Oh I totally agree. I just said 10 recommendations to make a point. If you can easily gather recommendations from individuals in multiple sectors, than this val

Oh I totally agree. I just said 10 recommendations to make a point. If you can easily gather recommendations from individuals in multiple sectors, than this validates your importance and potential impact. Reputation is crucial, because as we all know there is a huge difference between excellent programmers and average programmers. As for your second comment about judging "smartness", I would have to politely disagree. What you describe sounds more like "emotional intelligence." Can this individual relate to others on a human level? Do they seem like a "jack-of-all-trades"? This is actually crucial as well. If you do not have employees that can communicate well, and distill high-level thinking, then the transfer of those ideas is very difficult. As an example, we had a student in our group who was wicked "smart" but could not communicate their ideas seamlessly. Thus, when that student graduated, we were left with a bunch of beautiful code that none of us could understand. I still stand by my original statement. If a prospective hire brought forth a solid portfolio of accomplishments, they will have defended their cognitive abilities and adept understanding of difficult concepts...assuming those projects were non-trivial.