Why hiring is harder in a downturn

Thanks to Seth Godin, I discovered a couple of great posts on Auren Hoffman's blog.

The first is a terrific argument for why you should always try to hire great people and not settle for good enough, however urgent the need is. This is related to my post last week on collaboration. Auren's reasoning is simple: great people are way,way more productive.

His latest post looks at why hiring these great people is harder in times of recession. His explanation again is simple: noise goes up but the number of great people stays the same.