PHP is one of the most mature web technologies, but surely not a forgotten one. The language is still one of the most popular choices for back-end development — according to the Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey, approximately 26% of professional developers use the language in their work. Laravel, the most popular PHP framework, is used by more than 11% of professional developers — more than, for example, another popular back-end framework, Ruby on Rails.
The continued popularity of PHP is fuelled by multiple factors, including an enormous community of professionals with years and years of experience. Many developers and companies choose PHP also because it’s the main server-side language of WordPress, one of the most widely used content management systems in the world. Other recognizable CMSes, like Joomla, Drupal, or Magento, also prioritize PHP for their back-end.
Because of this enormous popularity of PHP, when you decide to hire PHP developers, you should be prepared to receive resumes from candidates who might not necessarily be up to the challenge. To make sure you hire a PHP programmer who can truly deliver on your project, you should carefully review each candidacy by taking into consideration hard and soft skills as well as the company fit.
How to proceed with such a reliable assessment? Read our guide below and hire PHP developers who won’t disappoint you!
Most important hard skills for PHP developers
Without the right set of hard skills, a PHP developer won’t be able to handle all the tasks you have prepared for them. What you should especially review when you want to hire PHP programmers?
- Extensive knowledge of PHP
A true understanding of PHP comes after years of experience in using the language for developing various web products. To make sure your product's back-end will be truly reliable and perform well, your PHP developer should know all the advanced features of the language, including database management, scripting, optimization, and testing.
- Familiarity with popular frameworks and libraries
The most popular framework for PHP is Laravel — in fact, it’s such a common solution that many companies decide to hire strictly Laravel-focused PHP developers. However, additional advantages can be gained by using other PHP frameworks and libraries as well, including Symfony, CakePHP, FatFree, and Zend.
- Knowledge of front-end languages
PHP developers, despite working on the back-end, often have to cooperate with front-end devs, knowledge of the client-side languages is also crucial. This most usually includes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Experience with relevant tools
Depending on your unique project requirements, you might want to hire PHP developers with different toolstack. For example, if you wish to develop a website or a web app based on WordPress, your candidate should have prior experience in using PHP with this specific content management system.
Soft skills that help PHP developers thrive
The quality of your PHP developer’s work is partly based on how well they can communicate with other people working on the project, especially front-end developers. That is why, in order to make sure you hire PHP web developers who can deliver results fast, you should also assess their set of soft skills.
What you should be exactly looking for?
- Researching skills
PHP has been in use for so many years that you can be sure most solutions have been tried and tested multiple times throughout this time. This gives a great advantage to your developers, as they are able to easily find fixes to common issues. The only thing they need to accomplish this is understanding of the internet PHP community and love for running their own research.
- Grasp of time management
From building out new features to maintaining the server to working on issues that suddenly popped up — there is a lot on the plate of a PHP developer. And if you want your project to be accomplished on time and according to the budget, you need to hire PHP programmers who are able to manage their time and plan their day well, taking into consideration the unexpected.
- Critical thinking
Sometimes taking a different approach than the standard one might lead to a huge increase in your site’s or app’s performance. A PHP developer should be able to always consider multiple ways of doing things and strive for finding the most effective solution.
PHP developer job interview questions
Running a technical interview is your best bet when you want to hire PHP developers who will truly deliver. Such an interview should be run by someone who understands the PHP well, so if you don’t feel confident enough with this language, consider asking an expert to assist you. This could be another PHP developer, a software consultant, or an IT project manager. Such experts will be able to check the knowledge of your candidates well and ask questions according to your project’s requirements.
To give you an idea of what questions could be included in a PHP developer job interview, we list some of the most commonly asked ones below.
- How to use HTTP Headers in PHP
- What are the super-global arrays used for?
- $argv and $argc — what are the differences?
- What is the most efficient way to load classes in PHP?
- What is multiple inheritance? Does PHP support it?
- if( !strpos( $haystack, $needle ) — what’s wrong with this piece of code?
- What are escaping characters in PHP?
- What's a Singleton class? How would you create in PHP?
- What are late static bindings?
- What’s the so-called „spaceship operator”?
Hiring PHP developers according to company fit
While having the right skill set is crucial for a PHP developer, their experience and way of working shouldn’t be overseen as well. That’s why, when you want to hire PHP developers, we recommend you carefully review the three areas of company fit.
- Product fit
Look for similarities between the web products your candidate has previously developed and what you have in mind for your project. The closer the match, the greater the possibility that the PHP developer has already worked on solutions that your app might require and, therefore, be able to deliver results faster.
- Industry fit
Finding PHP developers who have previously worked with companies within your business vertical gives similar advantages as the product fit — it simply brings you closer to having onboard someone who can deliver results faster thanks to to their past experience.
- Company culture fit
Want to power innovation and cooperation across your team? Look for a match between the values of your candidate and your business as a whole. Think of the preferred style of management, approach to remote work, attitude towards diverse teams, and any other feature of your business that you consider important.
Who else you will need to hire besides PHP developers?
PHP developers can help you build and maintain the server-side of your web app so it performs great — but just amazing back-end is rarely enough to make a product successful. You will still need to perfect everything that the client sees. This can be done with the help of web designers, UX/UI designers, and front-end developers. Experts like IT project managers, Product Owners, and Scrum Masters might also come useful.
How to hire all these professionals fast? Make use of Ideamotive’s industry-leading IT talent network. Our experts can swiftly connect you with perfectly matched experts from various fields, from data and AI to IT management to full-scale development.
Get in touch with us today and build a team that will deliver a top-class web product.
