Steve Jobs said it best ‘Hiring the best is your most important job’. We have seen over many years how small businesses have gone from 1 employee to 100 by hiring the best. The best does not necessarily cost the most, and is often a mix of fit, expertise and attitude. But when you find more than one good hire – which one is the best?

I am copying the title of Jim Calloway’s article on hiring within law firms. It resonated with me as I have heard all week from clients who have been hearing ‘hire slow, fire fast’. This saying has never rested well with me as having recruited over the past 20 years, I would say 80% of the roles I recruited I always needed urgently. Not because of bad planning, but because of opportunities we found. Being in the IT side of many industries, change and hiring are the constant – its just what change and what skills.

Recently we ran a study on how long it takes to hire an employee. This was internally for the business and compared this to how long it does take to hire for clients. An interesting concept, since hiring is what we do as a business. We hired over 15 employees in the last 6 months, so we broke down the

Creating a job specification (also known as job description or job requirement) is the first and most important part of hiring. We often ‘copy and paste’ from other job adverts out there, or from previous employee who left that role. But this can be the biggest mistake in hiring!

My story on when hiring can go very wrong, learn some lessons to ensure you hire well and safely.

Job search and retrenchment and what hind sight has got to do with this? A few years back I was running a new start-up and we hit a wall when searching for our 2nd round of funding. Unfortunately, we closed our doors and I had to retrench myself (it would be the first time, but not the last). While I