Best sources to find your go-to programmer [closed]

Question

After exhausting many resources, time, interviews etc, I cannot seem to find the correct programming talent for our company. Any other resources you suggest besides Dice, Linkedin, Craigslist, University Job Boards, Poaching techniques....its been months now!

Specifically, we designed proprietary data-manipulation and data-gathering technology, and are looking for skilled programmers requiring skills of PHP5/MySQL, Javascript/HTML/CSS , cross-browser compatibility/optimization, web interface development, familiarity with source control (SVN or GIT), any L/AMP stack, and/or related application protocols, GCC-supported languages, Zend Framework and/or jQuery.

Answer 1

I hear this broken record every day - "We can't find the skills we need"

Lets paraphrase the advert into an listing for a Truck Driver:

Wanted -- Skilled Truck Driver. Must have the following skill sets:

• 1990 Volvo Cab Over 10Speed Auto 250HP

• Pulling twin dual axle trailers containing farm supply products.

• Must have detailed knowledge of [Small geographical location here].

• Ability to fix truck, change tires and herd cats an advantage.

"Oh - I see you know the area well, worked farms you entire career, but you have only ever driven Kenworth, Mac's, Mitsi's - Don't see Volvo in that resume - Sorry, your not qualified, no point interviewing you is there"

My guess is that someone left the job, you have no idea what he did all day, so you copied the skill list out of his resume, or even better, asked him to put together a list of skills needed to do the job. For some reason you cannot figure, you cannot find his clone.

What you should do is find someone with the skills needed to get the job done, rather than someone who can tick a series of boxes and expect that thats all thats needed to get job done. So what if a candidate can't tick a box - a good candidate will need a week and a book, but you are not even interviewing them....

Answer 2

It looks like you really just want a PHP web developer just ask for PHP and SQL as 'Must Have' skills and everything else under 'Technologies We Use'.

Answer 3

Hire a recruiter. You might also want to try careers.stackoverflow.com. Sometimes if your tech stack doesn't match the talent pool in your geographical area, it can be tremendously difficult to find the right person. Something that I wasn't aware of until recently.

You might also want to try Usenet (er, Google groups). Try posting a recruitment thread in one of the groups focused on the most important elements in your tech stack (i.e. https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/comp.lang.php as you're using PHP).

Answer 4

One option is to hire a new grad who has solid understanding in computer science with some experience in PHP and MySQL. This might require some training and coaching, because finding well-versed developer nowadays is really hard.

Another option is to simplify the requirements to a good knowledge level of PHP and MySQL.

This is a path that we follow in our company and it has some good results, even though there might be failure in selection as well.

However, you may also look for good passionate developers in local user group meetings. Not sure about your location, but you may always Google for one. One that is local to us is the CMAP.

We also have dedicated recruiters that do search talents for our new or existing project expansions. They help with the pre-screening and searches as a first point of contact. That is definitely a big saver of time and effort.