Looking to hire a WordPress developer? Then you’ve come to the right place. In this guide, we’ll show you the best ways to find a WordPress developer or freelancer and what you should keep in mind during the process.

Why should you hire a WordPress developer?

Are you looking for ways to expand your business? Maybe even considering hiring a professional to build the right tools for you from scratch?

Powering 34% of all the websites on the Internet and with a market share of over 60% in the CMS industry, WordPress is the most popular CMS out there. So it’s no surprise that there’s a high demand for highly skilled individuals who know how to code and manage WordPress.

Due to its open-sourced nature and the possibilities for countless theme designs and plugin functions, you can virtually do anything on your WordPress site. However, someone who doesn’t know exactly what they are doing can break your website. That’s why finding the right WordPress developer can make a big difference in your business.

To take your site to the next level, you need skilled individuals who are well-versed with WordPress and all its systems, SEO, WooCommerce, and writing custom functions for your theme. This is easier said than done. There are thousands of people who claim to be experts in the field and hundreds of websites that offer developers for hire so it can be hard to handpick the right ones for your business.

That’s why in this guide, we’ll show you how to find a WordPress developer or freelancer for your site. We’ll cover where you should look for them and what things you should keep in mind before hiring them.

How to find a WordPress developer or freelancer

The best sources where you can find the perfect WordPress developer are:

1. Specific websites to hire developers
2. Social Media
3. Freelance platforms
4. Recruitment agencies

Let’s have a closer look at each of them.

1. Best Websites to Find WordPress Developers

The best websites to hire WordPress developers are:

1. Codeable
2. Jooble.org
3. WordPress Jobs
4. Smashing Jobs
5. WPHired

1. Codeable

Codeable is one of the best websites to find the right hires for your business and find freelancers for your projects. If you’re looking for freelancers to work on a WordPress project, whether it be a custom theme or an entire website, CodeAble is the perfect place to look.

Not only is Codeable fully WordPress ready, but it also focuses on finding well-trained developers. This platform guarantees that every developer is worth their value. All members are pre-screened and required to take multiple tests, live coding exams, and interviews to ensure that they will provide customers with the best experience.

On top of that, Codeable is very easy to use and allows you to post any type of project. From small tasks and fixes, to server and website maintenance, to full custom development work. You simply post your project and Codeable connects you with the most appropriate developer based on your requirements and the skill and availability of each developer.

In terms of costs, they recommend setting a rate of 70 to 120 USD per hour, so you can expect to pay 960 USD for a simple custom plugin development and 980 USD for a custom theme development. Additionally, Codeable charges a fixed commission of 17.5% of the total cost of your project and guarantees high-quality work.

2. Jooble

Jooble is a job search engine that aggregates job ads from thousands of sources. It’s present in 71 countries and it’s available in more than 20 languages, making it one of the best places to find a WordPress developer.

This platform receives more than 2 million visits per day and gets job vacancies from a wide range of sources (company pages, recruitment agencies, newspapers, and more) and has filters to display the offers by city, salary, type of employment, and more. Additionally, you’ll find everything from internships to freelance jobs to full-time jobs.

Even though you can virtually find anything on it, Jooble is particularly good to hire WordPress and IT professionals from around the world. Even with all the restrictions that countries have imposed due to the pandemic, you can find the best talent for your project and use tools like Slack or WordPress P2 to enable an environment where your developers can work directly from their homes.

All in all, even though you can’t directly post a job in Jooble, it provides you with plenty of opportunities to find the right developer for your site from anywhere in the world.

3. WordPress Jobs

Just like its name suggests, WordPress Jobs is a website that focuses on WordPress jobs. It’s a traditional job board maintained by the WordPress community.

The great thing about it is that you can simply add your hiring announcement to the board with the right requirements, and users from WordPress.org can view these vacancies and apply directly. With the integration to the website, you can view their projects, plugins, and themes directly and filter potential employees to ensure that you’re hiring skilled members of the WordPress community.

While WordPress jobs might not be as easy to use as Jooble, its streamlined, trustworthy design makes it one of the best platforms to find a WordPress developer.

4. Smashing Jobs

Smashing Jobs is the jobs market website run by tech writing media giant Smashing Magazine. Their well-renowned job board attracts the highest quality WordPress developers and freelancers. The website contains a paywall for employers to post their job vacancies and a few filters to help you find the most skilled developer for your needs.

In terms of costs, a 60-day job listing will set you back 225 USD for full-time positions and 75 USD for freelance jobs. While you may consider this expensive, the investment of finding a well-trained WordPress developer goes a long way. The website receives over 4 million monthly users so it provides you with a constant stream of well-qualified applicants for your projects.

5. WPHired

WPHired is one of the first WordPress-centric job boards and it has maintained its status with great success over the years. As it’s focused exclusively on WordPress, this platform provides you with the finest developers out there. With its huge user base, you can easily post a job and ensure that your job vacancy reaches thousands of experts in no time.

