Yes, that is how I found the engineers I did find. I wasn't impressed by the applications I got, although who I hired was fun and talented. If I remember they were either engineers who's primary projects were actually erlang, high priced agencies, people who were elixir curious, or people have only made pet projects.

The freelancers I hired had Elixir experience from a previous job, but we ended up figuring out a lot of stuff together. It was harder to just hand off requirements and expect it to be done.

Granted my budget wasn't very big and I limited my scope to those within the Americas due to working hour constraints.

But it is very different from hiring for Python which is very easy to get a reasonably priced agency or freelancer with years of experience very fast.