumni. This time we made it formal: 47 managers, 23 companies, three cities, one hour each.

1. Frameworks matter less than fundamentals

Eighty percent of managers said they’d happily hire someone who knew vanilla JavaScript and SQL deeply over someone who’d shipped three React side-projects.

2. Communication eats technical skill for breakfast

“I can teach React. I can’t teach someone how to write a Slack message that doesn’t make me want to scream.”

— Engineering Manager, Cape Town fintech

3. The ‘portfolio’ is mostly theatre

What they want is one project — one — that you can talk about for 45 minutes. Decisions you made, things you got wrong, what you’d do differently.

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