Cal Evans has a new post to his site with a great suggestion for those looking to hire PHP developers: get your jobs page right and show that you have a good "developer culture" to attract good, solid talent.
When building an online strategy for finding developers to hire, start with your web site. It is amazing that so many companies miss this totally or mess this step up. Make sure you have a top level menu item that is easy to identify as “this is where we post jobs”. Call it “Jobs”, “Careers”, “Work with us” whatever, just make sure it’s in the top level of your menu and not something that people have to dig down into your site to get to.
He also suggests that you treat the "Jobs" page as an important part of the site. Vague or incomplete descriptions of the positions turn off developers and will make them move on to something else. Link to the deeper details and don't overwhelm the viewer with it all up front. He gives two examples of companies that he thinks have gotten it right and how it reflects on their investment in developer culture.
So step 0 in the process of finding developers to work on your team is to build a culture of respect. If you get this right, attracting developers – attracting the best developers – will be easy. Get this wrong though, nothing else will matter. Remember, developer talk to each other within their community. They will know if you are not a good place to work.