Essential Skills to Look for When Hiring a Laravel Developer in 2024 (How To Test Them)

Identifying the essential Laravel skills is your gateway to recruiting top-notch programmers. As a hiring manager, navigating through the maze of talent in the PHP framework landscape can sometimes feel overwhelming. Yet, with a precise set of criteria and an eye for Laravel expertise, you’re not far from onboarding a Laravel developer who’s a perfect match for your business.

The top skills to look for in Laravel developers are not only pertain to knowing the framework. They should also be proficient in other web technologies, and database management and should have a strong understanding of concepts such as Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and Model-View-Controller (MVC).

But a true expert should not only be adept at programming. Laravel developers also need to work as part of a team, so they should have a strong grasp of project management methodologies, as well as soft skills to help them better communicate and collaborate with others.

If you want to get dedicated Laravel programmers who can easily fit your existing development team or even form a new one, we’re here to give you a crash course on what you should know (and do!) to make it happen!

Core Skills of Proficient Laravel Programmers to Look for

Now, let’s get down to business. If you have upcoming interviews of candidates looking to fill the Laravel job opening or already have some candidates selected, make sure they have what it takes before hiring them. 

These are the five skills every great Laravel programmer has: 

• Web development skills
• Database Management Skills
• Understanding OOP & MVC
• Knowledge of Project Management Frameworks
• Soft Skills

1. Web Technologies

Laravel developers should be skilled in fundamental web technologies:

• Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): HTML allows the differentiation of elements such as the headline, the body text, and the subheadings in a website. 
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): Styles the content of a page by dictating the way the HTML elements of the website should be displayed on the front end of the page. 
• JavaScript: Mainly used to change the website content and make it dynamic. 

Knowing these technologies is essential to a Laravel developer. PHP (and by consequence Laravel) works directly with them, and developers should be aware of how that communication works to perform a better job. 

2. Database Management Skills 

Laravel developers are experts in managing database systems. They can organize all the data from a company’s website, making it easier for end-users to quickly and effectively share the data across the organization. Some of the most popular database management systems are Oracle 12c, MySQL, and Microsoft SQL. 

3. Object-Oriented Programming

Lavarel is based on MVC architecture, making it easy to start projects with.

Laravel, like most other frameworks, is built on top of object-oriented philosophy. As such, developers must understand OOP and its concepts such as classes, objects, methods, traits, etc. 

4. Project Management Methodologies

Project Management frameworks are incredibly beneficial in tech. They provide a methodology that focuses on the necessary tools, processes, and tasks needed to build a project from start to end. Some of the most popular project management frameworks are Agile and Waterfall. 

This skill is especially important if you are looking for a developer who will be working on a project with other team members. In the case, you already employ one of these management frameworks, make sure your new developer is experienced in it so they can more easily integrate the team.

5. Soft Skills

Being a good Laravel developer only goes so far when you’re working with others. You’ll want someone that is highly motivated, communicates clearly, and works well together with the rest of the team so everyone can be more productive and happy while working.

Soft skills should be highly valued and tested in interviews. You’ll want someone in your team who besides being an excellent Laravel developer also has the skills below:

• Knows how to work in a group, listens to others’ ideas, and provides their own.
• Accepts criticism and is always trying to be better
• Provides creative solutions 
• Has great communication abilities
• Distributes their time efficiently and delivers tasks on time
• Is self-reliant

Here are some averages of Laravel developer salaries practiced in foreign countries for comparison:

How to Test Your Laravel Candidate Skills?

Finding candidates is only part of the process. Finding a winning candidate takes some skill and a very thorough interviewing process. You’ll want to evaluate both their technical and soft skills.

These interviews can be virtual or physical, depending on what you find suitable and convenient, and may take different approaches depending on what you’re trying to evaluate. The two most common types of interviews are:

• Technical interviews: These are your typical interviews, where you prepare a battery of technical questions pertaining to the nature of the job and use them to assess the candidate. As the name implies, these are better suited to evaluating the overall technical knowledge of candidates but say little in terms of how they work as part of a team. You’ll want to use this type of interview to test your candidates on their Laravel expertise, for example.
• Coding challenges: Coding challenges, such as pair-programming interviews, are better suited to assessing a candidate’s soft skills. While they can also be used to assess technical skills, they are tailored to test creativity and problem-solving, all while in an environment that resembles the candidate’s day-to-day job. You’ll want to give your candidates a custom test that closely resembles the types of challenges they will face regularly.

