How to Hire Drupal Developers: Finding the Right Talent

Say you already have your product specifications clearly written and you start "hunting" for the right Drupal talent for your project. Where should you start your searches? And, once you've found a pool of talent, how to hire Drupal developers who are the perfect match for your skillset requirements and who fit your organization's needs?

What recruitment strategies should you apply to... speed up things a bit?

What criteria should you use for filtering through your candidates?

What questions should you prepare for the selected Drupal developers and... what questions should you be asking yourself, too? About your project needs, scope, budget constraints...

Let's get you some answers.

Here's a handy checklist including 5 tips that'll streamline your searches and optimize your selection process:

1. First: What Is a Drupal Developer?

What does a Drupal developer do?

Generically speaking, a "Drupal developer" does a lot of things:

conducts researches, selects and installs those Drupal modules that fit your project's feature needs
develops new modules, from scratch, tailored to your project's needs
tweaks and extends existing modules so that they provide the precise functionality that you require
handles the look and feel of your Drupal website/app by creating a custom theme that meets CSS/HTML code standards
handles different PHP implementations
architects your Drupal solution incorporating data, display, and information infrastructure
migrates your existing websites to Drupal
puts together and runs performance-boosting strategies on your existing Drupal website

And this leads us to the 3 main Drupal roles that you might "bump into" while running your investigations.

Each one with a specific skill set to evaluate and to set against your own project's size and scope.

For instance, no need to look for a Drupal themer when it's a new functionality that you want to get developed and integrated into your website...

1.1. Drupal Site Builder

If your Drupal project doesn't require highly complex feature implementation or a PHP "guru", but rather someone who:

is familiar working with the latest versions of Drupal and, overall, with site frameworks
has basic Drupal project management skills
has a decent understanding of the essential concepts of JS and PHP code

... then a Drupal site builder experienced enough to put together core and the right contributed modules and create a fully functional website is what you need.

1.2. Drupal Front-End Developer

Looking for someone to "revamp" your Drupal site's presentation layer?

Or we're talking about a new project, that you want to make sure it'll deliver the best user experience?

Then a Drupal front-end developer (or themer) is what you should be looking for.

One that:

is experienced enough to develop new themes and to customize existing Drupal themes
has extensive knowledge in basic PHP, JS/JQuery, HTML, CSS
sticks to the best testing practices to ensure that the delivered theme is fully responsive and light enough not to impact your website's performance

1.3. Drupal Back-End Developer

Or maybe you need someone with proven expertise to set up a robust "bone structure" for your Drupal project?

One who can:

develop a whole new module, if needed, to fit specific functionality needs
tune an existing module till it meets your feature needs to the slightest detail
prove his/her expertise in CSS, Object-Oriented PHP, HTML, JS/Query

Note: a Drupal back-end developer's knowledge is not limited to code; a great one knows what goes into building a Drupal site, knows general design concepts and deployment best practices, as well.

Of course, the list of Drupal role doesn't end here. From Drupal Design/UX to Drupal Architecture, to Drupal Product Owner to Drupal DevOps Engineering... you could populate it with pretty much any level of specificity that you aim for.

Which brings us to the next question:

2. What's Your Project?

In order to find the answer to your "How to hire Drupal developers for my project?" question you should first try to answer:

What's my project scope?
What about its size?
Which are the general and (more) specific feature needs?

For, as you've already seen, there's a whole bunch of Drupal roles out there and selecting the right one(s) for your project can get challenging. To say the least...

So, to narrow down your options, identify and examine your needs:

is it Drupal maintenance that you need for your current website? Then you should get reasonable and not expect a lead Drupal developer to "jump" right in
is it a whole new enterprise-grade Drupal solution that you need? Then you might want to adjust your budget and time resources to the level of Drupal experience required and the complexity of your project
is it just back-end Drupal talent that you need, maybe just someone to integrate a new feature to your website? Or a... full-stack developer?

Do you just have a rough idea of what you'd like him/them to develop or clear wireframes and project specifications already laid down? Such as:

Drupal security updates
enhancing your website's overall performance
various eCommerce integrations
custom-built content tools

... etc.

