Our sales team needs custom reports that aren't available out-of-the-box. How do I hire a good CRM developer?

Hiring a great CRM developer requires looking past generic coding skills and testing for specific platform architecture, data modeling, and business logic experience.

Here is a structured roadmap to find, vet, and hire the right person for your team:

1. Define Your Technical & Business Scope

Before writing a job description, pinpoint what "custom reports" actually means for your tech stack.

• Platform specification: Identify your exact CRM (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho). A Salesforce Apex/LWC developer is entirely different from a HubSpot custom-coded card developer.
• Data complexity: Determine if the reports require simple SQL/SOQL queries, multi-object joins, or external data warehousing connections (like Snowflake or BigQuery).
• Integrations: Clarify if data needs to be pulled from ERPs, marketing automation, or billing tools before hitting the report layer.

2. Write a Targeted Job Description

A great CRM developer wants to solve architectural challenges, not just take ticket orders.

• Responsibilities: Focus on data modeling, optimizing query performance, building custom reporting dashboards, and maintaining API data integrity.
• Requirements: Explicitly list the required native languages (e.g., C#, Python, Apex, JavaScript) and platform-specific certifications (e.g., Salesforce Platform Developer I/II).
• Red Flag Avoidance: State clearly whether you need an administrator who can configure reports or a true developer who can write custom backend/frontend extensions.

3. Source Candidates Where They Hang Out

• Niche Communities: Look on platforms like Upwork or Toptal for vetted, freelance CRM specialists if this is a project-based need.
• Professional Networks: Search LinkedIn using specific certification keywords rather than generic titles.
• Developer Forums: Check community boards like the Salesforce Trailblazer Community or GitHub contributors for specific CRM repositories.

4. Vet for Real-World Competence

During interviews, skip generic coding puzzles and test practical CRM scenarios.

• Architecture Question: Ask how they would handle a custom report that requires aggregating data across 500,000+ records without hitting platform governor limits or crashing performance.
• Data Governance: Ask how they handle PII (Personally Identifiable Information) and role-based data security within custom report types.
• Portfolio Review: Ask them to walk through a past custom reporting or data visualization project they built from scratch, explaining the trade-offs they made.

If you'd like to narrow this down, let me know:

• Which CRM platform are you using?
• Is this a full-time hire or a contract project?
• Are the custom reports meant to live inside the CRM or in an external BI tool (like Tableau or PowerBI)?

Yes. The key is to hire for CRM-specific problem solving, not just “someone who knows the CRM.” For custom sales reporting, I’d structure the search like this:

1. Define the work before you hire

Write down 3–5 concrete examples of what the sales team needs, such as:

• “Show pipeline by rep, territory, product, and expected close month.”
• “Combine CRM opportunities with billing data.”
• “Create a report that calculates conversion rates across custom stages.”
• “Give executives a dashboard while restricting reps to their own accounts.”
• “Automate a weekly report that currently requires spreadsheet work.”

Also specify your CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics, etc. The technical skill set differs substantially.

2. Look for these skills

A strong candidate should be able to:

• Understand your CRM's data model, relationships, custom objects/fields, and reporting limitations.
• Determine whether a requirement can be solved with native configuration before writing custom code.
• Work with APIs and integrations if the required data lives outside the CRM. Salesforce, for example, emphasizes API integration, testing in staging, and carefully scoped permissions.
• Build maintainable queries/reporting logic rather than hard-coding one-off numbers.
• Understand permissions and data security—particularly important when sales reps should see different records.
• Communicate with nontechnical sales/operations people and translate “I want this dashboard” into an actual technical specification.

For Salesforce specifically, useful experience includes Apex, SOQL, Lightning Web Components, APIs, testing, version control and deployment. www.salesforce.com For HubSpot, REST APIs, CRM objects/associations, authorization and custom extensions are particularly relevant.

3. Don't make certifications the deciding factor

A certification is a useful signal, but I'd rank demonstrated CRM work higher.

Ask candidates:

“Tell me about the most complicated custom report or CRM data problem you've solved. What did the business want, what couldn't the native CRM do, and what did you build?”

A good candidate should be able to explain the business problem → data model → solution → tradeoffs → testing → deployment clearly.

4. Give finalists a small practical exercise

This is probably your best screening mechanism.

