Is Familiarity With Frameworks Essential When Hiring Developers?

If there's one thing that we have no shortage of in the Java community, it's frameworks. Ultimately, these frameworks give developers a great advantage, avoiding any reinvention of the wheel. However, Chris Hardin observes one of the bad side effects of frameworks - how we hire developers. 

When did getting a job become more about knowing a specific framework and not being an expert on the Java language? I have seen managers walk over qualified resumes looking for the names of frameworks only to land on someone less qualified who decided to put a particular framework on their resume.

This raises an interesting dilemma for interviewers. If you have a huge amount of resumes in, you're bound to focus more on the frameworks that you use in your organisation. I think that most interviewers would tend towards this - it's easier to assess a candidate's suitability for a job if you can ask them specific questions on the type of frameworks they will be using when they start with the company. 

It's easier, but it's not necessarily right. How can you judge if a developer with general knowledge (not experienced in your frameworks) can adapt to your organisation? I'd be interested to hear how you cater for this case. With frameworks changing rapidly, is today's genius interviewee going to become just a normal developer in the future?

I'll leave you with another piece from Chris' article, that makes you think about how we hire:

Kevin Rose, CEO of Digg.com, said the next time he hires for a project, he is going to hire for talent rather than technology. He said that when he was hiring for a project, he looked for developers working in PHP, but after placing the individuals, he decided to branch out to other technologies and the developers he hired, weren't able to make the transition and dare I use the term, "Think outside the box". A talented developer may know PHP, but can easily ramp up on any other technology, whereas, a developer with merely a toolbox, may not necessarily be able to assimilate other technologies fast enough if at all.