Do you need a freelancer Drupal developer or a contract-to-hire? Or you'd like to go with a staff augmentation solution?

As you take the time to ask yourself all the right questions you gradually start to identify:

what level of experience you need
what skill set your project requires
whether you need a Drupal developer to pay specialized attention to a specific area of your project or a generalist
what technology stack your project depends on

While you have your "Aha!" moments, simply turn your answers into... job responsibilities.

3. How to Hire Drupal Developers: Where to Look?

OK, now that you've identified your skillset needs and included them in your job description, it's time to "go hunting".

"But where can I find developers that have experience working with Drupal?"

You can run passive or active searches or... both.

Top channels to consider for passive searches:

job portals like LinkedIn, Monster, Glassdoor, Indeed ...
online Drupal (or PHP) communities
freelance platforms like Upwork, Toptal, Scalable Path

Top channels for your active searches:

social media Drupal groups
local IT communities
LinkedIn (when you start analyzing particular profiles on LinkedIn your passive search becomes... active)
Drupal.org (select the top Drupal profiles there and start evaluating them against your own requirements)
developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow

Note: an effective way to identify the perfect match is to delve deep into those profiles and evaluate those developers':

portfolios; are there any projects in there similar to yours?
Drupal roles that they "played" in different projects that they worked on
type of questions they posted
proof of them volunteering in different Drupal projects
documentation skills

Also, keep in mind to run a deep scan of the candidates' own social media profiles, as well. They're often packed with valuable information like:

number of connections within the Drupal community
number of projects that they've worked on, time spent on each of them and... number of clients, as well (is he prone to working with the same client on multiple projects?)
developer groups that he's joined
client feedbacks

4. 4 Questions to Ask Your Candidates

So, you've shortlisted your candidates and your "How to hire Drupal developers?" dilemma has turned into:

"How do I... know which is the best Drupal talent for my project?"

Here are 4 questions to ask them (among other things), which will speed up your "identification" process:

What techniques would you apply to enhance a Drupal website's performance?
What modules do you find essential, irrespective of the projet's scope?
Do you have a Drupal project portfolio that I can have a look at?
Have you contributed to developing or improving any Drupal modules?

5. What to Look for in a Drupal Developer: 8 Things to Evaluate

Level of experience, community involvement, proven expertise reflected in the projects that he's worked on, certifications... what precisely should you analyze first when you're evaluating your candidates?

Since the number of aspects that you could be checking can get... overwhelming, here's a shortlist of things to look into to identify your best match from a group of potential candidates:

5.1. GitHub Profile

It's a never-ending source of priceless information about your candidates:

how much time they spent on different projects
samples of their written code
details on their contributions

5.2. Experience Level

And here, what you should pay attention to is the no. of Drupal versions that they've worked with. The more... the merrier.

The more experienced that particular candidate is, the more familiar he is with Drupal's specific "roadblocks" and how to address them.

5.6. Technical Expertise

How do you assess their level of technical expertise? There are 2 straightforward methods to apply:

ask your candidates to review some of their own code
challenge them with a specific scenario: a challenge that they should find a custom solution to (e.g. "What module would you use to...?")

5.7. Community Involvement

An experienced Drupal developer is (most of the time) an active member of the Drupal community, as well.

Look for profs of his/her active involvement: discussions where's he used his expertise to help out other developers, contributions to different projects...

5.8. Client References

Are there any client references online to have a look at? If not, can he/she give you any references that you could talk to?

And this is particularly important if it's Drupal agencies that you're evaluating.

The END!

These are the 5 aspects to look into for finding your personalized answer to the "How to hire Drupal developers" question. Happy "hunting"!

Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

We do Web development

Go to our Web development page!

Visit page!