Give them a fictional scenario like:

“We have Opportunities, Accounts, Sales Reps and Products. Management wants pipeline coverage by territory and month, win rate by rep, and average sales cycle. Some revenue data is in an external billing system. Reps must only see their own opportunities.”

Ask them to spend 60–90 minutes explaining how they'd implement it.

Evaluate:

5. Hire someone who can say “no”

This is surprisingly important.

A mediocre CRM developer hears:

“Can you build this custom dashboard?”

and immediately starts coding.

A strong one says:

“Before we build that, let's determine why the existing report can't produce it. We might be able to fix the underlying data model or use a native reporting feature.”

That prevents you from accumulating expensive customizations that become difficult to maintain.

6. Where I'd look

For a full-time employee, search for titles like:

• CRM Developer
• Salesforce Developer
• HubSpot Developer
• CRM Engineer
• Sales Systems Engineer
• Revenue Operations Engineer

For a contractor, look for someone who has several relevant CRM implementations you can independently verify. Ask for references specifically from the people who used the CRM—not just the project manager.

7. Make the contract protect you

For a contractor, require:

• Work in your CRM environment/accounts.
• Code and configuration belong to your company.
• Version-controlled source where applicable.
• Documentation of custom reports, scripts, integrations and data models.
• Testing/staging before production.
• No shared credentials.
• Least-privilege access.
• A defined handoff period.

This matters because CRM development often involves customer data and powerful API credentials; official CRM guidance recommends restricting permissions and securely managing authentication tokens.

My biggest recommendation: before posting the job, give me which CRM you're using (Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics, etc.), roughly how many sales reps you have, and 2–3 examples of the custom reports you need. I can then give you a precise candidate profile, interview questions, and a practical skills test tailored to your setup.

Yes. The key is to hire for CRM architecture + business requirements + integration skills, not simply someone who knows how to build reports.

1. Define the actual problem first

Before interviewing anyone, write down 3–5 examples of the reports your sales team wants but can't currently produce:

• What question should each report answer?
• Which CRM objects/data are involved?
• Where does the data currently live?
• Who needs the report and how often?
• Does it need to update automatically?
• Does the requirement involve data from other systems?

This helps distinguish a straightforward CRM configuration job from a genuine development/integration project.

2. Look for these skills

A strong CRM developer should be able to:

• Translate sales requirements into a data model
• Understand custom objects/fields and relationships
• Build automation and custom reporting
• Work with APIs and integrations
• Write and test code where the CRM's native tools aren't enough
• Diagnose data-quality problems
• Explain technical tradeoffs to nontechnical salespeople
• Document what they build so you're not dependent on one person

For example, Salesforce's own developer guidance emphasizes data modeling, APIs/integration, testing, automation, and the ability to understand business requirements—not just programming.

3. Hire someone with experience in your CRM

Don't hire a generic "CRM developer" if you already know the platform.

Salesforce: Look for experience with Apex, SOQL, Lightning Web Components, APIs, data modeling, reports/dashboards, and deployment/version-control practices. trailhead.salesforce.comwww.salesforce.com You can also find certified consulting partners through Salesforce's current Partner Finder.

HubSpot: Look for CRM development, APIs, integrations, databases/data structures, and ideally experience with custom integrations. HubSpot's Solutions Directory lets you filter partners by service, industry, credentials, and reviews; it specifically lists CRM implementation and custom-integration expertise.

4. Give candidates a small practical test

This is probably the best screening method.

Give them a sanitized version of one difficult report request and ask:

"Our VP of Sales wants a report showing pipeline created by salesperson, segmented by lead source, with conversion rates and average days from opportunity creation to close. Some of the required data comes from another system. How would you approach this?"

Don't require them to build the whole thing. Ask them to spend 30–60 minutes explaining:

1. What data they'd need
2. What they'd configure natively
3. What they'd custom-develop
4. What questions they'd ask the sales team
5. How they'd validate the numbers
6. How they'd make the solution maintainable

A good developer will probably ask questions before proposing a solution.

5. Ask for evidence, not just certifications

Certifications are useful, but ask candidates to show—without exposing confidential client information—two or three comparable projects.

Ask:

• What was the customer's problem?
• What did you personally build?
• What couldn't the CRM do natively?
• Did you integrate another system?
• How did you handle bad/inconsistent data?
• How did you test it?
• What happened when requirements changed?

