Thousands of software professionals pass out every year from different programs whether from B.Tech, MCA or any computer diploma. Everyone has a dream to do something remarkable in IT industry but our education system is nowhere near to our very fast growing IT industry.  Most of the software professionals are not skilled enough to get a chance to work. Even they are forced to work on barely minimum wages and sometimes has to pay training fee until they are capable to earn for the company. All thanks to our age old and never updating education system.

In this article, I will try to help such candidates. Being very popular, I will cover PHP more than basic skills and some front end skills needed you to be productive from your first day of your first job. Here are some points which you should know as a fresher apart from basic PHP, CSS and Javascript :

1. Command Line Interface:
   CLI is the tool which is used most of the time for each task and you should be comfortable with CLI tools and basic commands. Linux terminal is added advantage but it is also fine if you are good with windows CMD or Powershell
2. Composer and auto-loading:
   Composer is the first thing that we use in every project and I see it as a basic thing which every PHP developer should know very well. It is a PHP dependency manager and does many things more than just dependency management.
3. Array functions and manipulations:
   Every developer regardless of programming language should understand Arrays, Objects and their inbuilt functions to search, parse, sort, split, merge and many more things. If you are not comfortable in this department then you should spend more time to learn these
4. MVC structure and any MVC framework:
   MVC is a programming pattern and now it is being used in every CMS and framework. So if you want to be competitive then you should also understand MVC structure and flow very well and atleast should have basic knowledge of any MVC framework
5. Namespace and complete OOP knowledge:
   These are the some advance PHP concepts which many training centres are missing and totally ignoring. These are very important and without these you are nowhere to work as a full time developer
6. Version Control tools:
   Version control is helpful in many ways but many new developer speculate it as a scary and complex thing but it is very easy. It will help you in your daily work and will manage your mistakes and give opportunity to fix any un-intentional mess. You can learn either Github or SVN though github is recommended
7. Jquery and Bootstrap:
   Only javascrpt and CSS will not make you a good developer. You have to learn and be handy with Jquery and bootstrap. These will also make your day to day work easy
8. XML and Json:
   XML and Json are 2 things which every web developer should know. Currently Json is replacing traditional XML with the introduction of RestFull APIs
9. Any NoSQL database:
   It is not necessary but a bonus if you understand any noSQL database like mongoDB. It gives you more weightage in interviews and on your work place as well
10. Any CMS:
    You should know atleast one CMS that may be wordpress, Drupal or Magento. It will help you to start your career with these CMS which reduces the chances of big architectural mistake as everything is available out of the box and you just have to use it and customize it. These are great learning tools before bigger more complex framework projects
11. A little about PSR coding standards:
    It is not necessary but an added advantage if you know what is PSR and no need to study it deeply.

Above are the points which I believe must for every new PHP developers. If you have these skills then I guarantee you that you don’t have to beg for developer position with respectable salary to ignore mediocre salaries as Trainee Developer. I hope this article was helpful for you