Recommended Stories

Drupal Drupal 8 Tips

5 Steps to Migrate Your Drupal Website to Another Host

At some point in their business journey, every website owner can encounter the need to migrate their web host. As more lucrative hosting options are making their way in the industry–VPS, shared, or dedicated hosting—it's no surprise that many website managers choose to perform host migration. This article provides support in handling one of the most popular DevOps services, hosting server migration, by outlining five essential steps that help you complete a successful migration. When is the time to move your Drupal website to a new hosting server? The decision to switch web hosts is not an easy one to take. The good news is that there are multiple signs that can make it clear that your website requires hosting updates if you know where to look. It won't be comfortable to acknowledge them, but as soon as you start on this journey, you are transforming your website for the better. Let's have a look at how you can spot these signs on your Drupal website. Downtime has become a recurrent issue. Your customers demand availability and speed, so every time your website is down and unavailable for users, you risk building a bad reputation of unreliable and low-quality services. Your server can impact your site's availability if your hosting equipment’s quality is low or your host's security features and plugins provide poor protection capabilities, as cyber-attacks can often lead to downtime. Your host is hard to reach. As a website owner, you want to ensure that the communication with your web host is fast and streamlined. There may be times when your server crashes or you a server error, and you need to get in touch with your host as soon as possible to provide troubleshooting guidance and get your site up and running. An unreliable host may not only affect the functionality of your website but can also cost you customers. Getting the support you need when it comes to your hosting account is paramount to provide high-quality user experiences. That's why making sure that you have a solid customer service team at your side at any time is good for the business. Your current host costs you too much. Web hosting can sometimes be the most significant investment when running a website. It's a recurring expense, so you want to ensure that you choose the best option. However, expensive web hosts aren't always necessary. You have to figure out if the features and the amount of server space that your host provides are a good fit for your site. You don't need to break the bank for hosting servers that don't serve your current needs. You can always review your needs and upgrade to a more expensive plan. You don't get the security you need. As far as investments are concerned, paying extra for a secure web host is worth it. A host that takes security seriously will bring significant benefits to your website. By investing in a secure hosting server, you'll avoid losing data and parts of your website, having user data compromised, and losing credibility in front of your audience. When choosing your web host, watch out for features and plugins like Secure Sockets Layer certificates, malware scanning, or server firewalls. How to switch to a new hosting provider Migrating your Drupal site to a new host is a process that involves contacting your current host, performing database backups, connecting to a new server, and uploading your files. It's not uncommon for issues like corrupted backups to appear during the migration process. Consider this when planning your migration, and think if you can save some resources by hiring a professional agency like Optasy to complete this process for you. There are a few essential steps to follow when migrating to another web hosting server. Let's explore some of them. 1. Turn Drupal caching off. This is the first step to take in order to avoid potential disruptions. Go to your Drupal admin dashboard and: Click Configuration - Performance - Caching - Select "No Caching.” Uncheck "Aggregate CSS files" and "Aggregate JavaScript files" in "bandwidth optimization" and click "Clear all caches.” 2. Backup your Drupal files. Connect to your remote server - Enter the connection details - Hit "QuickConnect" and connect to the remote server that hosts your website. In your main site's folder, download the content on your local device, and you've done backing up your Drupal files. 3. Export your Drupal database. Go to the phpMyAdmin on your server's control panel in the Database section. Click "Check all" on your Drupal site database, then "Export method and the SQL.” 4. Migrate your Drupal database to the new host. Create a new MySQL database on your target server. Click "Import" at the top of your database, then "Choose File,” and press "Go.” You've now restored your site on the new hosting from the backup. 5. Turn on Drupal caching. Go to Configuration - Performance - Enable Drupal caching. Kudos to you! You've officially migrated your Drupal site to another host. Conclusion Building and managing a Drupal website is a complex process, and hosting is one element that can be pretty challenging to handle. There are plenty of hosting options available on the market, and you might find it difficult to decide which one is the best fit for your website needs. If you're considering server migration or just need some professional advice on how to handle your hosting server successfully, our team of Drupal experts at Optasy is glad to help. Photo credit: bsdrouin on Pixabay. ... Read more

Raluca Olariu / Apr 12'2021

Drupal Drupal 8 PHP Tips

Drupal Commerce vs. Magento - Who Wins the Battle for eCommerce?

