[consulting] RE : Drupal Certification

[fgm]

Actually, asking for just a tiny bit of code to solve a simple question can go a long way towards getting an idea of a dev's level.

I've recently auditioned a number of candidates for a job on a biggish site I'm leading dev on, and when tasked with something very basic like properly listing some nodes, most candidates, who all had over one year Drupal coding experience, did from one "error" per line to one error every other line. In most cases, code would have run, but did not correctly answer the question, did not use Drupal mechanisms, or introduced security weaknesses, often combining all three

The catch, of course, is that this applies only to prospective developers, and many site builders don't really need to develop.

________________________________________
De : consulting-bounces at drupal.org [consulting-bounces at drupal.org] de la part de Rian B [rizenb at gmail.com]
Date d'envoi : mardi 29 septembre 2009 07:47
À : A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers
Objet : Re: [consulting] Drupal Certification

Sounds like we have enough good ideas in this thread to just do the thing better than any other certification program ever has. I just don't understand what you'd grade anyway.  Module familiarity? Theme dev? Module Dev?  I honestly question the possibility of even being able to grade a person's coding skills.  There are a lot of intangibles involved. Variables too. Intangibles and Variables. Even some intangible variables.

Maybe a better idea would be a site specific validator type service? Using developers as judges of other developers sites?  That's taking drupal dev to a whole new level.

=P

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Sheryl <gubydala at his.com<mailto:gubydala at his.com>> wrote:
Jeff Greenberg wrote:

> So with development, even though I give a nod to the fact that sooner or
> later there will be Drupal certification, I again question the value.
> You can assure a minimal amount of knowledge. Unlike being in the middle
> of a nursing day, a developer could easily look up the information, if
> ever needed, from the exam.

My objection to the sysadmin-oriented certification exams is much the same.

A few years ago I had a technical interview which IMO was much better than
anything I have seen in certification sample tests.  It was all about
problem solving.  Over an hour or two I was given some of the usual trivia
questions (which ports do SMTP, ssh and ftp run on, that sort of thing)
but the interesting part was being presented a number of scenarios and
asked about how I would go about tracking down the problem.  Some were
chosen specifically to put me unfamiliar situations.  For example, the
interviewer knew that I had MySQL experience but not Oracle.  He gave me a
long Oracle log from one of their real-life incidents that showed a
cascade of error messages and asked me where I'd start problem-solving.  I
speculated correctly that most of the errors were fallout from an apparent
login problem in the first page of output.

> I guess I'm saying that the difference between a low score and a high
> score on a certification exam for a software person is academic, and
> really doesn't speak to whether they can deal with clients, their specs,
> digesting their business need, or turning out a function let alone an
> app or site.

I agree.  It also doesn't speak to how long it took them to pick up the
skills you're testing them for or how long it would take them to learn
something new if there's a business need for that.

Sheryl

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