How to find the right candidate

If you’re hiring for a position where basic knowledge in PHP is required, this is one of the first skills you should assess. However, the right person needs to have several crucial soft skills, too. These include:

• Communication skills: More often than not, software developers work in teams, and this means they need to have excellent communication skills. The ideal candidate should be able to communicate their work to their peers and managers and be able to discuss eventual problems or obstacles they face. For this, they need to communicate in a clear and professional way.

• Empathy: Even though programmers spend most of their time working in front of a screen, they should never forget that the products they create will be used by other people. Being able to put themselves in other people’s shoes helps software developers create user-friendly interfaces and products.

• Critical-thinking skills: Problems that require creative solutions are a daily thing in the life of a programmer, so the perfect candidate will be able to deal with them with a can-do mentality. Having a solution-oriented mindset helps developers handle problems on their own and also makes them a good team player on whom others can rely.

• Time-management skills: Development projects sometimes have tight deadlines, so software developers working with PHP need to be capable of managing their work days efficiently if they want to complete their tasks within the allotted time frame.

• Teamwork: Developers today often work in teams and program in pairs, which means that being a good team player is crucial for success on the job. Candidates should understand that teamwork is a prerequisite to a project’s success, and that they need to put teamwork first, before their own professional achievements. One’s availability and readiness to help other team members increases the chances of success of big and small projects alike.

Besides having the right soft skills, applicants also need to have a strong culture-add potential and have values that are in alignment with your organization’s values, mission, and vision, and those of their future colleagues. Only then can the team work harmoniously together. Thankfully, you can test for all of these skills with our skills assessments and evaluate someone’s potential for cultural alignment.