For HubSpot specifically, its accreditation program distinguishes more rigorous partner accreditation from ordinary certifications and looks for demonstrated expertise and practical experience.

6. Decide whether you need a freelancer, employee, or consulting firm

Freelancer: Best for a defined project with limited ongoing maintenance.

Full-time developer: Makes sense if your CRM is becoming a core business system and you'll have a continuing stream of custom work.

Specialized CRM consultancy: Often best if the problem involves architecture, integrations, data migration, automation, and reporting across multiple systems. You're buying a team rather than depending on one developer.

For your situation, I'd probably start with a specialist for a short discovery/architecture engagement, rather than immediately hiring a permanent developer. Have them inventory the reporting gaps, data sources, and technical constraints, then use that work to determine whether you need ongoing development.

Red flags 🚩

Be cautious if someone:

• Immediately proposes custom code without understanding the business requirement
• Can't explain the CRM's native capabilities
• Has lots of certifications but no comparable project examples
• Doesn't talk about testing or data quality
• Wants to build everything directly in production
• Can't explain their work to a salesperson
• Doesn't document their solution
• Says "yes" to every request without discussing tradeoffs

The single best interview question:
"Show me a CRM project where the obvious solution wasn't the right solution. What did you recommend instead, and why?"

That tends to reveal whether you're talking to someone who can engineer a CRM solution versus someone who simply knows how to configure screens and reports.

Hiring a good CRM developer for custom reporting requires targeting specific technical skills, platform experience, and data visualization capabilities.

Follow this structured approach to find and vet the right talent:

1. Define Your Technical Requirements

Before writing a job description, pinpoint what your custom reports actually entail.

• Platform Experience: Identify your exact CRM (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho). Developers often specialize in just one or two ecosystems.
• Data Architecture Skills: Determine if they need to write complex SQL/SOQL queries, build data warehouses, or use BI tools (like Tableau, Power BI, or Looker) integrated with your CRM.
• API and Integration Knowledge: They may need to pull data from external tools into your CRM or push CRM data out to a reporting layer.

2. Craft a Targeted Job Description

• Highlight the pain point: Explicitly state that the core responsibility is building robust, scalable custom reporting and dashboards that the native CRM lacks.
• Require platform certifications: For Salesforce, look for Platform Developer I/II or Certified Administrator; for Microsoft Dynamics, look for relevant Microsoft certifications.
• Ask for portfolio/case studies: Ask candidates to describe a complex reporting challenge they solved (e.g., multi-object reporting, historical data tracking, or automated executive dashboards).

3. Key Interview Questions to Ask

• "Can you walk me through a time you had to optimize a slow-loading report or a heavy database query in the CRM?"
• "How do you handle data cleanliness issues or missing fields when designing a mission-critical sales dashboard?"
• "How do you decide whether a report should be built natively inside the CRM versus exporting data to a separate BI tool?"

4. Run a Practical Assessment

• Give a small, timed technical test or a scenario-based exercise.
• Provide a sanitized, hypothetical data schema and ask them to outline how they would structure a complex commission or pipeline velocity report.

To help narrow down the search, could you tell me:

• Which CRM platform your team is using?
• Whether these custom reports need to stay inside the CRM or integrate with an external BI tool like Power BI or Tableau?

Hiring a great CRM developer requires looking past standard programming skills to find someone who deeply understands data architecture, business workflows, and your specific CRM platform (whether it is Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, or another tool).

Essential Steps to Hire a CRM Developer

• Define Your Scope First: Clarify whether you need a short-term custom report build, an ongoing administrator/developer hybrid, or a major data migration. Knowing the exact scope dictates whether you need a freelancer, agency, or full-time employee.
• Identify the Right Platform Expertise: CRM systems use proprietary languages (e.g., Apex for Salesforce, HubL/JavaScript for HubSpot, C#/.NET for Dynamics). Ensure candidates have direct experience with your specific ecosystem.
• Test for Business Logic, Not Just Code: A great CRM developer doesn't just write code; they understand why sales teams log data. Ask how they design data structures to minimize friction for end-users.
• Review Portfolio and Case Studies: Ask for examples of custom dashboards, automated workflows, or complex reporting objects they have built from scratch.
• Conduct a Practical Assessment: Give them a small, realistic scenario—like mapping out a custom attribution reporting requirement—to see how they translate business needs into technical architecture.

