Here's my view as a veteran UNIX / Linux guy who's almost done with his search:

>> “They like to hide,” he says. “Marketing people, sales people, product people will network. Engineers, they’re very timid about giving out contact information for themselves or anyone else.”

Rule #1 about posting your resume on Dice or Monster: Your phone number is 000-000-0000 - screen via e-mail. I don't enjoy multiple interruptions in my day because you either A) matched a couple keywords or B) e-mailed me and I haven't responded. Don't be "that guy" who e-mails a person, calls them and says "did you get my e-mail??" I have got most of my jobs from Dice, they've been good to me, but there's no way I'm exposing myself to recruiter spam via telephone.

Same goes for references: I make it 100% clear that when I give out references they are ONLY to be used as references for this position and nothing more. If my references start getting calls from your company about 'opportunities' they contact me, I call the company, start chewing people out, AND I've got it in writing.

A tip for newer job seekers: Provide references after the interview, not before. The recruiter or company contacted you on the strength of your resume and not who your references are.

On another quick note: References are obsolete. Managers from larger companies can't give good or bad references due to fear of being sued and what are you gonna do - give your worst enemy as a reference?

>> “It’s the fear of the unknown,” he says. ”Everyone is afraid of hiring the wrong person, and if they would just trust that they know how to ask the right questions, then everyone wouldn’t be complaining as much about recruiting.”

Get your fucking interviews in order, take time and actually do it. I've had so many interviews where it's clear that the interviewers did not read my resume and did not have questions ready to go - they just played it off the cuff. I took the time to tailor my resume to your organization but you can't get your interviewers together for 15 minutes to read my resume and create questions to ask? You're showing me right off the bat that your company either can't or doesn't plan for a six figure investment (me, the candidate, the guy that will be sitting next to you).

>> But instead of asking the right questions and hiring a candidate who’s qualified, Marcus says that startup founders will take a candidate in based on a personal recommendation or an impressive company name on a resume, usually branching outside the original specification they wrote and usually regretting the decision in the long run.

This is very true because it's easy to hide and do nothing or know nothing at a large company. At a 10 person startup if you don't know what you're doing people are gonna figure it out - fast.

>> And the truth he’s seen in the past decade is that our insecurity is getting the best of us. “The big problem in general is fear,” he says. “To counter their fear, companies make their standards too high and turn down people who would be great at their jobs.

Job descriptions are getting stupid and out of control - they seem to be like a child's wish list at Christmas. Nevermind positions with low salary but do you really expect people to know C/C++ and be a Linux guru? Both a Windows pro and a Cisco wizard? Take 30 seconds and think about it: How many of those people REALLY exist in the world? 500? How many are looking for a job? 1, 2? And last but not least, are they really going to want to work for your random company for 90k a year with skills like that? Unless they are completely insecure and clueless the best of the best techies know their worth.

The other thing is listing requirements for the wrong reasons. I don't know Ruby and shy away from jobs that want it, but if you really just want someone who knows Ruby for Puppet then that's easy - it's just copy existing manifests and update the variables / settings for the new host, but you scared me off by projecting that you want a sysadmin + programmer when you listed Ruby + Python + C + perl.

Companies are also forgetting the root of IT: Adapting to new technologies. C'mon, I know ABC App is what you're looking for but I've been doing this for ages and changed with the times. Do you really think I can't read vendor docs and other web resources to come up to speed when I meet 80% of your other requirements? That and the old "everything old is new again" saying. Unless it's something completely new a mindblowing chances are I can use my knowledge of older systems to understand the fundamentals of the new ones - you won't need to teach me the fundamentals of high availability from scratch.

>> “Everyone wants the next Steve Wozniak to walk through the door, but really, they should be asking to see if they can do the job. … They want to populate their entire staff with engineering geniuses, and you don’t need the whole staff to be engineering geniuses. You need a couple really bright people who know what they’re doing, and then, just don’t turn down people who can do the job.”

I always laugh at places where almost every position wants something like "leadership skills." What happens when you have an organization where everyone has strong leadership skills? You have too many cooks in the kitchen, that's what. Understand that most people are better suited to a follower role - I know I am.

>> The great mystery and the core principle of recruitment, Marcus says, is at once simple and nearly impossible: Find a better candidate. The elusive “better candidate,” he tells me, can come from anywhere.

This goes hand-in-hand with the first quote about great engineers not making themselves known. While you look for that "better candidate" he's interviewing with and getting offers from other companies.

Lately I have been flat out telling recruiters "I get 10 or 15 e-mails per day so I'm not putting my entire job search on hold for one possibly maybe nothing-in-writing-yet opportunity. If your company wants me, they need to step up and come get me." Seeing as how recruiters and employers love to keep potential employees in a holding pattern for weeks or months I'm not going to let life pass me by, sorry.

Expanding on that, I also take the "send it and forget it" approach because I never know how quick or slow a company will respond - low expectations make for a happier life.

PS: Hey dumbass recruiters and employers: Make REAL job descriptions. Oh your only requirements are Linux and VMware? Sounds incredibly vague and doesn't grab my interest unless the job is in Hawaii. We have an interview and you go into all sorts of technologies that you expect me to design / admin but the job description didn't mention them? Lose/lose because I don't get any time to review them and you're getting bad candidates. Recruiters who can't provide detailed job descriptions? That's like going to Taco Bell and saying "give me food."

PPS: DevOps a buzzword, the old term is "teamwork." You probably shouldn't keep sysadmins that don't want to interact with the devs or are so insecure that they can't let devs control when and how they deploy their code...