Do you already know any hackers/programmers who you consider reliable? Request a few small code samples from candidates with some short (a few sentences descri

Do you already know any hackers/programmers who you consider reliable? Request a few small code samples from candidates with some short (a few sentences description) of what/who/how the code was designed for and a little bit of context (ie, was the code produced under a 24 hour deadline to fix a critical bug or the result of a six month side project). Have your existing reliable programmers skim over the submissions, looking for a quick yes/no. Bring in (or video conference, whatever works for you) the yes candidates, and actually treat the interview as a short work session. Brainstorm about your project requirements, technology approaches, talk about challenges you see, ask them for what challenges they see and how they would approach the problem. [EDIT] - oh, make sure to vet the submitted code samples too - if a candidate can't talk coherently about the submitted samples, I would be in "thanks for coming" mode. Ultimately, I'll echo what most posts here are saying - if some hacker/programmer in your network says good things about a fellow hacker/programmer, you're probably way ahead of the game. If you're completely unable to evaluate technical candidate skills and have no hacker/programmers in your personal network, I think you have to move back to a suggestion by bjclark - "Hire a reputable company." Maybe you can even pay a reputable software company to vet candidates for you - I've had poor experiences with IT recruiting companies, but I've always been on the other side of the table, trying to find a good technical recruiter to work with.