[ice5nake]

Some interesting and good ideas. However, I don't think there is a recipe for finding good software engineers. If you always use the same method you're going to end up with a team of people with the same strengths. Know your teams strengths and weaknesses and find candidates that balance things out.

[Periodic]

I think this is very important to take into consideration. I've heard a lot of stories about like-hiring-like and ending up with an imbalanced team. Part of that is the interview process, part of it is the interviewers.

Good interviewers should be able to recognize strengths in the candidate that they lack.