Do you know how to hire the right developer? This is the question VerifyWP shines some light on, with regards to technical WordPress developers.
A Problem That Hit Close to Home
The problem of finding and hiring really great WordPress developers dogged Jonathan Martin for years. In his decade of running an agency, he’d found some truly amazing developers, many of whom still work for him today. But an equal number of developers had to be let go because their skills didn’t measure up to expectation.
It all starts with the process of filtering candidates down to the handful you want to call for an interview. How do you get there?
Most hiring managers sift through that pile of resumes, making subconscious decisions and judgments to toss candidates out of the running. Unconscious biases drive much of this process, making it faster to identify that final handful. It does speed up this very manual process, but the results are a mixed bag.
Some candidates are great at marketing themselves. Some candidates are terrible at it. This does not speak to their technical talent. Too often, finding the best resumes actually means you’ve found the best marketers – leaving behind a host of possibly talented developers and elevating possible duds.
Further, this imperfect process sucks up valuable time. Why waste so much time on a process that is only about 50% successful?
Too often, finding the best resumes actually means you’ve found the best marketers – leaving behind a host of possibly talented developers and elevating possible duds.
Jonathan thought there should be a better way, a way of removing himself and his flawed filtering from the process while capturing real talent. Thus, VerifyWP was born.
Developing a Solution from Within
Leveraging the talented WordPress developers of Built Mighty, VerifyWP’s test questions were built out, tagged by skill and difficulty level, and assigned to the appropriate assessment – back-end or front-end.
Using a combination of custom development and native WordPress and WooCommerce functionality, the VerifyWP site was developed to create an intuitive experience for both hiring managers and candidates alike.
At Built Mighty, we pride ourselves on our custom WordPress and WooCommerce development acumen. As such, the creation of this site depended a great deal on these chops.
The custom dashboards differ depending on the user type – candidate, hiring manager, or sample user. Candidates are able to take tests they’ve been invited to, see their test scores, and try out the sample tests. Sample users just get a taste: they’re able to take the sample tests, see an example of candidate results, and watch demo videos.
For hiring managers, the dashboard includes the details of each assessment, their company profile, their number of days and invites left, and sample tests. They also get quick access to create new assessments or purchase additional time and invites.
Test results populate in real time as candidates submit their assessments. Once the assessments have been completed, the results can be sorted by score. Each result has a more detailed breakdown of scores by the underlying skills – HTML/CSS, PHP, WordPress Core, JavaScript, Theming, and more – associated with the test type.
Once the hiring manager is satisfied with the number of completed tests, they can find the top performers and call them up for interviews. Just like that, they’ve saved time and captured the best candidates.
Using WooCommerce for Simple Payments
To make the process of paying for VerifyWP as simple as possible, we employed WooCommerce One Page Checkout. Since saving time was one of the raisons d’etre of the platform itself, it was equally important it to emphasize in the purchase process.
For the payment gateway, we chose Stripe. This PCI-compliant payment option accepts all major credit and debit cards, automatically formats numbers and dates, and validates fields in real time. This helps ensure that the process remains simple and secure.
A Dedicated Job Board
After launch, Jon wanted to expand on the main idea of the site. We extended the hiring functionality to include a job board. It’s even easier to find the perfect hire on a dedicated job board that only advertises WordPress developers.
No custom development was needed to accomplish this base functionality. There was a plugin that did the trick – WP Job Manager. With it, users can search the job board by keyword and location, then filter by job type (be it full-time, freelance, remote, etc.hiring).
WooCommerce and WordPress plugins used on VerifyWP:
- WP Job Manager: Open source job listing plugin that allows for users to post jobs.
- Regions for WP Job Manager: Adds “Region” taxonomy to enable predefined job regions in WP Job Manager.
- WooCommerce Stripe: A PCI-compliant payment gateway.
- WooCommerce One Page Checkout: Simple solution for one page purchases.
- Advanced Custom Fields PRO: For creation of meta fields and supports function of CBW Section Builder.
- Gravity Forms: For form building on WordPress.
- Mailgun: Email automation integration for WordPress.
- Wordfence Security: Firewall protection, malware scanning, and anti-virus to keep sites safe from attack.
- Yoast SEO: A powerful Search Engine Optimization tool.
Next step for this is a design refresh to adhere more closely to the aesthetic of the rest of the site. Also in development are region pages, which will provide WordPress-related information unique to each area and increase the search visibility of those pages for employers.
Looking Forward
Jonathan continues to develop new ideas to embroider the central theme of making hiring easier and more reliable. VerifyWP is just starting its ascent toward what it hopes to achieve and provide. Only the future knows what’s in store.