With over 11% of professional developers using Laravel (according to the 2020 Stack Overflow Developer Survey), the framework is one of the most popular solutions for building the back-end of a web product. Supplied with MVC architecture, tons of built-in features and apps, and great tools that can improve authentication and cybersecurity of your product, Laravel is broadly recognized as a viable tool, adapted by businesses like MasterCard and 9GAG.
As the number of projects utilizing Laravel is rising, companies often struggle when they want to hire Laravel developers. While the community is huge (over 60k stars and over 6k commits on GitHub), so is the demand, making Laravel experts one of the most looked for specialists on the IT market.
How to hire Laravel developers that will truly deliver in such a situation? How to review your candidates and make a conscious choice? Read along our guide below to learn all you need to know about hiring Laravel developers.
The most important technical skills for Laravel developers
To truly thrive in the role, Laravel developers need to possess a specific set of skills on a relatively high level. Below, we noted down all the most important ones you should consider when you want to hire Laravel developers. They are all perceived as a must-have — but you might also require additional skills depending on the specific project you are hiring for. To make sure you have your requirements well planned out, consider asking an IT project manager or a software consultant for help in translating your needs into a set of such requirements.
- Excellent knowledge of PHP
Not every PHP developer is a Laravel expert, but every Laravel developer must be a PHP expert. As the framework has been built strictly for PHP, knowledge of this programming language is truly a must-have.
- Vast knowledge of Laravel
How to define extensive experience in Laravel? Consider things like routing, middleware, developing templates, unit testing, or being able to build modular apps. The more years of professional experience with Laravel your candidate has, the better for your project and its future.
- Understanding of other frameworks
Laravel includes a great set of functionalities but might not be enough for everything your project requires. A good PHP developer (and, therefore, also a Laravel programmer) should have a good understanding of other frameworks and libraries, including Symfony, CakePHP, FatFree, and Zend.
- Good grasp of object-oriented programming
PHP was not always an object-oriented programming language, but this principle has been added when PHP5 was released. Since then, developers can write web apps in an object-oriented way which allows them to build more complex and better-performing products.
- Understanding of MVC
Laravel helps with implementing the MVC (Model-View-Controler) pattern to PHP web apps. Writing apps with MVC in mind differs from more standard, linear programming, and it requires additional knowledge and experience from Laravel developers.
- Knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript
While Laravel developers most often work with the back-end of your web product, they sometimes might also need to cooperate with front-end devs on the client-side. That’s why a good Laravel developer should have a good understanding of the three programming languages that are considered the pillars of web development: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Not only tech — hire Laravel programmers with the right soft skills
As Laravel developers are responsible for the back-end of a website, its backbone, they often have to communicate with other teams (both tech and non-tech ones) to understand their needs and translate them into technological solutions. Because of this, when you want to hire Laravel programmers, you should look for people equipped not only in the right knowledge but also in a set of soft skills that will boost cooperation and innovation in your company.
What soft skills are we specifically talking here about?
- Approachability
Hire a Laravel developer whom everyone at a company will consider open and happy to help. Of course, happy to help to some extent, as even without loads of additional requests from other teams, a Laravel expert must be…
- Great in time management
Building (and later maintaining) a stable and reliable backbone is never a clear and obstacle-free path. Unplanned problems happen often and your Laravel developer has to be able to prioritize all their tasks well to deliver everything on time.
- Researcher attitude
Both PHP and Laravel are quite mature and stable technologies, but new updates to both are coming out regularly. To leverage the full power of Laravel, your developer has to, then, be always up-to-date with current changes and participate in the life of the online Laravel community.
Top Laravel developer job interview questions
Assessing your Laravel developers candidate’s skills requires an effort, but it pays off — if you do it the right way, you will hire a Laravel expert who truly knows their way around the framework and will deliver you top results efficiently.
To help you out a bit with running the interview, we listed below some of our favorite job interview questions to ask a Laravel developer. Please be aware that such an interview should be run by another Laravel expert who can assess the skills of your candidate well. If you don’t have enough knowledge in Laravel yourself, we recommend asking for assistance from any colleague developer of yours who has experience with Laravel, a software consultant, or an IT project manager. They will be able to tailor the interview questions and potential test tasks to your project’s unique requirements.
- What would you use Lumen for?
- Which libraries for Laravel do you use the most often/like the most? Why these?
- How would you make all your forms Bootstrap opinionated?
- What's a dependency injection? How do you do it in Laravel?
- What are Facades in Laravel?
- How to prevent SQL injection attacks?
- What are Observers in Laravel?
- What is the Publish-Subscribe Pattern? What are its pros and cons?
- How do you pass a variable by value?
- How can you monitor the performance of an app on the production server?
Finding a Laravel developer who truly fits your business
Should you end up with multiple candidates who successfully passed your initial review, you can also consider how well they fit your specific company and project. Consider the three areas of company fit…
- Product fit
Look for people who have worked with Laravel on similar web apps like yours. Such experience means they might have already developed features you want in your product and the planning phase will be, therefore, shorter.
- Industry fit
Similar advantages can be achieved by hiring Laravel programmers who have worked with companies within your industry. Similar solutions are used by similar companies, meaning, once again, that Laravel developer with the proper experience can deliver results faster.
- Company culture fit
This area, on the other hand, doesn’t directly affect the hard knowledge of a developer but rather their soft skills. Hire Laravel developers who share the same values as your business as a whole to keep communication within the teams fruitful. When evaluating company culture match, consider things like the preferred style of management, approach to remote work, attitude towards diverse teams, and other issues that are important for your business and current employees.
Who to hire besides Laravel developers?
Your web project can have a great and reliable back-end with the help of expert Laravel developers, but it might not be enough to make your product successful. You will surely need other professionals within your team, including front-end developers, web designers, UX/UI designers, a Product Owner, and a Scrum Master.
And whoever you need, we at Ideamotive can supply. Our industry-leading network of top IT talents covers all roles a modern business may need to fill, including as specialized experts as Laravel developers. We also always make sure to find you people that truly match all your requirements and fit your project and company.
Get in touch now for a tailored selection of IT experts.
