Folks at Hacker Dojo have been discussing holding a reverse job fair, where hackers who are in the job market come in with their craft (live demo, code samples and whatnot) and interact with other engineers or hiring managers who can recognize their mad skills and refer internally, decide who to bring in for further interview or hire someone on the spot!
It's not scalable, but as I see more and more co-working spaces sprout up in many places, this could be ONE way of solving the hiring/recruiting problem for hackers.