To help narrow down your search, could you tell me:

• Which CRM platform your team is currently using?
• What specific metrics or data sources your custom reports need to pull together?
• Are you looking to hire a full-time employee , a freelancer , or an agency?

Yes. For custom sales reporting, I’d hire for CRM architecture + data/reporting skills, not simply someone who calls themselves a “CRM developer.”

1. Define the problem before hiring

Write down 5–10 examples of reports your sales team needs, such as:

• Pipeline by rep, territory, product, and stage
• Win rate by lead source
• Sales-cycle length by segment
• Forecast accuracy
• Rep activity vs. closed revenue
• Conversion rates between pipeline stages
• Custom executive dashboards

Also specify where the data lives: CRM only, or CRM + ERP, billing, marketing automation, spreadsheets, etc. If the reports require combining multiple systems, you need someone comfortable with APIs/data integration—not just CRM configuration.

2. Look for these skills

A strong candidate should have:

Must-have

• Deep experience with your specific CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics, etc.)
• Data modeling and reporting/dashboard design
• CRM automation/workflows
• API and integration experience
• Ability to translate sales requirements into a technical solution
• Experience troubleshooting messy CRM data

For Salesforce, relevant skills include data modeling, automation, APIs/integrations, testing, and DevOps/CI/CD. trailhead.salesforce.com HubSpot similarly emphasizes APIs, custom CRM extensions, and integrations for more sophisticated development work.

Nice-to-have

• SQL/SOQL
• ETL/data warehouses
• BI tools such as Power BI or Tableau
• Git/version control
• Experience with your industry and sales process

3. Don't hire based on certifications alone

A certification proves familiarity with a platform; it doesn't prove they can design your reporting architecture.

Instead, ask candidates:

“Show me a complicated sales-reporting problem you've solved. What data did you need, where did it come from, how did you model it, and how did you make sure the numbers were accurate?”

Then ask for a sanitized example or demo.

A particularly good candidate will ask you questions about data definitions before proposing a solution. For example, they should clarify what your company means by “pipeline,” “qualified lead,” “closed won,” and “sales cycle.”

4. Give finalists a small paid test project

This is probably the best hiring filter.

Give them one real reporting requirement and limited access to a sandbox/test environment, then ask them to:

1. Examine the existing CRM data model.
2. Explain whether the report can be built natively.
3. Identify data-quality problems.
4. Propose an architecture if native reporting isn't sufficient.
5. Build a prototype.
6. Document how the sales team will maintain it.

Don't give them a huge unpaid take-home assignment.

5. Choose the right type of hire

For a handful of custom reports, I'd start with a freelance/contract CRM developer or specialized CRM consultancy, rather than immediately hiring a full-time developer.

You probably need a full-time person when the work expands into ongoing CRM ownership: integrations, automation, data governance, custom applications, reporting, and continuous development.

And there's an important distinction: if the problem is primarily reporting, you may actually want a CRM/RevOps analyst with strong technical skills rather than a software developer.

A good job description

I'd phrase the role roughly as:

CRM Developer / CRM Reporting Specialist
Build and maintain custom sales reporting, dashboards, CRM automation, data models, and integrations. Partner directly with Sales and RevOps to translate business requirements into reliable CRM solutions. Must have hands-on experience with [your CRM], complex reporting, data modeling, automation, APIs/integrations, and troubleshooting CRM data. Experience with SQL and BI tools is a plus.

If you tell me which CRM you use (Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics, Zoho, etc.), how many sales reps you have, and roughly what the custom reports need to show, I can give you a much more specific hiring profile—including where I'd look for candidates, interview questions, and what a reasonable contractor vs. full-time hire looks like.

If your goal is custom sales reports, you don't necessarily need a general software developer—you need someone with experience extending your specific CRM platform. A Salesforce reporting expert, for example, is very different from a HubSpot or Microsoft Dynamics developer.

A strong hiring process looks like this:

1. Define the reporting needs before hiring. Write down:

   • The business questions you want answered (e.g., "Which reps close the highest-value deals by industry?")
   • Data sources involved
   • Who will use the reports
   • How often they need to update
   • Whether dashboards, scheduled emails, or exports are required

   This helps candidates estimate effort accurately and prevents paying for unnecessary customization.

