Professionally-Trained, Community-Oriented, Drupal Career Online Students Ready for Work

The fifth class of our Drupal career training program is just about at the halfway mark, and our students are eager to put their new skills to work. The six Drupal Career Online students will be ready for junior-developer-level work in mid-November, and we're looking for forward-thinking organizations willing to help our graduates on the next leg of their Drupal career journey.

As we've done for the past five classes, (we've had more than 60 graduates so far) we're looking to make introductions between our upcoming graduates and organizations looking for people with Drupal site-building and development skills. Our Work Experience Drupal (WE Drupal) program is designed to provide students with valuble experience in internship-type settings. WE Drupal host companies are asked to make a 6-10 week commitment to one or more of our students, provide them with guidance, mentoring, and the professional experience that is so difficult to come by for new Drupal site builders and developers. In return, you get the efforts of a well-prepared, super-eager Drupal novice to help you lighten the task-load for your staff.

Should Your Organization Participate?

In the past, Drupal shops of all sizes and types of organizations that use Drupal, as well as organizations looking to get into Drupal, have participated in the WE Drupal program. Students have worked on everything from large, highly-visible sites to prototype sites used as proof-of-concepts.

If your organization fits into one of the following categories, you may want to think about applying to be a WE Drupal host:

1. Your organization is top-heavy with senior level Drupal developers. Often, these developers end up doing low-level or repetitive tasks that can (and should) be handed down to a junior developer or intern. Start developing your Drupal developer pipeline with someone professionally trained.
2. Your organization is looking to update it's own web site (cough_DrupalEasy_cough) but all of your developers are too busy with client work. Our graduates are perfect for prototyping new sites, researching new site building techniques, or getting the ball rolling on an internal development project.
3. Your small organization doesn't have the budget to hire an experienced Drupal developer. Our curriculum stresses the importance of well-designed, sustainable site-building. Our students understand the importance of a strong information architecture and can help ensure that a small site built today has room to grow tomorrow.
4. Your organization is looking for some good karma and wants to help grow the Drupal community and help fill the vacuum of experienced Drupal developers.
5. Your organization is already looking for junior- or mid-level Drupal developers. Taking on an intern is a great way to provide someone with a limited-time "try out" to see if their skills and personality are a good match for your organization.

Check out this success story to see how a non-profit organization utilized one of our recent graduates.

Student/WE Drupal Host Introductions and Matching

The matching of students to WE Drupal hosts is completely driven by the students and hosts - DrupalEasy acts only as a introduction service. We make all student profiles available to all WE Drupal host applicants, and we ask all potential WE Drupal hosts to tell us a little bit about who they are and the kinds of tasks they have planned for the interns. The majority of this information is shared among students and potential hosts, and then both parties have the ability to request introductions. DrupalEasy makes the introductions, and then it is up to the hosts and students to follow up (normally via phone/Skype interviews). Offers are then made by the hosts.

Length of the internship, compensation, schedule, and all other details of the internship are controlled by the WE Drupal host and student. While we do have some suggestions, we're not part of that process.

Current Students

Our current students are all U.S.-based, with five of the six on the east coast. Their interests lie mainly in site building, but we have one student who already has three Drupal 8 core commits(!) and several other students with an interest in theming who have already contributed back to the community in the form of Drupal.org documentation updates.

Our students receive a strong dose of Drupal best practices and community involvement from day 1 of the program. While the majority of the program focuses on Drupal fundamentals and site-building techniques, we also spend time learning the basics of module and theme development, Git, and basic site maintenance.

Next Steps

By now, you're surely interested, so what do you need to do next?

First, contact us by October 28, 2014 to let us know that you're interested. If you'd like, you can go right to the WE Drupal host application form and provide us the details about what you're looking for.

Next, we'll provide WE Drupal host applicants with a URL where they can review current student profiles. Similarly, we'll provide students access to portions of each WE Drupal host applicant's application so that students can have an idea of what each organization is looking for.

Finally, we'll ask all parties who they'd like to be introduced to, and we'll send out email introductions. This will complete our role in the process, although we're always happy to provide feedback to all parties on both students and potential hosts.

The Drupal community needs to do more to grow the number of experienced Drupal developers. WE Drupal is designed to help meet this need - we'd love to see your organization benefit and be part of the efforts to promote solid Drupal Talent Development!