TomdeMan, I empathize with you about finding qualified employees. It's a really tough job, especially where your business' bottom line is at stake.

I am coming at this from the potential employee's perspective. Not all of us are fortunate enough to have employers who care enough to invest in continuing development. Yes, it may be on paper, but sometimes it's quite a struggle to get them to pay for needed training and not worth going through the hassle if there's no results. One may have to spend their own money getting needed education to remedy gaps in their knowledge - that's what I should have done, looking back. (Those of you starting out, don't rely entirely on the company to pay for tuition and training, but try to set aside a little money for that on your own.) I plan to remedy that once I get a job.

Also, some of us have a life outside work - we may be married with family, or single and trying to take care of our children. Compromises have to be made on a daily basis whether to go to the user group meeting or to go to that award ceremony at the grade school, or to spend time with one's spouse or significant other. Thank goodness for Connect presentations that are available on a 24/7 basis. Ironically, for me at least, this presents an additional barrier, since I'm deaf and the audio part is almost not accessible for me. It's very expensive to close-caption Connect presentations (quoted price is in the $300/hour range) and to date I haven't seen any CF-related presentations that are CC'ed.

As for certification, well, for some people it may be needed. Especially here in the DC Metro area where there seem to be quite a few contracting positions. Do I have it? No. Will I get it? Yes. But it may be a while, especially in light of recent conversation about the certification process for ColdFusion 8. It may be useless in that anyone can memorize the material and not apply in the real world where there are 10 different ways to slice out AJAX solutions. But it's certainly not useless to Human Resources folk who put out the job ads and sign off on the new employee hire for a government contract that requires certified developers.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, sometimes one just has to take a chance, take a deep breath and hire that candidate who has, at best, 50% of what you need. That person may turn out to be the best employee you've ever had in the long run.