Advice on hiring a ColdFusion developer
Employers often comment how tough it is to find and hire ColdFusion developers. There are ColdFusion developers on the market and I've spoken with them at user group meetings. We often discuss job opportunities that are floating around online. Several of them had interviewed, but where not hired by these companies. I assume the same companies that complain about the scarcity of ColdFusion developers.
So, why do ColdFusion positions remain empty, while unemployed ColdFusion develoeprs remain idle?
Temp to Perm
In this economy, I can't think of anyone quitting a stable job to work on a temporary basis. Think about it? I understand your company wants an escape clause if your new employee turns out to be a "wally" from Dilbert. On the other hand you've denied yourself an interview with all the currently employed (and presumably desirable) developers.
Location, location, location
Depending on traffic patterns, your pool of applicants shrinks naturally based on geography. Isn't this a bit insane? Your ability to find qualified developers is limited by the roads we drive on.
Must have X skills or experience
Employers looking for developers to match their laundry list of technologies are shooting themselves in the foot. Think about it? You've spent the last five years working with Mach II, Transfer, mySQL, Apache, ExtJS, etc. Yeaaaaah, I'm sure you want your next job to look exactly like your last job. I don't think so. Developers find more satisfaction from work that is new and challenging.
What is the solution?
Figure out where you can bend. Seriously, with the above requirements, you've painted yourself into a corner. You can remove the "temp to perm" requirement and connect with employed ColdFusion developers (Conferences, User Groups, Linkedin are all good places to start). Find those skilled programmers waiting for a better offer to come along, but are not actively looking. Location is a tought one. If you don't allow telecommuniting, what about partial telecommuting. Having a top notch developer in house two or three days a week is enough to keep team cohesion. My final suggestion is lose the laundry list of skills. Instead of requiring they meet your checklist, SELL your postion as a challenge with cool technologies you use or plan on exploring. Why not find a developer with PHP or Java experience? If they gel with your team and have the coding chops, they can learn ColdFusion and learn it the way your team codes projects.
Am I off the mark? What do you think?
After our last discussion in CFdev camp in San Francisco I was able to convince my manager to lower our requirements, but trust me this is not best solution. Adobe should work with collages to offer ColdFusion development courses. I believe this will boost ColdFusion resources. You also doing great job in bay area, actually I was surprised in last cfdev camp most of attendees were all new to ColdFusion.
Thanks for the comment. Yes, when your team supports multiple server side technologies they will push projects where the resources are at. This is an immediate solution but in the long run are we hurting the project? Once your start down a path, the project becomes wed to the technology choice. What happens when that technology falls out of fashion and skilled developers in that language are hard to find? This can happen to any technology, server-side, client-side, mobile?
I'm glad your management was able to find a solution to your staffing problems.
My post also reflects on a ColdFusion position in the bay area that a few unemployed CF developers applied for, but were not chosen. I spoke with the recruiter a few weeks later and the position was filled by a Java developer. The company realized a solid understanding of OO is a good foundation for new ColdFusion developers.
My feelings are a bit mixed. I want all experienced ColdFusion developers to find work, but if a Java, PHP, .Net, whatever developer is a better fit in a forward thinking ColdFusion shop, so be it. This will push our community to become better programmers. Competition is a good incentive for growth, regardless of the technology.
It's rather disconcerting to think that people are still drawing lines that way, as It's been my continued experience that front-end programming is becoming more and more of a programmatical position than a design position.
It's also very very troubling to experience a scenario where a company is just dwelving into the internet development end of things and the people above you have little or no understanding about the trials, tribulations and limitations that can occur (for instance, The last company I was wokring with wanted to target consumers that were still running IE 6). I tried to on many occassions inform them that that scenario is unlikely and anyone still running IE 6 is still also on dialup...(that ofcourse was an assumption) and they could not understand the design principles have changed since the IE 6 reign of the net and were rather displeased when I was developing standards-complaint websites that unfortunately didn't function well on IE 6.
But great Article!