In 2021, it is expected that about 27.2% of the world population will shop online at least once. A lot of potential customers out there, right? As eCommerce is becoming the new norm, digital businesses seek out ways to thrive in this competitive landscape and position themselves as leading trend-setters. To do that, companies need to realize the power of digital transformation and how they can embrace it in order to support the modern demands of speed and accessibility that customers require today. This starts with leveraging the right tools for building robust digital assets. One of these tools is represented by eCommerce platforms, which are getting increasingly popular for businesses that seek to deploy an eCommerce system. Drupal Commerce and Magento are two of the leading eCommerce solutions on the market and are often seen as direct competitors in the industry. This article provides a side-by-side comparison of these two platforms in regards to technical capabilities, development, costs, scalability, security, and mobile responsiveness. Hopefully, this information will help you narrow down your choice in order to ensure that you choose the best fit for your business needs. Key eCommerce Capabilities Enabled by Drupal and Magento Drupal Commerce was released in 2011 and offers an open-source application framework that supports retailers in building and managing inventory, track orders, or handle payments. Magento's initial release was in 2008. This PHP-based eCommerce site provides high levels of PayPal protocol integration and supports 12 worldwide payment gateways. Both platforms offer, through native features or third-party add-ons, the following benefits: Intuitive, easy-to-use user interface and control panels. No technical knowledge is required to customize and edit basic features. Full-featured CMS that supports social sharing. Business-centric structure for online stores. Native integration of inventory-driven advertising material Integration capabilities with third-party analytics, invoicing, or quoting solutions One thing to keep in mind is that neither of these eCommerce platforms is a "plug and play" solution and making the most out of their potential may require further expertise. Headless eCommerce The headless version of Drupal Commerce has been in the spotlight in the last few years. This new initiative is an eCommerce solution that stores and delivers content without a front-end delivery layer. It's an API-driven implementation that transforms eCommerce functionality, making it available across a wide range of potential host environments. A headless eCommerce model inclines towards a more SaaS-oriented, platform-agnostic solution that allows for better employee adoption and considerable time savings across IT departments. When it comes to Magento, the open-source eCommerce platform, headless eCommerce is equally prioritized. Both Drupal Commerce and Magento are supporting headless models as the future of eCommerce. Pricing Drupal eCommerce's technical cost of entry is free. However, depending on scope and scale, the costs of developing and maintaining performant and secure eCommerce servers might reach tens of thousands of dollars. Drupal Commerce project costs are directly proportional with a business needs for specific development architecture, module integrations, custom theme styling, or particular feature integrations. Magento's newer modules are not offered as open-source and upgrading from Magento Open Source to Magento Commerce might be challenging. From this financial point of view, Drupal Commerce seems to be a clear winner. Scalability Drupal Commerce has relevant capabilities of staying highly performant at scale. However, this CMS platform does not provide out-of-the-box database sharding and it can only be implemented on a third-party basis. Drupal Commerce has lower requirements than Magento Commerce when it comes to the web server—the minimum required RAM for PHP is 64 MB and production systems usually require 128 or 256 MB. Drupal Commerce-based implementation splits the eCommerce experience across three related Drupal domains. As a result, scaling is better, bottlenecks are eliminated, and the content and purchasing experiences are efficiently separated. On the other hand, Magento's cloud hosting solves a large number of scalability issues, although at a higher price. The minimum RAM requirement of 2 GB will probably not scale well and distributed networks or caching may need to be deployed with greater care to keep up with the heavy load. Security Drupal is proven to be the most secure CMS and Magento's infection rate is much higher than Drupal's. From the point of view of security, Drupal Commerce is a winner for businesses that want to prioritize secure platforms. Source: Sucuri.net Mobile Responsiveness As most websites transition to a mobile-first approach, eCommerce platforms that prioritize mobile responsiveness are a must. Fortunately, both Magento Commerce and Drupal Commerce provide robust mobile capabilities to satisfy the need for accessibility and performance. Drupal Commerce's themes allow building a fully responsive design for eCommerce websites and offer screen flexibility for creating versatile experiences. The most popular themes like Corolla or eStore provide: Multi-level responsive header menus Custom layouts and color options Box shadow and background textures Custom field additions Magento Commerce is close to Drupal when it comes to mobile optimization capabilities. Its responsive web design features help users create optimal viewing experiences for multiple devices. Magento Blank or Luma are out-of-the-box themes that deliver a fully responsive design. Who's the winner for eCommerce? While both Drupal Commerce and Magento Commerce are reliable options for a digital company that wants to thrive in the eCommerce market, every business has its own unique needs and requirements. Choosing the software that best supports these needs is a process that involves a lot of research and planning. If you want to speed up this process and ensure that you reach the right decision, don't hesitate to contact Optasy for professional advice and support. Discover which platform is most suited to provide a robust eCommerce experience for you and your customers. Photo credit: Mark Konig on Unsplash. ... Read more

