The Best Practices for Interviewing WordPress Developers

It’s the responsibility of the hiring team to make sure that there exists no room for errors in the recruitment stages. It all starts with a proper job post that conveys what you are looking for in a candidate, bringing the right set of applications to your inbox.

However, the steps that you take after receiving the applications will decide whether you end up with the right candidate or not. For hiring WordPress developers, the areas to focus on for the hiring team are vast. Based on this, the hiring strategies have to be varied when hiring a developer in the WordPress ecosystem.

We will explore the best interview practices you should incorporate into your recruitment process when hiring WordPress developers.

What Determines the Best Interview Practices for Hiring a WordPress Developer?

So far we have been referring to “WordPress developers” as a kind of umbrella term. If were to expand on this, what we include in it would be:

• Front end developers
• Full stack developers
• Developers solely to developing themes and plugins

Now as you can infer from the above, the areas of focus and responsibilities do differ. In short, based on the open position and expertise needed, the interview practices will vary. Having the right set of practices will ensure that you can analyze the candidates without making any compromises.

How Do You Develop the Right Interview Strategy?

Developing a strategy for hiring WordPress developers depends on the various aspects of the open positions. For this, you need to outline a few aspects, such as the needed skills that the candidates should have, the tools they should be familiar with, and so on.

For example, if you are hiring a fresher the strategy that you need to apply will be entirely different compared to when hiring an experienced developer. So, the areas that you need to focus on to develop a strategy are:

• The years of experience
• The focus area for the new hire
• The various tools and programming languages they should know
• Their tech stack

Now, a recruiting manager is going to need to consult with the existing developers at the organization to get a clear idea of the above points. Based on this, the rest of the points can be mapped out. The work experience will determine the level of difficulty and the various scenarios you can give the candidate to test out their skills. This, in turn, will also reveal their soft skills, and the list goes on.

In short, there is no predefined strategy, instead, there is only an outline, that you have to modify according to your requirements.

How to Effectively Structure Your Interview Process When Hiring WordPress Developers

Now that we have covered the areas you need to focus on, we will explore an interview scenario that showcases how to put the strategies to good effect.

We have created the interview strategy for hiring WordPress developers and divided them into three different sections:

• The ice breaker
• The technical aspect
• The logical side

The Ice Breaker

This is a part of all interviews; if not, it should be. Rather than jumping straight into the interview questions, slowly build up to them. This will also help you gauge the candidates’ soft skills at the initial stage of the interview itself.

As a recruiting manager, you could opt for a variety of questions. Right from their hobbies to their favorite place, what motivated them into the field of WordPress, and so on. Once you are certain that you have erased the nervousness and got a clear idea of their listening and speaking skills, now is the time to move on to the next stage.

The Technical Aspect

Now, this is where it gets tricky. As we have mentioned, it entirely depends on the role you are hiring for. But we will try to cover as much as possible here. We will cover the technical aspect in two rounds.

Round 1 – The Scrutiny

The first point that will set the tone is the years of experience. If it is a fresher, you are kind of limited in what you can ask. In such cases, there are two things you can do: make sure they know about WordPress and have coding skills. Ask them about the various functions, hooks, coding standards, and so on.

But if you are looking to fill the open position with an experienced candidate, then the scenario completely changes. This opens up an opportunity to ask more questions, such as:

• Can you elaborate on the various tools and page builders you have worked with over the years?
• Have you faced any issues while working with any of them and how did you handle that scenario?
• How’s your experience in handling the hosting control panel and FTP clients?
• Are you experienced in pushing changes to a live site?

Once this checks out, both of them can be assigned a task that will test their coding knowledge. You can now ask them to use a particular builder or theme along with some integrations.

Round 2 – The Evaluation

Now, this round is entirely based on the task that you gave them. Here, the best interview strategy is if it is carried out in the presence of a developer in your organization. This is because the various questions that will be asked are based on the project, such as:

• Why was this approach favored instead of other methods?
• Have you maintained the coding standards, the various optimizations for loading times, and the security aspect?
• Have you considered the SEO schematics?
• How will you tackle if you face any integration issues?
• Can you make a change right now and update in 10 minutes?

Once you are happy with the results, the next round can commence.

The logical Side

So far, everything has been revolving around the assigned project. But what about the scenarios where they have to work on a client site or take over a project? Are they able to navigate it and find the underlying problems?

To gauge their critical thinking and problem-solving skills, you can provide a sample code snippet during the interview and ask them to explain it. Once they are done, ask them to analyze if anything is out of place, and if they uncover it, proceed to tell them to explain how they will rectify it.

Take note of their approach and the time they take. Then, based on their response, further questions can be framed, which in turn creates more hypothetical situations that the candidates have to solve. This examination will also reveal whether they are capable of taking over projects.

Why Are These Strategies Important in the WordPress Environment?

The strategies are vital because when hiring a WordPress developer, you are not just looking at their knowledge and skills but also at whether they can adapt to various scenarios. Project and task requirements will vary from time to time, and having a developer who can adapt to changing times is crucial.

By incorporating the strategies, you can put the candidates in various scenarios before offering them the position. This, in turn, will ensure that the candidate you hire is the right one.

Secondly, WordPress is an open-source project that progresses as each day passes because of the contributions from the community. Organizations contribute a part of their time and resources to the project. It is only possible if the participants can communicate and work with other contributors from across the globe. This is why it is important to test the logical side, as it is not just limited to client and in-house projects.

Wrapping Up

The best interview practices for hiring a WordPress developer entirely depend on the open position and will vary according to the organization’s requirements. Having the right set of strategies will help you identify and hire the best candidate out there.