All the talk in the past year has been about high unemployment and a terrible market for job seekers. Well, there’s an exception.

Our Capitol Hill-based tech startup company, EnergySavvy.com, has been aggressively recruiting for the past few months for software developers, primarily “front-end” web developers. We’re going through all channels (job boards, personal networks, recruiters, etc) and having a brutal time finding candidates that meet our, admittedly picky, hiring bar. It’s gotten so bad that we’re resorting to a crazy PR “stunt” – offering anyone who refers a candidate that gets hired a $10,000 bounty. And we’re an 8-person tech startup, not some giant like Microsoft or Google. The last time this kind of thing went on, it was 1999.

We talked with a number of other hiring managers at tech startups in the area and they’re all having the same issues. We just did a blog post about it on our company blog: http://www.energysavvy.com/blog/2011/02/14/how-to-land-your-first-startup-job-and-leave-corporate-life-behind/

So, while the overall economy may still be in bad shape, there’s a real labor shortage in Seattle for good web developers.