> we had so many applicants (400+) that it was a tough challenge discerning the best candidates

You just want good candidates that fit your company. Then you /make/ them the best by teaching and mentoring them.

> I would like to hire senior developers instead, but they are too expensive for my budget

Sorry to say it but this sounds not like a good place for junior developers. You can't just put them in a senior position and expect results for cheaper payroll costs. They need to learn (experienced developers need to learn too, but juniors even more so).

Conversely hiring really good seniors saves the company money even if a good senior is really expensive. A good senior can probably do the work of 4 junior developers while also introducing code that demands less maintenance into the future, which pay dividends over time.

What I see from some juniors who spoil it for everybody else is immaturity and unrealistic expectations. A hiring company is there to provide you compensation for work. They aren't there to satisfy some emotional fantasy or other self-serving justification.

Because there is greater risk in hiring juniors demand for juniors is lower and there are more juniors competing for those fewer positions.

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With all of that said above, the goal isn't to get a better junior job, but rather become a senior. Here is how I did it.

First of all I didn't want to be a developer. Travelocity couldn't hire competent front-end developers. It's like they didn't exist. The company saw potential in me and involuntarily relocated me into a developer position. If I wanted to stay employed I had to figure it out. I sucked really bad a first and felt like I was struggling in a vacuum.

After about a year of this my military job needed me to perform security assessments in Afghanistan. You have a tremendous amount of available time on military deployments. Just before deploying I started a personal project, which I continue to work on today nearly a decade later. This little code beautification project kept me busy and it forced me into deep learning of complex algorithms.

When you are deployed in a combat zone you have to be self-sufficient. You don't often have internet. At the time I was writing code on a small netbook with 16gb total storage, because it was durable and portable. I didn't carry around a bunch of unnecessary tooling. You simply learn to do more with less.

Once I got back to Travelocity I discovered I had surpassed some of my peers in problem solving and code proficiency. I was coding all the time even when I didn't have to. I had found every little bit of proficiency I had gained in personal practice allowed me to work faster which then allowed me to become that much more proficient like an accelerating force.

The primary distinguishing factor between seniors and juniors to me is self-sufficiency, predictability, and simplicity. I find juniors tend to spend most of their time living in frameworks, dependency nonsense, tooling, and configurations. These external things distract from predictability and simplicity. They certainly don't benefit self-sufficiency.

Mainly, though, I look for enthusiasm and eagerness to learn, the ability to communicate clearly, and intelligence. I also look for a balance of self-determination and the willingness to work through a problem on their own but also enough sense to know when and how the to ask the right questions when needed. Finally, honesty. If they've fluffed up their resume that is a red flag.

You are not going to be hiring senior level developers who've misclassified themselves. Juniors are going to take work; there is no avoiding that. Adjust your expectations to that reality and you will have a better chance of pulling in an employee that will do well for you over time.

1. Bullshit. Juniors are mostly blank slates and anyone who hires a junior can train. But you can't fix a liar.

2. Potential. The variance for a junior is a lot higher than a senior. It's sometimes a bit of lottery.

So I do indeed look for people who can be amazing over people who can get the job done. A chess game would be a hint of amazing. Many great devs started with a game.

I hired one junior because she made a crappy robot. It didn't matter that the robot was crappy. It mattered a lot more that robots aren't a software developer "thing". The first page of her resume was typical, but the crappy robots on the second page onwards were interesting. She turned out to be an excellent programmer and I paid her about 30% more than the usual, but alas we couldn't afford her for long.

What's interesting was that nobody else gave her an interview, so from a statistical view, she did poorly. But she got some above average jobs from it later so ultimately she succeeded.

There's a lot of dumb "rules" around applying for jobs, but I'd say it's a lot like dating. Don't dress for who you expect to meet. Dress for who you want to meet.

Plus the market is flooded with junior devs. At this moment it's tough -- but not too tough -- to hire a senior dev. But juniors are a dime a dozen.

The problem I see with the article that it confuses experience with talent. Or at least ignores talent. Referring to your example, it just may so happen that the right Junior Developer has the skill sets to immediately tackle the difficult 20% with little or no mentoring. To me, this is the big reason for hiring junior programmers: their ability to quickly infuse the organisation with new ideas and talent and in the process raise productivity.

Though optional, please include your job title. Much appreciated.

I love hiring and mentoring junior developers, but the barrier to entry is quite high. Employers love junior developers with aptitude and enthusiasm.

We have no issue whatsoever hiring juniors (we hire about as many as mid-levels), but we don't have to settle for someone who doesn't have internships or projects and the openings can be closed in 2 weeks so it seems like nobody is hiring, but actually the bar has risen (and there are plenty of candidates who clear the bar).

One major downside of this kind of variation is managers think they can somehow repeat the trick. If we just make the hiring process hard enough and shove enough candidates through, we can pan for those elusive 10x guys. It also makes people think that 10x guys are a thing like a gold nugget in the river, rather than the outcome of a long process of maturation in an appropriate environment.