Finding (good) Drupal talent is a challenge. In fact, it's a real pain in the arse. The fact is (says Dries Buytaert, creator of Drupal):
"The demand for Drupal experts continues to be much larger than the supply"
I share his concerns. As a business that has adopted Drupal as our primary technology, we rely on having reliable access to Drupal talent for our projects. We're not alone, of course. Lots of businesses (like The Economist, and NBC Universal) have invested deeply into Drupal as the primary technology to power their online services.
The shortage of Drupal talent is bad news because:
- It makes finding Drupal skills costly, time consuming and sometimes just plain impossible.
- Bugs in the Drupal core (the code that is at the heart of Drupal) and contributed modules (the code that the Drupal developer community makes public and free) don't get fixed, for a long time, because there just are not enough developers or developer time to work on them.
- It drives up Drupal developer rates, and consequently, the price that Drupal agencies charge. If this gets inflated too much, it will kill the Drupal ecosystem.
- It becomes hunting ground for cowboy recruitment agents that just want to make a quick buck, hiring out poor skills disguised as experience, and leaving a bad taste in the mouths of those that used them. By association, it creates a bad experience on Drupal's name.
So if you need to hire, and can't find the right people, what do you do?
Here are your alternatives: training and mentoring.
Nothing new there, in general. All kinds of industry do this. But I'm surprised there isn't more of this going on within the Drupal community. That's how it looks from where I'm sitting anyway... do correct me if I'm wrong.
Training
If you have in-house PHP developers already, train them. If not, hire PHP developers and train them. PHP developers are less difficult to find than Drupal developers. (And why PHP? Because Drupal is built with the PHP programming language).
How to train? If you are in the UK or US, you have some obvious choices for training companies, like Lullabot or Brightlemon. (If you are a Drupal training provider, please feel free to add yourself to the comment section below).
If there isn't a training company or trainer near you, go online. Buildamodule.com do Drupal training videos. I think Lullabot does too. Drupal Dojo is a also a good source of free videos. See also the Drupal Open Learning Initiative.
What are the benefits?
- You will get yourself your own Drupal developer!
- If you are training an in-house PHP developer, s/he will be able to pick up Drupal skills that are directly relevant to your projects.
- Help grow the global Drupal talent pool. You will be benefitting, or have already benefitted, from the open source nature of Drupal, from the countless hours of developer time that the Drupal community has contributed, for free. This is your chance to give something back and support it.
- Bonus: If you are creating an in-house training programme, it's an opportunity to package it for general consumption and resell.
Mentoring
Alternatively (or even in addition to training), you could hire an experienced Drupal developer on a freelance, part-time or on-demand basis to guide your in-house developers to be proficient in Drupal.
Mentoring is great because most of the time your developers (if they are worth their salt) will be able to learn or research solutions themselves. However, Drupal is a complex system and there is a steep learning curve to doing anything new in Drupal. Having access to someone who has done it before will save a lot of time.
To a certain extent, Drupal developers are already doing this in discussions on drupal.org and on IRC drupal-specific chatrooms, but this is unreliable if you need immediate access to help. Most developers are busy (there's a shortage, remember?), so it's not always possible to find someone in the chatroom who is free. Furthermore, there's a timezone issue if you're relying on real-time chat.
So how do you find a mentor? Some options to get you started (again, if you are a mentor or know of resources for mentors, do post in the comments section):
- Post an ad on drupal.org jobs section or the specific city/country Drupal groups.
- Buildamodule just started a list of mentors so you can look there.
- Try the groups on Drupalkata.
- Network. Go out and meet Drupal developers. Easiest way to do this is to find a local Drupal meetup. Here's one for London, for example.
- Soon, we'll be launching DrupalHire and that will include support for offering yourself as a mentor and also searching for mentors by location.
Options
So, in short, you have options. And remember that this is not only relevant for Drupal developers. You can do this for your developers, themers, designers, project managers, and content managers.
At Redkey, I'm starting to do both training and mentoring. We are going to have a new hire soon and will see how that goes in practice.
So some options to consider if you are..
An employer:
- Consider training existing in-house PHP skills, if you have any.
- Hire PHP developers and train them.
- Hire part-time or on-demand mentors.
A recruitment agent:
- Consider providing training programmes (and stop only thinking of selling meat)
- Find and offer freelance mentors
An experienced Drupal developer:
- Make yourself available as a mentor and spread the word
- Consider providing training
- Create training videos
An aspiring Drupal developer:
- Fine an experience Drupal developer and ask if they can be your mentor. Maybe trade their time for yours.
- Offer yourself as an apprentice to experienced Drupal developers.
- Learn Drupal yourself. It can be a headache at first, but it's not rocket science. There are lots of videos and articles online. And get yourself on IRC.
- Get involved with writing themes and modules and contribute them to the Drupal community. It's a great way to learn and gain confidence in your Drupal skills. And it will make you visible to people looking for Drupal talent.
A Drupal training company:
- Offer post-training mentorships. It will complement the training very nicely, as most of the real questions a developer will have will arise while doing some real Drupal work.
