Sense and Sensibility-ness-ing-ly

I know that to hire a good IT person at the moment, things are pretty tight - at least in Brisbane. Demand is high, and so anyone that's any good is locked down doing something decent. I expected the same in Perth... and I'm pretty shocked at what I've experienced in the past two days.

I'm in the west to recruit someone for our Perth office, and so to support this I've got 7 interviews lined up. To assist in the process (as the role we're recruiting for is a desktop/customer-facing technical one) I'm using a prac and theory test additional to the normal face to face interview to ensure we find someone that can not only talk the talk, but walk the walk also. With 6 interviews down, I've so far only identified 2 people who passed the testing with an appropriate level that matched their face to face... ouch.

To make matters worse, the HR officer over here used to help her husband (who still works for the company, but not doing IT stuff any more) deliver the IT stuff for the business. She sat the prac and theory stuff and is currently sitting second on results alone!

Ouch part 2.