Posted by James Gutholm on April 1, 2015 at 2:42pm
I'm just curious if anybody has any observations to share regarding difficulty in finding people with Drupal experience. We've had a position that's been hard to fill (still open) even looking for more generic web developer candidates. This might just be a sign of the state falling behind the salary curve but I'm thinking that adding Drupal specific requirements might just make that worse.
As an aside, we may have an opportunity for a full or part-time project position for someone with Drupal site building experience if any of you know of someone in the Olympia area that might be interested.
Comments
Difficulty finding Drupal folks
Hi James,
Yes it is incredibly hard as I was saying at the meet to find resources. That is why we started drupalcontractors.com and are trying also to cultivate drupalinstitute.org as quickly as possible to foster in-person training and curriculum in the schools. This is particularly in response to our local and regional void of talent.
Aside from that even harder is on-site, and most likely government as with the flood of work many devs are able to work remotely, and command say $20-30 an hour more than the average government Sr. Web Dev makes per hr.
If the role you mentioned is a short contract role, we may be able to assist you. I think otherwise you best bet is to find a more generic resource interested in learning Drupal.
Many staffing companies and Acquia themselves have had to do the same. Here is a short post about some programs out there https://www.acquia.com/blog/3-inspiring-drupal-intern-training-programs. Becoming more common are paid internships that last 18 mo or so and may have job rotation involved to expose folks to different roles find the best fit and turn em loose on Drupal.
Good luck and do let me know if we can be of help.
Chris
cmcgrath@celebratedrupal.com
Hybrid jobs are hard to fill!
If the open position is the one you sent me earlier, I think it just might be tricky to find someone who has both the networking/support (?) background AND a web development/design background. Those areas have really diverged over the years. You may need to adjust your expectations accordingly.
My job at the credit union had been split off from someone who did both web & other tech, and I was their first web-only staff person. It was a REALLY good thing that they made that choice to split it IMHO. I can talk about it in more detail offline if you're interested.
RE: Hybrid jobs are hard to fill!
Thanks E, I agree. In such a small organization, this is just the reality we are faced with. Specialization leaves us without coverage. The additional duties are pretty minimal but nonetheless, for a person that's not interested in having those extra duties, it would not be the best fit so we want to be upfront about it. I'm still holding out hope though.
PS, we did re-open the position.
http://agency.governmentjobs.com/washington/default.cfm?action=viewJob&j...