How do you find a skilled Drupal Developers?
Finding Drupal developers in the market is rather easy but how do you know if the developer you are hiring is a good Drupal developer? Unless you are a good developer yourself it is going to be difficult to evaluate the development capabilities of a developer you are planning to hire. Unless you are a good Drupal developer you will find it difficult to evaluate the knowledge of the Developer in Drupal. However, this is not as bleak as it looks. There are some simple mechanisms you can use to find out how good a Developer you are dealing with is.
Evaluating Drupal Developers: A Quick Guide
1) Ask for sample code
If the developer is good then the code would simply be good to look at even if you don't understand a line of code. Indentation and spacing would be consistent and you will be able to see patterns in the code. You would also be able to simply read through the code and comments and understand the logic if the code is good. Bad code is almost always an indication of a bad developer.
2) Ask for a drupal.org profile
A half-decent Drupal developer would have a drupal.org profile and if the person does not have one then you can assume that the person has not interacted at all on drupal.org which would indicate that he has not worked on anything he was not taught by somebody else and that could not possibly be a lot.
3) Check out public interactions of the developer
In Drupal.org and other forums / bulletin boards / systems like stackoverflow.com check how the developer is engaging. Check out if the person has only been asking questions and never answering any. Check out if the person has been explaining things clearly both when questioning and when answering. Good communication skills are essential for a good developer.
These are simple background checks you can do to eliminate bad developers. These criteria would not guarantee good developers but they would definitely eliminate a lot of bad developers. When you are hiring an individual you are ultimately going to end up making a choice on the capability level of that individual. However, when you are hiring an organization the decision is no longer about the capability of an individual but rather about the ability of the organization's processes to deliver predictable quality. If you are interested in hiring an organization to take care of your Drupal project contact us.