Best Questions To Ask in a Laravel interview

Here is a sample of questions to ask your candidate for Laravel development, with increasing difficulty:

1. What Are Artisan Commands?

Artisan is a command line interface that Laravel comes packaged with. It provides several commands that can help you automate certain tasks when building your Laravel applications. You can also create new commands to help you with the specificity of your projects. Examples of default commands provided include:

2. How Do You Generate Events And Listeners?

There are two main ways to generate Laravel events and listeners. One is doing so by hand by defining them in the App\Providers\EventServiceProvider file:

use App\Events\BookRead;
use App\Listeners\SendReadNotification;

protected $listen = [
	BookRead::class => [
    		SendReadNotification::class,
	],
];

But this requires the developer to define all of these classes, which can become cumbersome as the application grows. A more convenient method is available by using Artisan. We’ll still need to define the event and listener as paths in the App\Providers\EventServiceProvider file:

protected $listen = [
	'App\Events\BookWasPurchased' => [
		'App\Listeners\EmailPurchaseConfirmation',
	],
];

And then you can use Artisan to generate all the needed definitions and classes for you:

php artisan event:generate

This will run through all the $listen list and generate all events and listeners that do not yet exist.

A third method using Artisan is available, which allows you to create events and listeners with a specific command:

php artisan make:event BookRead 
php artisan make:listener SendReadNotification--event=BookRead

3. What are Queues and Job Workers In Laravel?

Queues are jobs that Laravel runs in the background while the rest of the application runs unimpeded. They are useful to process complex or long tasks that would take too long to perform during a typical web request. By running these intense tasks in the background, your application can remain responsive to your users while still performing these taxing jobs.

Job workers are entities that pick up jobs from a queue and execute them, one at a time. You can have several workers running at once, and jobs will be distributed to them as they are queued.

4. What Are Traits In Laravel? Why Are They Useful?

In PHP (and subsequently in Laravel), a trait is a group of methods that can be attached to other classes. A trait, much like an abstract class, cannot be instantiated on its own.

Classes can only inherit from a single superclass, so Traits allow code reusability outside of the normal inheritance chain.

Here is a simple example to illustrate the concept:

<?php
trait Reader
{
    public function read($bookname)
    {
   	 return "I have read $bookname.";
    }
}

class Librarian {
    use Reader;
}

class Patron {
    use Reader;
}


$evelyn = new Librarian();
echo $evelyn->read("The Book of the Dead");

echo "<br>";

$jonatan = new Patron();
echo $jonatan->read("The Golden Book of Amun-Ra");
?>

The output is:

I have read The Book of the Dead.
I have read The Golden Book of Amun-Ra.

5. How Does Laravel Use Inversion Of Control?

Inversion of Control (IoC)  is a programming pattern where the normal flow of creating objects is reversed. Instead of classes creating the objects or class instances they are dependent on to function, the main (top) class creates all the objects and then passes them to the classes that need them.

This increases code modularity since classes no longer need to be concerned with creating their inner dependencies. They just receive them and work with them as needed.

Imagine we have code simulating an Exhibit of Aquariums, each filled with Fish.

• Without IoC, the Exhibit would create the Aquariums, and then each Aquarium would create the Fish to populate it.
• With IoC, the Exhibit creates all Fish and Aquariums, passing the appropriate Fish to the corresponding Aquariums.

In Laravel, there is a component called the IoC Container, which allows developers to automatically receive those dependencies. Here is an example:

class ADependency {}
class ASecondDependency {}

class UserRepository {
    protected $aDependency;
    protected $aSecondDependency;
    
    public function __construct(ADependency $dependency, ASecondDependency $secondDependency){
   	 $this->$aDependency = $dependency;
   	 $this->$aSecondDependency = $secondDependency;
    }
}

Route::get('/', function(){
    var_dump(App::make('UserRepository'));
});

See how we’re creating a UserRepository without explicitly instantiating ADependency and ASecondDependency first? That’s the power of the IoC container in action. It automatically detects the needed classes and instantiates them.

But what if I want a different subclass of those dependencies? Fortunately, there is a way to specify that:

$this->app->bind(
    'ADependency',
    'ASubDependency'
);

Now, everytime a class needs ADependency, it will be fed an instance of its subclass ASubDependency instead.

