Alternative sources of Perl programmers

[Gareth Kirwan]

On 13-05-13 10:48 PM, Mark Fowler wrote:
> On Monday, May 13, 2013, Duncan Garland wrote:
>> We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
>> struggling.
> The question I ask anyone who has problems hiring for any IT position is
> "have you considered telecommute?"

We've had a mix of teleworkers and onsite staff, going back over the 
past decade.
Last year I started to consider the issues of hiring good programmers 
locally, and concluded that there isn't really a choice.
So we embraced teleworking completely when hiring new programmers recently.

It's made a world of difference.
The CVs from agents trickled in. I would have thought that meant that 
the perl programmers weren't out there.
But the response to our jobs.perl.org advert was enormous, and very good 
quality indeed.
I'm still open to anything through agents, because if I find "the right 
candidate" then I wouldn't care where they came from.

I'd suggest opening yourself up to telecommuting.
Make sure you actually hire for it as a skill, though. Assuming "You're 
a good dev, you can work from home, surely?" can be disastrous.
Watch for signs of demotivation, and ensure that there's some 
"telecommuting best practices" available.