2. Look for platform-specific experience. Ask for candidates who have worked extensively with your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics, Zoho, etc.), not just general web development. Platform expertise is often more valuable than broad programming experience for reporting and automation work.

3. Verify reporting and data skills. Good CRM developers should be comfortable with:

   • Custom reports and dashboards
   • Data modeling
   • SQL or CRM query languages (where applicable)
   • APIs and integrations
   • Security and permission models
   • Performance optimization for large datasets

4. Ask for relevant portfolio examples. Instead of asking "Have you built CRMs?", ask:

   • Can you show a dashboard you built?
   • What reporting challenge did it solve?
   • How did you handle messy or incomplete data?
   • What metrics did stakeholders care about?

5. Give a realistic test project. Rather than a coding quiz, ask candidates to explain how they would build one of your actual reports. Look for someone who asks clarifying business questions before proposing a solution.

6. Evaluate communication skills. Reporting projects require translating sales requirements into technical work. The best developers ask questions like:

   • "What business decision will this dashboard support?"
   • "Who owns this data?"
   • "How current does the information need to be?"

7. Discuss long-term support. Sales processes evolve. Ask:

   • Who maintains custom reports?
   • How are changes documented?
   • Will your team receive training?
   • Is documentation included?

Questions to ask during interviews

• Which CRM platforms have you customized?
• What's the most complex reporting project you've completed?
• How do you improve slow-running reports?
• How do you validate report accuracy?
• Have you integrated reporting with BI tools like Power BI or Tableau?
• Can you describe a project where business requirements changed midway?

Red flags

• They focus only on coding and not business requirements.
• They can't explain how they validate data quality.
• They promise every request is "easy" without asking questions.
• They have no examples of reporting or dashboard work.
• They recommend custom code before exploring native CRM reporting capabilities.

For many organizations, a small paid discovery engagement (for example, one or two weeks) is a lower-risk way to evaluate a developer than committing to a large project immediately. It lets you assess their technical skills, communication, and understanding of your sales team's reporting needs before expanding the engagement.

Hiring a great CRM developer to build custom sales reports requires looking past general coding skills and zeroing in on platform-specific expertise, data architecture, and communication. A brilliant backend web engineer might still struggle if they don't understand CRM data models, objects, and reporting limitations.

Here is a step-by-step roadmap to finding and vetting the right person:

1. Identify Your Specific Ecosystem

• Match the stack: Determine your exact CRM (e.g., Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot, or Zoho).
• Know the native language: A Salesforce developer needs Apex and Lightning Web Components (LWC); a Microsoft Dynamics developer needs C#, .NET, and JavaScript plugins. For custom reporting, they also need mastery of querying tools like SOQL, FetchXML, or SQL, and often experience with external business intelligence tools like Power BI or Tableau.

1. Define the Scope and Role

• Differentiate Admin vs. Developer: Many configuration tasks (like basic dashboard layout or standard custom fields) can be handled by a CRM Administrator. Writing custom code, optimizing database queries for massive datasets, and handling complex cross-system reporting require a true Developer.
• Document the pain points: Write down precisely what the sales team is missing. Is it multi-attribution revenue modeling? Complex historical pipeline velocity tracking? Giving candidates a concrete example of a missing report helps them explain how they would architect it.

1. Sourcing Channels

• Platform-specific communities: Look on the Salesforce Trailblazer Community or the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Community where active developers showcase their expertise.
• Specialized tech recruiters: Partner with boutique agencies that focus strictly on the CRM ecosystem rather than general software staffing.
• Freelance marketplaces: If it's a short-term reporting project, vet specialized freelance talent on curated platforms like Toptal or Upwork by reviewing past CRM implementation ratings.

1. Essential Screening & Interview Questions

• Ask for architecture strategy: "How do you design a custom report or data aggregation when the native reporting engine hits governor limits or performance bottlenecks?"
• Test data hygiene awareness: "How do your customizations ensure we don't pollute or break existing data models and sales workflows?"
• Evaluate soft/translation skills: A great CRM developer doesn't just code in a silo; they have to talk to sales reps and VPs who speak "quota and pipeline," not "API and schema."

If you share which CRM platform you are using and what specific data the sales team is struggling to pull , I can help draft a targeted technical assessment test or specific interview questions for your candidates.