If you want to specify a different dependency to bind based on certain criteria, that is also possible:

class AnotherDependency {}
class YetAnotherDependency extends AnotherDependency {}

class ADependency {
	protected $anotherDependency;
    
	public function __construct(AnotherDependency $anoDependency){
  	  $this->$anotherDependency = $anoDependency;
	}
}

class ASecondDependency {
	protected $anotherDependency;
    
	public function __construct(AnotherDependency $anoDependency){
  	  $this->$anotherDependency = $anoDependency;
	}
}

$this->app->when(UserRepository::class)
      	->needs(AnotherDependency::class)
      	->give(function () {
          		return new AnotherDependency();;
      	});

$this->app->when([ADependency::class, ASecondDependency::class])
->needs(AnotherDependency::class)
      	->give(function () {
          		return new YetAnotherDependency();
      	});

Why are Laravel developers highly in demand?

Laravel is a very popular PHP framework, in no small part due to being free, fast easy to develop in, and extremely secure. According to Statista, close to 10% of developers used Laravel in 2022.

BuiltWith shows that more than 1.65 million websites currently use Laravel, and it is used on top websites regularly: 

Key Factors to Consider When Hiring Expert Laravel Developers

“How do I choose the best Laravel developers?” Skills are indeed important, but you should consider other factors when hiring your developer.

Choosing Between a Freelancer and Full-time Laravel Developer

When choosing between a freelancer and a full time developer, you first need to evaluate the project. 

Freelancers tend to be employed on smaller and fast projects. They have a set project or job to perform, and that will be the extent of it.

But if you truly want your business to grow, you’ll want someone full-time that answers and grows with you. Full-time developers bring more value to your company and can eventually take on senior roles with experience. They are also the option to go with if you expect heavy support needed after a project launches.

Evaluating the Experience Level of Laravel Developers

If you’re looking for someone to integrate an already established team and you just need more hands on deck, you can go with an associate or just a plain regular developer. The rest of the team can help them grow and gain experience as they work.

If, however, you’re looking for someone to lead or to bolster the level of knowledge of the team, then you’ll want an expert or senior developer. Their expertise will be the pillar of the rest of the development team, so make sure you’re hiring someone who is knowledgeable of Laravel itself but also of the specific field in your business operates.

Salary

Your budget will dictate the salaries you can offer your developers and thus the experience of people you can employ. Senior developers will be more taxing on your business’s finances, but these costs can be offset by the efficiency these experts bring. 

You can offset part of these costs by hiring remotely (more on that later!), but it’s still important to be prepared for the costs of hiring developers.

Embrace Remote Hiring for Laravel Development

In the current job market, the best way to attract talented developers is by offering them the opportunity to work remotely. As the world is going remote, developers are beginning to value the comfort and practicality of working from home. 

Remote work has also brought advantages to people looking to hire developers. Whereas previously companies would hire local talent, remote work has opened a whole world of possibilities (quite literally!).

When hiring locally, you might hire someone who has what it takes. When you hire globally, you get to choose the top IT talent from anywhere in the world. By hiring in countries with lower costs of living, you can hire said top developers at a fraction of the cost for you while still offering extremely competitive salaries to your employees. How much do Laravel developers make?

Final Thoughts

Now you know why hiring a Laravel developer is so important, and how to do so. It’s not always easy, especially in today’s job market: you have to look for a person with not only the right technical skills and know-how, but also soft skills and team spirit. It may seem daunting, but there are ways to land that perfect developer for your needs.

What if I told you that you can welcome your new talented Laravel developer in two weeks? If you let us help you, of course! At DistantJob, we are tired of seeing companies paying exorbitant salaries for developers who don’t meet their expectations. That’s why we have more than 15 years of experience headhunting talented remote developers. We match them with companies who, despite their significant efforts, weren’t able to find qualified candidates. 

We are believers that ALL companies, no matter their size or budget, should have the best tech talent. You deserve better, and we can help you! If you want to hire a Laravel developer, reach out to us today!

Joana Almeida

Joana Almeida, with her diverse experience as a programmer and game developer, stands out for her technical writing prowess on DistantJob, a remote IT staffing agency. Her background in software development and video game programming, enhanced by her roles in consulting and freelancing, has sharpened her expertise in areas like game design,tech stacks, UI development, and software development.