Raluca Olariu / Apr 06'2021

Drupal Drupal 8 Tips

Drupal DevOps Best Practices for 2021

Today, businesses interact with their customers in many forms of digital services on all kinds of devices. As the digital world is more and more present in our lives, delivering streamlined experiences at the tip of your customers' fingers is the key to success. A vital role in delivering rapid, accessible IT services is played by DevOps, a set of practices that brings software development and IT operations together. And when it comes to Drupal web development, DevOps represents a valuable instrument that can maximize the potential of Drupal-delivered projects. How does DevOps work and what benefits does a DevOps model deliver? DevOps, the culture that encompasses most digital businesses today, uses automation and advanced tech stacks to add a new layer of velocity to a company's infrastructure. “DevOps represents a change in IT culture, focusing on rapid IT service delivery through the adoption of agile, lean practices in the context of a system-oriented approach. DevOps emphasizes people (and culture) and seeks to improve collaboration between operations and development teams. DevOps implementations utilize technology — especially automation tools that can leverage an increasingly programmable and dynamic infrastructure from a life cycle perspective”. - Gartner, Inc. Businesses that incorporate a DevOps model into their workflows see benefits like: Scalability. Fundamental processes like infrastructure and development are operated at scale, which allows for a more efficient approach to developing, testing, and producing environments in a repeatable and streamlined way. Faster and more reliable delivery. The modern customer's need for speed is real, and DevOps can support organizations in their quest to speeding up feature releases, bug fixes, and other types of upgrades. Continuous integration and delivery are two critical practices that can automate the release process. High velocity. Adopting an efficient DevOps model allows professionals to build digital innovations faster and keep up with the trends imposed by ever-changing markets. Security. When adopting DevOps, you don't have to compromise on safety as DevOps models provide automated compliance policies and configuration management mechanisms. DevOps best practices To make the most out of DevOps, there are some key practices to follow when implementing your model: Leverage microservices architecture, which allows breaking down large systems into more specific, independent projects. As a result, developers and architects have more flexibility over managing these projects, and applications are more pliable and allow faster innovation. Install minor updates on a regular basis to solve issues and fix bugs quicker. The DevOps model aids companies in deploying updates more often and constantly optimizing their ongoing processes. Use continuous integration and continuous delivery to overcome operational challenges in complex development workflows. Don't forget about infrastructure as a code, as automating your infrastructure provides better computing resources and higher responsiveness to possible alterations. DevOps for Drupal development Implementing a DevOps model into your Drupal development workflow will not only accelerate your development cycle and delivery but will also contribute to better user experiences and business outcomes. As more companies are adopting DevOps models (according to a recent report, 60% of businesses are using or are considering DevOps for their organization), it is expected that DevOps will gradually become even more essential for any digital business. With this growth will come better opportunities for building future-ready Drupal deployments and web experiences suited for the modern customer’s complex needs. Wrapping Up DevOps continues to grow in new industries, opening possibilities for enhancing security, product monitoring, development, and cluster computing. As it will become the new norm, DevOps will continue to integrate more departments, improve solutions and designs. As we've seen, DevOps models can also support a Drupal development team that focuses on improving project timelines and delivery. Optasy is the right partner for fostering digital innovation and can help you create customized Drupal digital experiences. What do you need support with? Photo credit: PCB-Tech on Pixabay. ... Read more

Raluca Olariu / Apr 02'2021

How to Hire Drupal Developers: 5 Ways to Find the Right Drupal Talent for Your Project