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Stop obsessing about college degrees for the 90% of coding jobs that don't require complex algorithmic work. Hire smart people and train them on the job or hire smart motivated self-learners.

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The problem is that those people are even harder to find than people with CS degrees, many of whom couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.

I live in a country where most companies couldn't care less about CS degrees when it comes to developers. Still leaves us with the same problem though.

How do you find the 'smart people'? (not that a college degree implies that someone is smart). Being 'smart' isn't enough to get the job done.

You put out an ad? I would have assumed otherwise, but since you actually asked this question I'll make the obvious statement that a college degree is clearly no substitute for screening for 'smarts'. So either way, the ability to tell if someone is smart is still required. The degree is just more typically used as a crutch, imo.

Time and effort. They don't magically appear. There is no webapp for it. You WILL have to spend a significant amount of time to find these people. It's probably also why you should be spending whatever you can to hold onto them once you have them.

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