I once traveled to Boston with a colleague to hire for a position. After three intense days of back-to-back interviews, we ended up flying home empty-handed. We interviewed sixteen candidates, in multiple interview rounds. We combed through close to 150 resumes. Still, we walked away because we just didn’t find the right person.

There are 300 million people living in the United States and 35 million in Canada.  The right people exist for every role. You just have to keep looking. Trust your gut, too.  When your gut says, ‘no’ don’t let yourself keep trying to make it say ‘yes.’

Patience is a virtue when you’re hiring. Be willing to wait for the right person.

Most “A” players aren’t out there looking either, so you might just have to shake the tree a few more times…

The old adage of, ‘hire for attitude, train for skill’ doesn’t work anymore.  A good attitude can’t overcome a lack of skills, and when you’re growing at 100% revenue growth a year, you need the people that will get the job done right away.

What should you do? I coach and mentor CEOs to go attract those who have proven skills and a personality.

Brad and Geoff Smart wrote an awesome book called Topgrading It’s one of the best systems for interviewing candidates and determining why you should bring someone into your organization. Topgrading recommends ‘leaning out’ two years into the future with every prospective candidate and determining what they have to achieve for you to be happy that you hired them at the end of those two years. Once you’ve started this ‘scorecard’ for the role, construct your job description around the milestones your candidate needs to have achieved after two years.

Once you have a tight job description, then you can interview against it to make sure that candidates have what it takes.