Hiring a great CRM developer to build custom sales reports requires looking past generic coding skills. They need a solid grasp of database architecture, native CRM reporting engines, and—crucially—how sales teams actually think and track metrics.

Here is a step-by-step framework to find and evaluate the right person:

1. Identify your exact platform and ecosystem
   Different CRMs require completely different technical stacks. Make sure you are looking for specialists in your specific tool (e.g., Salesforce Apex/SOQL, Microsoft Dynamics 365/Dataverse/C#, or HubSpot operations). For complex cross-platform reporting, experience with BI tools like Power BI or Tableau integrated into the CRM is a massive plus.
2. Define the scope beyond "just reports"
   Custom reports usually fail if the underlying data isn't structured correctly. A good developer won't just write a SQL/SOQL query; they will look at your pipeline stages, object relationships (leads, contacts, opportunities, custom entities), and data hygiene rules to make sure the data feeding the report is accurate.
3. Look for the right blend of technical and communication skills
   Sales teams often request what they think they want rather than what they actually need. The ideal developer has strong stakeholder management skills to translate vague requests ("I need to see rep velocity") into precise data models.
4. Ask targeted interview questions
   • “How do you approach optimizing a complex report or dashboard that is timing out or lagging due to a massive data volume?” (Tests database and querying efficiency).
   • “Can you describe a time a sales leader asked for a metric that the CRM didn’t natively support? How did you design the custom fields, triggers, or data capture to make it happen?” (Tests business acumen and problem-solving).
   • “How do you handle data validation and ensure that custom objects or required fields don’t frustrate end users into entering bad data?” (Tests user adoption awareness).
5. Give a small practical assessment
   Don’t rely on a resume alone. Give candidates a mock scenario: provide an anonymized schema or sample data layout, explain a specific reporting bottleneck or missing sales metric, and ask them to map out or sketch the data relationship and query logic required to solve it.

To help narrow down the search, could you tell me:

• Which CRM platform your company is currently using (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics)?
• Are you looking to hire a full-time employee, a contractor, or an agency?

If your sales team needs reports that your CRM can't produce out of the box, the right hire is usually someone with deep experience in your specific CRM platform, not just a general software developer. CRM customization often involves platform-specific APIs, data models, permissions, and reporting tools.

Here's a practical hiring process:

1. Define the reporting problem first. Before interviewing anyone, document:

   • The reports you need (with examples or mockups).
   • Who will use them.
   • Where the data should come from.
   • Whether the reports require new fields, custom objects, or integrations.

2. Look for platform-specific expertise. A Salesforce developer, HubSpot developer, Microsoft Dynamics developer, or Zoho CRM developer will generally be more effective than someone who simply lists "CRM" on their résumé. Strong specialists usually focus on one or two ecosystems.

3. Review real project experience. Ask candidates to describe:

   • A custom reporting project they built.
   • Dashboards they've designed.
   • Integrations they've implemented.
   • Performance challenges they solved.
   • How they handled changing business requirements.

4. Ask technical questions about your needs. For example:

   • How would you design this report?
   • Would you use built-in reporting, SQL, APIs, or a BI tool?
   • How would you make the report fast as data grows?
   • How would you validate the numbers against existing reports?

5. Evaluate communication skills. The developer will likely spend significant time translating sales requirements into technical solutions. A candidate who asks thoughtful questions about your sales process is often a better choice than one who immediately starts discussing code.

6. Start with a paid pilot. Rather than committing to a large project, hire someone to:

   • Build one complex report.
   • Document the solution.
   • Demonstrate it to stakeholders.
   • Incorporate feedback.

   This gives you a realistic view of their technical ability and collaboration style.

7. Clarify ownership. Your agreement should specify:

   • Source code ownership.
   • Documentation requirements.
   • Access to repositories and admin accounts.
   • Support after delivery.
   • Change request process.

A simple scorecard can help compare candidates:

If your reporting needs are extensive—combining CRM data with ERP, finance, or marketing systems—you may also want someone with experience in business intelligence tools like Power BI, Tableau, or Looker in addition to CRM development.

If you tell me which CRM you're using (Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics 365, Zoho, Pipedrive, etc.) and whether you need custom reports only or new CRM features as well, I can suggest the specific skills and interview questions to use.