A friend recently asked me this question. Usually my response is to search through the people you know or have worked with and respect. Failing that to search through your extended network and base the decision upon the recommendations people get and, provided the person is able to and willing, on a trial-run period with whoever you decide to take on.

Otherwise I suggest using a specialised/alternate recruitment method to explore the niches as this works well e.g. posting an ad on your blog or an ad using SnapTalent or registering a need on YouNoodle generates excellent leads compared to the more traditional agency methods.

However, her startup is fairly established and is having problems finding suitable people. I have included text from her blog below which provides an overview with what she is looking for (from http://www.birthofastartup.com/).

Any comments, suggestions, and feedback on the experiences and thoughts of the others here is most welcome.

Thanks.

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"Skimbit now has a good size team (Joe the amazing Marketing Director and Matthieu the incredible Operations Manager), but what we really need now is a CTO.

We have a team of developers offshore, but we would like someone to really champion Skimbit from a technical perspective, with experience in scaling web applications, and in building innovative services. As we are a small team, the CTO would also have to be a lead developer (so experience with Javascript, AJAX libraries and PHP essential), and probably be involved in some front end development work too. But aaah, isn’t that the joy of working for a start-up, you can be a jack-of-all-trades, and be truly an integral part of building something special.

Let me know if you or anyone you know would be appropriate. The candidate doesn’t need to have been a CTO before, but is ready (and experienced enough) to be one now, at least."