In the digitized world of the 21st century, online sales reign supreme, promising entrepreneurs ever-increasing revenues and rapid business expansion. Launching their online store, many savvy business people rely on Magento. It is a robust and comprehensive e-commerce platform. It is known for its superb functionalities both among vendors and customers. Consequently, companies and individuals providing Magento development services are in increasing demand.
Our company offers Magento development services to various customers who tend to ask us one and the same question over and over again - whether they need to hire a Magento certified developer. Or, to put it simply, does our team consist of certified developers? Of course, we answer in the positive since our employees are required to obtain Magento 2 certification.
Yet, after this query was repeated for a dozenth time, it set us thinking of how important this official recognition is and whether the fact that a person can sport this document serves as a guarantee that (s)he possesses adequate skills which can turn out useful for delivering a high-quality Magento product. These ruminations are fed from time to time by our sometimes painful experience or even mistakes in staff recruitment.
On the one hand, enlisting the services of a developer, a client wants a Magento expert with sufficient skills to tackle the upcoming project, and the best proof of it is stereotypically a paper of a kind that vindicates the prestige of the developers. Moreover, it is not only e-store owners that tend to be fascinated by official certificates. Software development companies looking for a qualified workforce may also be enchanted by the official evidence of high skills.
On the other hand, our familiarity with the issue proves that there are other considerations that factor in, so it is worthwhile to take them into account.
How a Magento Certified Developer Get Their Status
The procedure of obtaining Magento developer certification is simple: you are to pass an exam.
- - Associate developer certificate - This is the first-degree certificate for those who just start their career in Magento site development. Experts with this certificate are proficient in any Magento 2 version customizations, database and functionality changes, UI and admin modifications, catalog, and checkout structure.
- - Professional front end developer certificate - These specialists can use the Admin Panel for creation, translation, and customization of all front end components, including layouts, templates, CSS, etc.
- - Professional JavaScript developer certificate - This one highlights a person’s skills in developing and customizing Magento 2 JavaScript modules. Such a specialist’s field of competence includes layout, admin HTML, etc.
- - Solution specialist certificate - More advanced developers who have learned for at least 1.5 years to work with Magento 2 E-commerce get this certificate. These experts are skillful in architecture, admin, storefront, applications, and catalog creation and management.
- - Professional developer certificate - Skilled aces of Magento 2 UI and admin modifications, database, functionality, and catalog structure changes, order management integrations, and checkout process customizations get this certificate.
- - Professional developer plus certificate - a certified Magento developer of this qualification have 2+ years of practice in customizing various Magento 2 E-Commerce components, experience in managing teams of developers, and others.
- - Professional cloud developer certificate - A Magento 2 certified professional developer with this certificate has proficiency in Magento Cloud, including deploying, operating, testing, and troubleshooting.
All the underlying information and exams to get these certificates are freely available online. Practically any eager person can go for Magento certification. And that’s only an advantage for the related labor market.
If you’re up to hire a certified Magento developer, however, remember that other crucial factors should also be considered. A professional certificate alone may not indicate a truly experienced, competent dev.
We can help you pick the most highly-qualified experts if you don’t want to bother.
How to Hire Dedicated Magento Developer: Skills to Look for
Our experts have accumulated considerable experience in cooperation with developers and
building Magento sites. We confidently state that if a person can produce a certificate, it doesn’t automatically make him/her a qualified specialist apt to handle practical tasks. We ran into several certified developers with outdated technical skills and lousy code. So, there is always a chance that you will hire Magento certified developer well-versed in the platform fundamentals. But real-life projects may turn out to be above their head, especially in terms of meeting deadlines.
Consequently, while looking for a Magento developer, you should rather look for certain skills the person possesses. Such skills are of two categories.
