How to Hire a WordPress Developer when you Know Nothing about Code
Hiring an Expert WordPress developer or WordPress web design agency without coding knowledge, sounds daunting? Yes, it seems obvious daunting because for hiring expert WordPress Developer required sound WordPress knowledge and solid technical background. For nontechnical entrepreneurs or business owner, this task looks like next to impossible because they always have so many things on their plates like sales, training,throat-cutting competition, meetings, so many other things and always running out of time. In such a situation, it’s not feasible for they start learning a WordPress to hire an expert and it also sounds like a jerk. It’s not their cup of tea :(.
On the other side, the entrepreneurs or business owners can’t afford to hire an inexperienced WordPress developer India as their website their own brand and it’s identified for their business. Nobody wants to ruin it. Due to faulty codes, the website may work like a jerk, it takes ages to load, do you think your potential customer will wait for 10 seconds to see your home page? It may be security outrage, do you think your potential customer will buy the items from the website, which does not look safe from the beginning nor not installed properly secured socket layer (SSL)? The obvious answer is “No”. So hiring the experienced remote WordPress developer is inevitable.
Please find below 8 steps guideline for the hiring your potential WordPress developer without coding background.
Step1: Understand your requirement and it’s a presentation for the developer
First, you just need to decide what you want? It’s just simple as write your business plan. The main agenda is your requirement is clear enough so the developer can understand what you want. Albert Einstein very well said: “If you can’t explain simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. So it simply means, you need to clear about yourself before hiring the process, a few questions you should clarify from yourself: What is your goal for the website? Who is the target audience? What functionality it should have? How many pages websites will have?. Your little homework will make a difference and also make a good impression on your developer, and most importantly they will understand your requirement clearly. One should also cover the functionality requirement and technical requirement. These are too much for you, then you have one shortcut here. Just identify the competitor website or your likable website, send the name. In this case, the top WordPress developer will study and get your requirement, but this process makes the hiring process slow, but your purpose will be solved.
Step2 : Search for the developers
After having the requirement document with you, the second step is initiated here searching for your potential WordPress website developer. The easiest way is to talk to your friends, community and other business owners about your need and try to get any reference. Another way is you can search on LinkedIn, Google and so many websites for the hunt. Once you have shortlisted candidates, you can conduct the interview. In shortlisting process here, you can check step 5(portfolio) and 6(reviews and ratings) if get some sort of hints, if you can’t get then don’t hesitate you can always ask after the interview. Before moving to the interview process, define the date, time, possible interview time and communication tool in advance. Make sure to send requirement(step1) in advance before the interview.
Step3: Interview Procedure
It’s a very crucial part of the process since you are going to interact directly with the developer. Please create questions list in advance to make the process smooth. Try to get all the details as much as you can in all aspects. Try to check their technical skills in WordPress and what kind of challenging work they did so far? You can also check their feedback about your requirement, What they understood, from that you can understand how focused they are. You can entertain all their questions for the requirements and clarify them till they convinced fully. During the interview, it might be some questions they ask which might too technical for you, don’t panic, just note down and ask them to you would revert back shortly. You can also demand their resume for your reference. You can also demand their portfolio(step5) and some reference (step6). If they understood the requirement well, then you can ask for the estimation for the job to get effort idea.
Step4: Check online presence and reputation
After the interview process, need to check their participation, knowledge sharing and contribution in WordPress. You can check if they have created any plugin or theme which is available in the marketplace. You can check their blogs, white paper, case study, code repository and their contribution in the online community to get inside about their WordPress expertise.
Step5: Portfolio in a similar kind of business/industry
Next thing is which we asked during the interview process which is the portfolio in the same industry or similar kind of websites. Check the hows their WordPress portfolio is diversified. Check their portfolio is genuine and how’s the website is performing. You can always ask the best three work rather than the WordPress web developer will bombard the many links to save time.
Step6: Talk to reference and verified the person
In this step, you need to verify the reference. Ask with the potential developer if s/he has the reference from the same country which you are living, which make reference check process fast and smoother. Take prior appointment for the reference person. Ask some meaningful questions with the reference like Hows his or her experience with the potential WordPress expert? How responsive he or she is? What challenges the reference person faced while working with him or her? How are the potential developer actions during the emergency? These are some sample questions, but you can use your judgment to decide the questions. Most important, please try to get more details about the reference person’s business and also make sure s/he is a genuine one.
Step7: Start with the small test drive and understand the process
If you feel ok with till step 6, then assign small work or demo test drive to him or her before hiring. It’s always good to start with small. Try to understand their process, response, quality of work and handling your change requests. You also need to focus on their communication skills, project management, and collaboration tools.
Step8: Define the term, finalized the developer and backup plan
Once you find you will be comfortable during the test drive then you can decide now to hire a remote WordPress expert. You must need to define the terms of hiring. You need to define the term for the exists also. Project scope and development model is very crucial here so focus on it. You should also have a backup plan for that developer in case of emergency exist for any reason, what alternative will be available for you.
Conclusion
In daily fast and competitive life for any entrepreneurs or business owners have limited time and always other challenges, in such a scenario, hiring the technical WordPress team is always a daunting job, but if they plan well and consider the above points, then the hiring process may become simpler and hasslefree.
