OK, I can't help but talk about my experience too :) I agree fully with the "find a developer" trend. One of our summer interns didn't know anything about Perl 2 months ago, now he's using CPAN, he does OOP happily... A good developer will learn quickly Perl if there's someone to hold his hand for the first steps :)
And what about experience? Well, our interns are just students, but they can code quite efficiently. After all, a less experienced programmer is less payed too, therefore perhaps may you hire 2 young people eager to learn and have two very experienced Perl specialist 2 years from now!