I’ve been recruiting many Drupal developers. The process is usually a mixture of random in-depth questions, a drupal.org profile review and pure intuition on the applicant’s fit for our company.

That’s why I felt genuinely interested in the recently published Acquia Certification program. Could a single test provide a trustworthy distinction between a seasoned and an unexperienced Drupal developer? I got to test myself a couple of days ago.

The Acquia Certified Developer Exam promised to analyze a testee’s knowledge of Drupal as well as web development skills in general. The covered areas are so overly wide that it is pretty hard to cover all corners with 60 multiple choice questions. Drupal was naturally present in most them while some of the other development topics were covered only by one or two.

The test time was limited to 90 minutes which I spent completely. The most time consuming part was reading the questions themselves.  I would have made the answer options tricky, not the questions. The questions were  quite lengthy, trying to mimic a real life case of a freelancer. An entreprise level questions would have had more focus on testing, scalability, deployment and documentation - not to mention drupal.org participation.

My overall feeling about the exam was positive. Althought I would have preferred the test being split into more specialized, separate tests, the certificate test gives what it promises. After completing my test, I got the results which reflected in my mind quite well my personal skills.

For sure one cannot pass the test only by guessing so the certificate is a valid testimony of prior in-depth Drupal experience. That’s why having a Acquia Certification in your CV will give you additional credibility and personal ROI. It will grow from personal ROI to corporate ROI when becoming an acknowledged selling point as well as a decision criterion in tendering processes.