Hiring candidates through interviews or through known contacts list is just about taking a chance. There are several unknowns which can only come out in the cou

Hiring candidates through interviews or through known contacts list is just about taking a chance. There are several unknowns which can only come out in the course of time. I agree with vonnik, that running the Project in Open Source definitely has an edge in the interviewing process. The potential employee has already seen your code (or you can make sure that he has), knows what he/she is getting into. I would seek for some links of their contributions to other projects which will help me evaluate if their code. Of-course less than 5% of the job applicants now have had the opportunity to develop for open source. (Either the folks contributing in the open source love their job so much, that they hardly look around or they are already being offered jobs without looking..).