1.Technical skills
The following are must-haves for any developer, so you should make sure the applicant is competent in:
- Technologies in general and Magento in particular. It would be strange indeed if a Magento developer were a poor hand at the platform they are hired to work with, so there should be no secrets for the dev as to any aspect of this tool (front-end, back-end, extensions, modules). Yet, being good at Magento also presupposes being sufficiently familiar with the principles computers and servers operate as well as being well-versed in major software programs and web apps. This awareness is supposed to have a dynamic nature, i.e. expert devs should aspire to be in the know of all the latest trends and developments in the Magento universe.
- Theme development skills. Customization is what lets an online shop stand out among competitors. Consequently, clients are in dire need of creating a unique design of their website, so a developer must be able to tailor standard themes to cater to the requirements of the client.
- Programming languages. The basic language of Magento is PHP, and a developer must know it perfectly. However, if your aim is to hire a dedicated Magento developer that shines, (s)he should also manifest proficiency in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These languages can be instrumental in adding custom modules to a core Magento e-store.
- Clean development and testing. Working in a team has its drawbacks: If too many people work on the same website, its integrity may become compromised. However, if your employees are good at clean development, this pitfall can be easily bypassed.
- E-Commerce integration. Basically, eCommerce integration is the optimization and coordination of an eCommerce website, backend accounting, and ERP system. It ultimately allows entering all needed information into one system while it is further shared with another system.
- SEO. If you want your future Magento store to get high rankings by search engines, the developer is supposed to know the main principles of search engine optimization
How can you make sure the developer you want to hire has all the abovementioned skills? The answer is simple: they should provide a portfolio that is illustrative of all they can be proud of.
2.Personal skills
Such qualities are more intangible and hard to gauge than the previous ones, yet without them any project a developer starts on is doomed to defeat. So, a developer of your dream should possess:
- Proactivity and creativity. A good developer does everything by the book. An outstanding developer adds a dash of creativity to all rules and instructions. As the saying goes, the map is not the territory. So all carefully planned strategies may need a serious revamp when a specific project is being implemented. So Magento experts should be ready to use their imagination and adapt to the shifting requirements of sometimes whimsical customers. That is a must to eventually deliver a top-notch product.
Besides, if the developer has serious doubts as to the viability or expediency of a solution, they should be straightforward in informing the project manager or the client about it. Moreover, Magento experts must know how to insist on choosing a different way of dealing with the problem (although the customer might not agree at first). In such a way, looming problems will be nipped in the bud, which is much better than letting things go as they do, and reacting when a significant overhauling or correction is imperative. Prevention is always much easier than treatment.
- Flexibility and readiness to learn. In the contemporary world where nothing lasts, the high-tech realm is ever in motion, being prone to changes that are even more precipitate than it happens in other spheres. Software gets obsolete quite quickly while new developments push their way in ousting what seemed to be a cutting-edge technology only yesterday. Consequently, software developers must be exceedingly recipient to innovations and alert to the appearance of all nascent trends and challenges.
- Team-player skills. Working with Magento software is essentially a joint effort. A developer can be a guru in his sphere, yet if (s)he is a loner who doesn’t fit well with the team (either through ignoring the group ethics or through constantly interfering with what others are doing) it bodes no good for the common cause. Alternatively, successful communication, mutual assistance, and friendly cooperation are crucial for any teamwork, and creating Magento sites is not an exception.
Taking all this into account, we at SOFTLOFT have deduced a succinct profile of a perfect Magento developer. In our view, it is a person who can read code written by others, take the difficulties in their stride coming up with a solution, and get along with the team. To make sure an applicant matches this description, we hold a kind of test for them.
This test is not a couple-of-hours venture. Alongside sounding out the applicants’ hard and soft skills, we keep close tabs on how quickly they learn and find the right answers. We consider how they adapt to new conditions and comply with requirements we find essential for completing a project. Whether the developer has a certificate or not, matters little or even not at all.
Conclusion
If your ultimate goal is to hire a competent specialist able to deliver, there are many aspects you must pay attention to. A certificate is only one of them and not the one that should determine your choice. It won’t help you much if the person who owns it is a poor team player lacking hands-on project implementation skills. Based on our deep experience in the niche, we can point you in the most efficient direction. Contact us if you want heads up on who to hire.
