[consulting] Drupal Skills Inventory

[Steven Scotten]

On Aug 24, 2009, at 10:42 AM, Domenic Santangelo wrote:

> When hiring for the shop, I often take this approach. If I need a  
> "hired gun" though, portfolio means a lot more. WRT "rate yourself"- 
> style questions, people are inherently terrible at self-evaluation.  
> I usually take it with a grain of salt.


Yes. People that rate themselves 10/10 will inevitably be useless and  
incompetent, or else you will have already heard of them.

This entire conversation also avoids the most important abilities:  
problemsolving and analytical thought. The cliche interview questions  
like "why are manhole covers circular?" will tell you more about  
whether the person in question has a half a brain.

In my fourteen year career in Web development I have never been paid  
to do something I knew how to do and I have no idea how anyone can  
live with themselves in a career where they are not constantly  
learning and challenging themselves. If you prove in your interviews  
that your candidate is an expert at what you want done, you've  
probably picked the wrong person unless your project is less than a  
month in duration.

Finally, a question about experience: would you rather have someone  
who has been assembling Drupal sites for four years but had no  
previous programming or database knowledge, or someone with years of  
PHP and MySQL who is relatively new to Drupal? It depends on the  
project and position you're looking to fill, but if all things were  
equal I'd rather work with someone intimate with the concepts and  
underlying technologies even if that person had never heard of Drupal.


Steve