2022.12.19

Magento Developer’s Job Interview Preparation Cheat Sheet

Magento is one of the most popular e-commerce solutions. Due to its large set of tools and extensive functionality Magento occupies high position in the niche of medium and large online stores. The system is complex in terms of architecture, but allows developing stable and functionally intense solutions, enhancing and maintaining them for years.

Online sales are growing rapidly, so the demand for the specialists in Magento is increasing. How to prove yourself in order to get into an interesting and promising project? Let’s talk about this in this article. We will talk about where to start preparing for the job interview and what should be the “right” CV that will leave a good impression about you.

Magento Developer: How to Prepare for Job Interview | NIX

What is important to include in your CV

Before you start making your CV, think about your strengths. What makes you stand out from the crowd of applicants? Follow these guidelines:

List your real skills. It’s always interesting to see how the jobseeker used the techniques learned. If you are still a student or have just started practicing in Magento and do not have much experience, don’t worry. Include any additional information that is very close to development, even if it’s writing scripts in Word. The technical expert will see that development is “to your liking” and you can become a promising specialist in the future.

Maintain a balance regarding the amount of information you provide. A longread about yourself isn’t OK, but a couple of facts aren’t enough either. You need to “sift through the sieve” the relevant information about yourself, your skills and knowledge, choose the key points and keep to a maximum of two pages.

How to stand out from the flow of candidates

If you decide to try your hand as a Junior Magento Developer, you will need a basic knowledge of Magento, namely, the principles of module writing, where, what for and which folders should be used, what the static means and how to properly customize Magento functionality. It will be enough to perform simple tasks in a project, including developing your own functionality and adapting third-party modules according to the customer`s requirements.

In order for the technical experts to understand whether you have specialist knowledge and its level, write about training programs completed by you, the university you graduated from, or where else you are studying and what you are learning now.

Before you start developing in Magento, you need to learn and confidently apply the basic principles of PHP programming in practice. Knowledge of JavaScript will be an advantage. If you are familiar with another programming language, such as Python, be sure to include that in your CV. For many people this information is a proof that you’re not a beginner, just starting out in IT. A profile on GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket, and a link to Pet-projects you’re proud of will be a bonus for you 🙂 The experts will definitely pay attention to the date the repository was created and the last changes made. Such references will help to estimate the complexity of the project and quality of the code writing.

In general, knowledge of several programming languages is an indication that a person loves programming and, therefore, will always enjoy the process, including in our team. The main thing is not to hinder such guys, but on the contrary, to guide them in the right direction while training. And then the task will be done at its best.

As far as English proficiency goes, the higher your level, the better. From the very beginning, you will need to work with and understand technical documentation. Google Translate won’t always help. There will be definitely specifics of your own.

An effective way to test your knowledge as a junior is through personal communication. If you are really familiar with Magento, tried developing functionality and fixing bugs, it won’t be a problem to answer questions of the technical expert.

If we are talking about switchers, it makes absolutely no difference what you did before you decided to try your hands in IT. The main thing is your knowledge and skills in PHP and Magento, and your desire to develop and retrain.

In fact, an experienced specialist can be seen at once: he/she understands the complex mechanisms and architectural solutions of the system, ready to take responsibility for the result. To make it all clear from your CV, describe in detail your career in IT, tell what you did, which projects you are most proud of and why.

What can you expect at your job interview

While speaking to the experts, you have a great opportunity to tell about the project (even a student project) you implemented yourself and are proud of its result. Do not confuse teamwork and your personal achievements when telling your story. Focus on your achievements, tasks and challenges, and how you dealt with them.

During the interview for the Junior position ask the candidate to solve the task. The condition of this task may be as follows: when implementing functionality, you have a product ID. How can you get the object of this product?

To answer the question correctly, you need to remember several ways to solve this task and explain how each of them works. We won’t reveal all the cards, let each of you think about it now 🙂 Experts will be able to determine which version of Magento the candidate is familiar with (first or second), and how well they understand the inner structure of the system.

Conversation with experienced professionals is no different from that with beginners. We start in the same way with the base and ask similar questions, e.g. about the modules structure and product IDs, which they “crack like nuts”. Then we raise their level and ask about architecture, optimization methods, website acceleration, and other interesting questions. In the communication process, you can find out what the candidate managed to work with, which decisions he/she made during development, and why.

After a job interview, prepare a general portrait of the applicant and decide whether he/she is suitable for this position. Don’t feel bad if you couldn’t answer all the questions due to a lack of experience. You can obtain the knowledge you need and practice during training courses. This is why experts often develop training programs for beginners. Upon completion of the training, everyone has an opportunity to be re-interviewed by our team.

All candidates for Junior Magento Developer position are advised to read these materials before a job interview:

Official documentation: