PHP juniors often arrive from tutorials that skip deployment, dependency hygiene, and the ways requests actually move through your app.
Filter for modern language habits, package discipline, and security instinct—before framework fan loyalty.
1. Modern PHP language habits
They use type declarations where your codebase does, understand attributes when relevant, and handle errors deliberately. Copy-paste from PHP 5 era blogs is not a good sign.
2. Composer and autoloading reality
Composer installs, lockfiles, scripts at a junior level, and PSR-4 layout they can explain. If they brag about editing vendor/ to “fix” something, expect the same shortcuts in production.
3. Web security instincts
They name SQL injection, XSS, and CSRF at a practical level, talk about prepared statements and context escaping, and show curiosity about secrets handling. Perfect depth is not the bar. Awareness is.
4. Debugging with logs and traces
They read stack traces, reproduce on local, and add logging without spewing sensitive data. If production is a black box to them, your on-call rotation becomes their classroom.
5. Framework patterns your team uses
Laravel, Symfony, or your house stack—match the interview to reality. Can they describe routing, controllers versus services, validation, and where business logic should live? Book chapter recall matters less than structure.
Screen fairly and compare apples to apples
Align every finalist on the same scenario and rubric. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reminds small employers to apply consistent standards to applicants for the same role (EEOC hiring guidance).
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