[OliverSteenbuck]

I'd think that it would be the used car nobody who knew it wanted...

When jobs show up in those sites, the company already failed at filling the position through trusted references. (or so is my impression)

Doesn't have to be bad ofcourse, but propably warrants more due dilligence on the job seekers part than a good reference.

[euroclydon]

There are so many reasons why a company might not be good at recruiting employees. They run from not having enough time, to opening an office in a new city, or simply being willing to outsource networking so they can do stuff they like.

If you're looking for a job as a place to make friends and work with interesting people, fine, that's good stuff. But, many places of work are simply businesses, trying to make money for their owners. Recruiters want to find competent and experienced workers who can come in and get stuff done. It's not all lowballing and keyword bingo.

[sbisker]

That may be true, but it's obvious that recruiting has a problem if it's so hard to separate the wheat from the chaff in their own ranks. It's the same problem with realty and real estate agents.

[kisielk]

In our case our company is in an industry (biotech) that traditionally doesn't seem to attract a lot of developers. Most of the developers I know in my network are either game or web app developers.

When we have openings they're usually reluctant to apply because the positions normally benefit from a solid math or sciences background, or they'd rather be working on more general-purpose software than that used for drug R&D.

That's mostly why we use job posting sites and we've actually managed to find solid team members via StackOverflow and some local job posting sites.

[ericb]

I'd like to refer you to my, rather opposite, take on this. BTW, this worked VERY well for me.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2309405