When your business needs attention right now its mission critical for you to have the required talent right now! The old adage hire slowly fire quickly applies perfectly here. It is extremely unlikely that the perfect long term employee for your immediate need is waiting in the lobby to be hired. Hiring a new permanent employee under duress is generally bad but often disastrous. Ask yourself how many quick hires have I made in my career that turned out to be superstars?

Leverage a consultant to address the immediate need. Plug the hole and buy yourself some time to properly plan and execute the right next steps.

Case Study 14: Suzanne is a Director of Information Technology at Smith Trucking. She leads a staff of 8 including 6 application developers. In January of 2007 3 programmers resigned in unison all having accepted positions together with a local software company. With counteroffers rebuffed, deadlines looming and 100% of the companies Java development talent walking out the door in two weeks Suzanne faced a critical decision. According to Suzanne using consultants literally saved my job!