Serious question: Why did it never occur that you might need to take in a less experienced developer and train them? Wouldn't it make sense that there are no experienced developers available because they are currently fully employed?
I once posted a job on monster.com and we rejected probably 50 resumes for each one we interviewed. We were looking in the wrong place. At a different job, we had a terrible time trying to find somebody with 10+ years of embedded systems experience in a town that didn't really have that kind of industry. In retrospect, we probably could have found a less experienced person that we could train. We were looking for the wrong person.
I am unlikely to hire a candidate who would need training because I simply do not have the time to train them. I need someone who gets things done, can self-train if needed, and who already has the minimum required experience so they have minimum impact on team velocity. Moreover I live in an "at will" employment state, so any money/time I spend training a person can just walk out the door at any moment (something I have seen happen just because a person was offered even more money elsewhere).
People should come first. Everyone has to start from the beginning at some point.