[technobabbler]

It depends on what you're looking for, both in terms of what you use React for and what you expect of the new hire. Basic React can be learned in a day, but there's a lot of hidden complexity regarding state management, contexts, render lifecycles, async, etc. that take a while to get up to speed on. Throw in another framework like Next.js on top of it and it's even more complex.

Not to say any of it is impossible to learn, but it does take more time. It's a lot more complex than jquery because of the shadow DOM and all the timing issues arising from that vs working with real HTML nodes.

All else being equal, I'd definitely choose the candidate with direct React experience who already understands the challenges around that abstraction vs direct DOM manipulation.