Broken down to bullets:

* Don't hire until you've had to endure the pain of doing the job well yourself. If you don't know how to do the job right, you don't know how to hire for it.

* Don't hire just to capture talent. You'll only end up alienating the talent.

* Stay as small as you can.

* The resume form makes everyone look good, which means it doesn't tell you anything useful.

* Cover letters on the other hand tell you lots, and, incidentally, also tell you how well people can write.

* Sometimes the best candidates distinguish themselves with effort. Their most recent designer hire made this mini-site while applying: http://jasonzimdars.com/svn/

* Questions are good, but beware people who ask too many "how do I...?" questions as opposed to "why...?" questions.

* Test drive if you can. They hired designers for 1-week projects at $1500 before extending FT offers.

* Be flexible about where you hire (they're all over the place), if you can.

Ah, the joys of grammatical ambiguity.

This is just as compelling an argument that you never write another resume. Or, to make the conclusion a little less doctrinaire, spend more time on networking and creating things that you can present to prospective employers to convince them to employ you beyond the confines of the 1-2 page resume that nobody reads anyhow.

Almost all the suggestions on hiring in this article are pretty good. The one where I would differ is:

  We're happy to skip over the perfect catch 
  if we don't have the perfect job for the person to do. 

Right now, a company might be content with their current suite of products, but constant innovation is required in our industry to stay ahead. It could be in the existing products or coming up with completely new solutions.

If people working on existing products have their plates full most of the times, they 'might' not be able to devote as much time as they would like on coming up with newer things, that could further improve the bottom line.

Another rule of thumb: When in doubt, always hire the better writer.

OK, I'll bite. Why?

What are the elements of a truly good cover letter? Stuff beyond the cliched advice you get such as showing interest in the company/position and so on.

Are good cover letters "from the heart" (so to speak)? Is semi-formal but well-written language better?

"What we do look at are cover letters. Cover letters say it all. They immediately tell you if someone wants this job or just any job. And cover letters make something else very clear: They tell you who can and who can't write. Spell checkers can spell, but they can't write. Wordsmiths rise to the top quickly. Another rule of thumb: When in doubt, always hire the better writer."

Writing is critical in today's technologically, geographically dispersed world. Those who can write well can communicate their ideas and intentions well to their team and to their clients. There has been some ink covering the subject in various outlets over the last year or so.

undefined

it does seem a little short sighted to pay entire depts lots of over time because you can't find the perfect hire.

This is what my current employer does and I'm always amazed at the practice.

Isn't paying out twice as much in overtime more expensive than just hiring more people?

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100601/never-read-another-resu...

Link with ads so they can get some small money for their content.

> Finally, we never let geography get in the way. We hire the best we can no matter where they are. We're based in Chicago, but we have programmers in Idaho and California, system administrators in North Carolina and downstate Illinois, designers in Oklahoma and Colorado, a writer in New York City, and others in Europe. This obviously wouldn't work for customer-facing folks, but for most everyone else, it does. The best are everywhere. It's up to you to find them.

This is so true, I don't understand tech companies from London or Miami or whatever that do not accept telecommuting and require someone from their own city. They're missing out on the best just so they can have face to face? Face to face is not required in programing!

I generally agree with this advice, but it doesn't always scale.