Hiring a Theme designer – what skills do they need?

I posted an ad on oDesk 2 months ago for someone to design a theme for resale.

First guy took 8 weeks – work unfinished – looked awful – contract terminated

Second guy took one week, and came back with an AWESOME theme. The only problem was, when I looked at the files, I discovered he had taken one of the popular themes here, rebranded it, and called it his own work. Contract terminated.

Now Im in a pickle – need the theme done NOW (customers waiting) and cant afford the time lost for any more experiences like this!

So Im asking the community for a hand – can you help me?

2 things:

1. If I hire a theme designer, what skills should I be looking for? – I have a lot of applicants who have heaps of WordPress experience, but I wonder how relevant to theme design this is. Is theme design the same skill set as extensive WordPress modification? or does it rely on a different skill set?

– if you were hiring a designer for a theme – what skills would be ‘must-haves’?

In interviewing some of the applicants, they seem to get as far as PHD to HTML conversion, and then get to some fuzzy explanation about CSS – without any actual detail of the steps involved. This leads me to believe a lot of them have only ever modified themes, and not made one from scratch.

Also, I have asked a number of them to define THE LOOP – which seems a core concept in theme design – none of them know what it is.

Is this an indication that they are inept?

Thanks so much to anyone who can shed light on this stuff Im pulling my hair out atm as I dont know where to go from here, and urgently need to get this project off the ground with someone who actually knows what they are doing.

Jim