Hiring good developers is always a hard thing to do. You need to be sure that the person you hire is qualified, has a set of communicative skills, and can be a good fit for your team. But how to do it right when it comes to Laravel developers. This article will shed the light on the process of hiring the best Laravel developers for your team!
About Laravel
Before we dive into specifics let’s say a few words about what Laravel is and why we choose this framework for PHP development. Laravel is a PHP framework created and developed by Taylor Otwell in August 2011. It abstracts complex functionality by providing easy to implement functions and methods that do the work for you. It provides MVC (model-view-controller) implementations which separate code logic from HTML. It was built using the best practices recommended by the most experienced developers with security in mind. Laravel is a very stable framework. Web applications built on top of Laravel stay genuinely responsive.
Reasons to hire Laravel developers
Today’s market is full of all kinds of amazing developers that are working with different technologies. So, why should you go for Laravel developers in particular? Here are a few reasons that can reassure you that Laravel professionals are the ones to go for:
- The profound knowledge in the Laravel PHP framework lets developers accommodate the competent solution within the given time without the risk of quality or efficiency loss.
- Laravel developers can provide you with complete integration and customization. They can help you bring out the best through websites or web apps.
- Its built-in HTTP middleware ensures that only a user with requisite authentication is able to access your web application.
- Configuring and implementing the authentication process is rendered remarkably easy by Laravel.
- Developers can integrate support for multiple languages in their web applications.
- A broad range of templates allow simple layouts with multiple sections.
- A command-line tool called Artisan helps developers to avoid a number of repetitive tasks.
- A number of preinstalled object-oriented libraries offer plenty of advanced features.
- The Laravel Schema builder tool is very useful in the construction of database tables, inserting columns and indices.
- Laravel runs numerous unit tests to ensure that no modifications by the developers result in any unanticipated obstructions in the applications.
- The Laravel framework has been designed in such a way as to take care of its security from within.
What are your options for hiring
Let’s find out what are your main options for hiring.
Option One: Hire a recruitment agency
Hiring a recruitment agency is an effective solution, but it’s expensive. If you are choosing the option to fulfill your recruitment needs, you’ll have to pay the equivalent of 1 or 2 monthly paychecks of the new hire as remuneration for the agency. In the UK or US, you may have to pay 25% of the hire’s yearly salary. These investments can pay off in the future, but the initial cost will delay the days when you start getting a return on your investment.
For this particular reason, we are going to focus on option number two: recruiting by yourself.
Read also: Developing a Recruitment App as Part of an Enterprise Digitization Process.
Option Two: Recruit by yourself
You can recruit Laravel developers using these two methods: outbound and inbound.
Outbound recruiting method
The outbound approach requires you to find viable candidates for your Laravel developer positions and entice them to apply for a job. You can use these two main techniques:
- Direct search via LinkedIn and other portals. This is a classic way of finding potential Laravel developers for hire. What you need to do is send them a message through LinkedIn or a different platform.
- Recruiting via knowledge sharing. This way of recruitment requires you to share your organization’s tech knowledge at conferences, workshops, and hackathons. It’s actually quite a winning case: you give the event attendants an opportunity to educate themselves and at the same time you have an opportunity to grow your network and expose new people to your company.
Inbound recruiting method
Inbounding method means that the candidates come to you by themselves to work at your company. So basically it is a passive job submission, but how to ensure that the resumes keep coming? Here are a few techniques to ensure a strong presence in the job market.
- The classical. The classical way is to post a Laravel developer position on job portals. Even though it seems pretty easy and basic job postings can be as effective as ever, but you need to put in the effort to do them correctly. here are a few job platforms to post your Laravel developer openings on: Indeed.com, Monster.com, LinkedIn Jobs, AngelList, Dice.com, and Glassdoor.com.
- The Careers page. If you have a website, use it! Make a career page on your website. When someone is on a job hunt, they might go to your website to find out if you are hiring.
- Social media. You can post developer job offers on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Never underestimate the power of social media especially if you already have quite a big following there.
- Ad campaigns. Yes, you need to set a budget for this method, but a well-profiled campaign can be very useful.
Things to consider when hiring Laravel developers
Those who read this article might have different reasons why you need to hire Laravel developers, but there are few things you have in common. You are all searching for the same thing in the developers – reliability, competence, and efficiency. To help you with that, we provide you with a list of things to consider when hiring Laravel developers.
Portfolio/experience
Checking for portfolio and your candidate’s previous experience is the most obvious and important step of interviewing a developer. It can say a lot about their future performance.
