Testing PHP Programming Skills

[ronmauldin]

Anyone with experience in testing programmers prior to hiring them?

I resell the skills of programmers (Web Design/Flash/PHP/MySQL/Javascript) around the world to work virtually for companies in the USA. Preferably, I contract with a manager that actually hires the coder, supervises them to make sure they are working and then makes a percentage of the coders pay. The problem I am experiencing is how to make sure the coder has a reasonable level of skills prior to hiring them... seems that resumes/CVs are worthless. Some coders I hire are a natural and I end up with a happy client. Some coders never seem to have a clue or worse... do not reasonably test their code. So, does anyone know of a test or skills assessment problem that can be used to separate the good coders from the duds?

It is not just about creativity, but also productivity. With PHP, there is already a wealth of code available on the internet... so the coder also needs to be able to find and recognise good code snipets to use in their assignments.

Any ideas?

[kovik]

The first part of your posts suggests that you want talent, but the second part suggests that you want laziness. Which is it? Most of the really talented programmers don't like using third-party applications and prefer to write everything themselves instead of dealing with the problems that come with using someone else's code.

The only way to really know which programmers are 'talented' is that most programmers who are very good at it either have some sort of contribution to the open-source community, or have familiarized themselves with more than one programming language (not just 'dabbled' either). Also, examples, examples, examples. Ask for them and make them impress you.