it is funny to see that you go for a masters degree but want actual coders that have experience. in my experience hireing developers you are on the wrong track.
if you want good coders in the mid cost tier you go for those guys that dropped out of uni and actually did coding for a while compared to those that did uni but never touched an editor. also, if you want good guys, think of maing them. expecting to get only the good ones without investing into education is a bit arrogant in my view. get the most promising ones and get one really good senior guy who mentors the rest. a team of heros will never get anything done ... they only fight for the best algorhythm :-)
Well first of all, I don't dictate the hiring strategy at my company. I try to help in that department but i'm a developer myself. There is indeed an emphasis on academic requirements but I think other successful companies (google) have this bias. Management at my company tends to think that people with no university are "too close to the code", meaning they don't have the ability to abstract things.
There is no easy solution to the problem, but I can tell you that if your standards are already high and strict, adding yet more elaborate screens to vett suitable candidates isn't going to do much more than create more work for you.
The best way to get people is to network. Are you and your developers going to conferences and being active in developer communities?
Perhaps de-emphasizing "php" and emphasizing hardcore functional descriptions of the work you do might attract better people? In other words, is what you really want a "php guy" or do you want a capable developer who knows the core material. Can a competent front-end guy with demonstrated ability become quickly productive in a php shop even if he hasn't work in php? I think so.
Yes, I think we're not active enough in developer communities in general. Whereas facebook, 37 signals & co must have no problem finding software developers, it's harder for companies that didn't make a name in the developer community yet.
However, the focus of my blog post was more to identify what things a startup could do to help software companies finding talent. Easing the workflow or adding some screening steps are examples of what a startup could do to solve this problem, which is a major one for tech companies and where a lot of money is spent.
I got fed up trying to hire team members quickly. It got me to the point that I am working on a solution to that problem. It is too early to talk about it, but it will kill the spam of irrelevant applications common to normal freelance sites and provide real-time view into availability of talent pool.
I agree on de-emphasizing PHP in general. You want to know what framework that person is comfortable with and why it's their method of choice.
Look for people from C# or Java or Python background. They can write PHP if they have to.
