DrupalEasy: The new IXP program: Ushering in needed fresh Drupal talent with bona fide incentives for employers

I’m super proud to have been working with Carlos and Anilu (A Drupal couple) and a number of other volunteers on this effort and am really happy to see it launched.The IXP for new developers page details the minimum recommended skills level (although hiring organizations are welcome to hire at any skill level) as long as the IXP developers being hired have less than 3 months of paid experience.The complete Drupal IXP requirements for interested parties are available at https://www.drupal.org/ixp

Why?

How does the program work?

Keeping in mind that individual IXP’s will have diverse backgrounds, and, based on research we’ve done, IXP developers may be well-suited for tasks like:Have questions? Fee free to use our Contact page or ping us in #ixp-fellowship channel of the Drupal Slack workspace.   Both the IXP developer and hiring organization are required to submit periodic reports to Drupal-IXP to ensure all program requirements are being met (including a minimum number of mentoring hours.)This is only the beginning of the Drupal IXP program. We are looking forward to learning valuable lessons along the way, and fully expect the program to evolve as more and more organizations get involved.The IXP for organizations page details mandatory program requirements including, but not limited to, at least 160 hours of paid work and a minimum of 1 hour of mentoring for every 10 hours of work.

What types of tasks are IXP developers suited for?

We have worked with the Drupal Association on creating a dedicated area for IXP positions on jobs.drupal.org.

• Drupal core and module updates
• Drupal site-building
• Quality assurance

Organizations can now be rewarded with Drupal contribution credits (among other enticements) for hiring new, inexperienced (IXP) Drupal developers.Depending on the non-Drupal background, IXPs might also be well-positioned to take on more complex or specific tasks.

What are the program requirements?

Interested organizations can apply to participate at Drupal-IXP.site. After a quick manual review, accepted organizations will be provided with a coupon code to post an IXP position on jobs.drupal.org for free.Once the minimum program length has been met (160 hours of paid work,) the hiring organization is eligible to receive 250 contribution credits upon a final review by IXP program volunteers. Interested IXP developers apply for positions, and upon an offer from one of the participating organizations, both parties notify the Drupal-IXP site that the engagement has begun.

Moving forward

The Drupal developer community is getting older. With modern Drupal being more challenging to learn for new developers (especially compared with Drupal 7), fewer and fewer new Drupal developers have been joining our ranks. In order to survive, we need to build up the pipeline of new, fresh-minded, Drupal talent.We realize that the more guidance we can provide hiring organizations, the more successful this program will be; so we’ve started a Best practices for hiring organizations document and plan on collecting data from more organizations to help provide additional information (and case studies) to help with the IXP hiring process.After many months (years?) of planning, the Drupal IXP program is open and accepting applications for hiring organizations. From now forward, any participating organization that hires a new Drupal developer (with less than 3 months of paid experience) can earn 250 contribution credits upon successful program completion.