When looking at developers’ portfolios, you can understand the level of their experience with website development. You can examine the quality of their work and skills that they have under their belt.
Niche developers have in-depth knowledge of the industry, but unlike multi-niche developers, they frequently develop cookie-cutter designs and lack flexibility and innovation. So look for multi-niche developers who can provide you with the best practices from a variety of cases and design different kinds of websites.
Industry/business understanding
Considering that a website is going to be the future of your business and your company’s brand face, the developers you hire should have some kind of understanding of your industry.
Expense
When the discussion comes to the salary question, Laravel developers usually can be hired either at a fixed cost or on an hourly basis. It is essential to discuss your project requirements with the developer. Then the developer can accordingly tell you the cost.
Check previous work record
Don’t forget to check the developer’s previous work record. It is very important for you to find out the feedback from their former employers. Unlike reading a resume or looking through portfolios, this step can give you real insights into Laravel developer experience, skills, and professionalism. So, when you are checking your candidate’s background besides his coding skills ask:
- Is the developer a team player? You need a developer who has good communication qualities and is used to being part of a team. What you don’t need is a developer who always complains about participating in mandatory daily and weekly Scrums.
- Do they hit their deadlines? Trust me, you don’t want to hear the word “I’m on course” only to find out on the delivery day your developer is not even close to submitting. It can set your whole team back. So finding out if your candidate is capable of hitting deadlines is essential.
- Are they coachable? Not being able to take feedback is one of the biggest problems you can face with your employee. An employee who is coachable can become long-term viability.
Interact Directly With the Developer
A face to face meeting with the developer lets him understand what you are looking for. When hiring Laravel developers, have a clear conversation and discuss the following question:
- Your preferred functionality
- Estimated delivery and expense
- Testing procedure
- Your project specific needs
- Your business purpose
- Work assurance
Qualities of a good Laravel developer
Apart from all the above key points, you should also make sure that your Laravel developer has the following qualities of a good Laravel developer:
- Ability to clearly describe their code and development process thoroughly with you.
- Aptitude of giving rough estimates of cost and time required for a project.
- Awareness of the latest versions of Laravel framework.
- Flexibility in adopting new ideas and methodologies.
Never hire before giving a test project
And the last but by no means least, you should never hire a Laravel programmer without first giving a test project, however good first impression they produce. Sure, it can be very tempting, but do not extend an offer until you see what your candidate produces.
The testing period can be a one-week assignment or you can bring on the candidate as a consultant.
5 simple rules for hiring Laravel developers
Questions to Ask Laravel Developers
Now to help you with the hiring process here are five question to ask a Laravel developer at a face-to-face interview.
How would you solve this ‘specific’ issue?
Here you need to come up with a hypothetical or real issue you have. The solution your candidate suggests will show you their interest towards the process as well as their expertise in this particular problem.
For example: How to turn off CRSF protection for a route in Laravel?
Answer: To turn off or disable CRSF protection for specific routes in Laravel, open the ‘app/Http/Middleware/VerifyCsrfToken.php’ file and add excluded URLs:
protected $except = [
'api/v2/users',
// Exclude route in group
'users/*',
// Exclude all routes under main route
];
How do you match up with the latest programming trends and technologies?
The answer to this question is not exactly about what new technologies the developers know. This question is an ideal weapon for you to find out developers’ attitudes towards learning and collaboration. As a matter of fact, a perfect answer includes a mixture of independent research and networking with co-workers.
What problems did you have working with Laravel projects and how did you solve them?
This question will shed the light on the candidate’s experience and his/her ability to resolve development issues. Usually, candidates talk about projects they succeeded and show how great they are. But hearing about the project’s problem and developers’ behavior in difficult situations can actually show your candidate’s real personality.
Name the main difference between Laravel 4 and Laravel 5.x?
Usually developers just list tones of key points, and yes, there are quite a few of them. But the thing is that you don’t actually need to hear all of that. What you need is one key reply that reflects their expertise in the Laravel development scenario. It will tell you much more about a developer’s experience. Between two developers, one listing every single key difference, and the other telling a few about their own personal experience, you should choose the last one.
What is Laravel Eloquent?
This question serves as a tool to examine the proficiency in Laravel development services. You can change this question with any Laravel features, the intention still stays the same. The perfect answer should be brief and up to the mark.
Conclusion
Now that you know the key points of the hiring process, choosing good Laravel developers should be a piece of cake.