For me Scrum wouldn't be a "skill" that I would be looking for. I have... issues... with Scrum (not the process itself - which is a damn fine process improvemen

For me Scrum wouldn't be a "skill" that I would be looking for. I have... issues... with Scrum (not the process itself - which is a damn fine process improvement and project management framework - but the industry that has sprung up around it). However - your comparison is pretty much a straw man. I'm not looking for good Scrum / Agile experience instead of code experience. I'm looking for code experience and good agile team experience. Because - over the last ten years - the teams I've seen using agile approaches have been darn effective. When I'm helping build a technical team you need great coders and you need great team players working in a way that makes everybody happy and effective. Ideally you want to recruit folk who are already great coders and are already used to working in effective team environments. If you think either of those is a natural skill or simple then you're mistaken or very lucky. I can mentor folk up on both sides - sometimes it's actually easier to turn a good coder into a great one than it is to turn an asocial fuckwit prima-donna coder into an efffective team player ;-)