>>> You may have to do a couple of things to get people. 1) Increase salary/benefits 2) Thechnical people are often lured to high-tech jobs, so you may need to move to the cutting edge of technology to lure them 3) Do a nationwide search and pay someone to move there.
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>>I wish our Corporate Personnel Director could here you say that :(
>>I cant find any skilled VFP programmers in my area either. Atleast not one that doesn't want a salary and relocation compensation equal to 1/2 the department's total salaries. It's to the point where corporate has all but told me to forget about hiring a permanent person and just stick to using consultants. ;) I figure that will change once they see a year's worth of consultant fees.
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>I understand the compensation problem. There are other concerns related to consultant vs employee. We need to keep in mind that as an employee you are entitled to insurance, etc...which typeically can be 30 - 50% of the salary. Also, consultant fees are booked differently by the accounting dept, so they don't look quite the same to the people who actually sign the checks.

Boy you just said it all. Whenever I try to play hard ball about hiring somebody with good potential, I get this song and dance about capital expenxe (I assume that means consultnat fees) vs. overhead. And it's hard to convince the powers that be that their IS technical people aren't "overhead" just becuase we don't directly sell pagers/cell phones. Currently I'm in a Phase where I keep saying "Nope. Can't Do It. Need to Hire more Programmers." Out of the last 10 times I said that, 1 instance resulted in a job for my mentor's company while the other 8-9 things were left to sit on my desk anyway. =D) I guess it's a good thing I have a deep respect for the term "job security"