Additionally, WPHired also provides you the option of adding your job listings for free. Regardless of how complex or simple your jobs are, WPHired provides you with a huge user base to quickly find the right WordPress talent for you.

2. Finding WordPress Developers through Social Media

Nowadays, it is quite common for WordPress developers, experts, and SEO specialists to participate in discussions in social media communities or websites. By using Facebook groups, Twitter hashtags, Github projects, LinkedIn, WordPress.org communities, and specific WordPress forums, you can find tons of talented people sharing their projects and content online.

That’s why you must build your social media presence as a WordPress business. Not only can you look at other people’s work and find a WordPress developer for your site, but also interested users can contact you and offer their services proactively.

As there’s no regulation or third party that manages what kind of developers you can hire, make sure you ask for enough information before deciding who you’re going to hire.

3. Freelance platforms

Alternatively, you can also use dedicated platforms for developers such as Upwork, Toptal, Hired, and even LinkedIn. These websites have a system of ratings and references that allows you to have a look at their past work experiences. This way, you get a better idea of whether they’re a good fit for your project and make sure you hire the right person.

An important thing to note is that the process of hiring and assessing the quality of your possible hires is entirely up to you. This includes requesting their personal portfolios, discussing past working experiences as well as their field of work, specialization, and rate.

4. Recruitment agencies

A more traditional way to find a WordPress developer is to use recruitment agencies. They are companies that ask you for a job description, qualifications, and skills you require and look for the perfect match to fill the role. For their service, they usually charge a percentage of the salary that the role will receive. 

Some of the most famous recruitment agencies are Adecco, Hays, and Randstad.

Recommendations when looking for a WordPress developer

There’s always some risk involved when hiring new employees, especially when you’re not an expert in the field. Since WordPress is such a huge field to work on, you might find that your new hires might not be perfectly ready for the job. If that’s the case, don’t worry. That’s something fairly common in the development world. However, it’s always a good idea to minimize your risks as much as you can.

To ensure that there’s little risk involved when hiring your new developer, there are a few things you should consider:

1. Provide a proper overview of your project and the tasks involved

Whether you’re contacting a WordPress developer or setting your job vacancies on various websites, you should outline the scope of your project as clearly as possible. This information should be brief and clear and provide a clear overview of how you and your business approach your projects.

This provides potential hires with enough information to assess if they’re the right fit for the project. This makes your life easier because the project will be clearer and you will attract developers that fit your requirements. The better they understand your project’s scope, the easier it is for them to make sure they suit your needs.

2. Assess the developer’s skills

This is an obvious one but it’s often overlooked. To find the right WordPress developer for your project, you must make sure that you assess their skills. A portfolio with previous projects they’ve worked on helps, but you should also test their knowledge. What exactly did they do in that project? How long did they take to finish? How’s the quality of the code? What technology and languages did they use? These are just some of the things you should keep in mind before deciding whether they’re a good match for your project or not.

Additionally, dedicated websites provide you with a good rating system that gives you a clear idea of the developers’ skills. Finally, make sure you check their Github or StackOverflow portfolios to determine their level of competence.

3. Consider setting test periods or test jobs

If you’re unsure about your new hires, you can always define a test period or project. This way you can show them your workflow and the projects they’ll be involved in working with you. Moreover, this also serves as a test period to see how they handle your tasks and how difficult/easy it is for them to fit your work environment.

A good idea is to split the project into milestones that they need to complete in 1-2 weeks. This way you make sure that you give them feedback and assess their work frequently. 

For additional measures, you can also provide them with a small-scale test project to work on and decide whether they will fit your business or not. This works very well for those who want to hire freelancers for a long-term contract.

4. Communication is key

It’s no secret that communication is very important in any work environment. So regardless of how and where you find your new WordPress hires, you need to ensure that communication is smooth at all times. This includes what the job is, the requirements, timeline, milestones, and so on. Communication with developers over technical things can be hard so always double-check and make sure that you’re both on the same page with what has to be done.

If your developer works remotely, a quick daily call to go over the current situation and the work that needs to be done can go a long way to ensure that everything is clear. It’s always better to have a quick chat to solve doubts than to let them guess what they have to do.

Conclusion

All in all, hiring the right developer can make a huge difference in your business. In this guide, we’ve seen some of the best ways to find the best WordPress developer:

1. Using specific websites
2. Social Media
3. Freelance platforms
4. Recruitment agencies

All of these will help you find the right developer for your projects. Websites such as Codeable and WPHired are great places to look for developers. They have thousands of highly skilled candidates so it’s just a matter of filtering for what you’re looking for. Similarly, social media groups and communities, and freelance platforms can be great options too. They require a bit more work because there’s no prescreening or automatic match but they are a great source of talent. Finally, if you want a more traditional approach, you can hire a recruitment agency to help you find the right developer for your site.

Regardless of what approach you take to find WordPress developers, there are always some risks involved. Hopefully, we have helped you minimize these risks as much as possible.

How do you find developers for your WordPress site? What other ways should we include in our guide? Let us know in the comments section below!