How to Make Smart Staffing Decisions

These days, good help can be hard to find, and if you own a small business and have a job to fill, you probably can't afford to spend more than a few weeks searching for the perfect hire. But, as this Fortune Small Business article points out, good hiring decisions can save your business—which means it pays to put some thought into how to find the right people. Take Joe Saba and Stewart Winters, co-owners of the New York City-based VideoHelper. They describe their hiring process as "brutal" and "stringent." When filling a composer position recently, they whittled 400 applications down to 10 finalists, who were grilled not just on technical skills, but also on how they handled criticism, praise and pressure. Sounds very involved, but these guys must be doing something right. Their retention rate is 95 percent!

Ok, so maybe you don't have time to get that in-depth with your hiring process, but if you want some quick ways to make smart staffing decisions, the article goes on to list some simple suggestions, including researching job history, analyzing past hires, paying attention to body language and not always going with your gut!