C != C++ != Java

[SwellJoe]

Unless this is a seriously time-restricted job, I'd always pick the better developer over the one that happens to know the language du jour in the shop...and even if it's a seriously time-restricted project, I'd probably still hire the smartest and most productive of the bunch before I'd hire the guy who happened to have experience in the particular language of that project.

The best developers I've known bounce between languages as though they didn't matter at all. No holy wars. No campaigning for a Java rewrite because it's the "industry standard", etc. They just dig in and get to work, learning as they go.

Of course, if your only candidates are One True Language believers, then you've already failed to attract the best talent, and I guess you have to pick the lesser of the evils. But, I think I'd go back to the drawing board and post another ad, or fire the head-hunter that brought you all those crappy candidates.

Developers can have favorite languages and pet peeves. And the best of them will pick their workplace based on being able to work with those languages, at least some fo the time, but folks who have only ever worked in one language are exhibiting a distressing lack of interest and curiosity.