How to hire good java developers

[owainlewis]

Hello, I'm currently in the process of expanding my development team
at WANdisco and I'm coming up against an odd problem (seems odd to me
anyway) so I thought you guys may have some thoughts.

We're struggling to find good solid java developers - ideally I'm
after people with 3 or more years experience who are smart good
problem solvers and have all the usual qualities we look for in our
colleagues. The problem appears to be that there's a split of
applicants, meaning they fall into two camps:

1) Graduates/less than a years commercial experience.

or

2) Senior developer - actually there appear to be two sorts of these -
those who are highly qualified with genuine experience who are
prohibitively expensive (for this particular role) and those who bill
themselves as Senior Dev (regardless of experience) who also want a
load of money - but don't have the skillz to back it up.

So I guess the question is... how do I go about finding the good
people? How have you found those awesome team members in the past?
We're trying to avoid using agencies as they cost a fortune and don't
seem to do much more than a keyword search on a database (in my
experience). I'm also concerned that the cultural fit has to be right
- we're a small (growing) business so the candidate has to 'get it'
and be up for the challenge.

The job description is here: http://wandisco.com/php/careers.php?career=sheff_java_developer

and we're looking to pay around 30k (though we could go higher for the
right person) - which I think is about the market rate for the
experience.

Any thoughts? Know anyone who's looking? Wanna job?

Cheers. O.

[Dan Dukeson]

Hi Owain

I think the sort of people you want: smart, problem solving,
experienced java developers are out there, but they all have jobs and
they are going to make a leap into the unknown for 30k, as they are
already earning that or more.

You might get lucky and find someone that hates their job and is just
looking for a change, but that would be lucky.

I think if you offer slightly more than "market rates" you might
attract people who are otherwise quite comfortable in their current
jobs.

Regards
Dan

2009/12/17 owainlewis <owain...@yahoo.co.uk>: