Originally Posted by Varius

IMO, if the guy is great at all three of those aspects you mentioned, he has no reason not to be working on his own (he can program/design his sites and seo them to get traffic)

Unless he needs the social interaction that a office brings, but in that case he'd typically be employed right now and not looking.

You are better off seeking a designer who also knows somewhat about SEO and then a different coder who also knows SEO.

That said, I think I'm a very reliable, experienced coder and solid with SEO (my mainstream blogs are in top 10 for google for most of their terms) - but I have my own stuff to do so not looking

Good luck though!