I must admit that I’m the unkept person that has some spelling mistakes in [this story][story] about finding the right staff to hire.

> “Wait,” said Oscar, “but surely all things being equal, the person who takes the time to get the email right is better than the person who doesn’t?”

As the character Ernestine goes on to say, the spelling mistake could be because the person is busy and they are busy because they are talented. I’d like to think that I’ve got the same excuse but I might just be fooling myself.

> “The problem with filtering people by spelling mistake is that we’re making up a little theory about whether a spelling mistake tells us something important about the candidate’s abilities. Which would be fine if we didn’t have anything else to go by, but we do have something else to go by, we have their resumé and their code samples and we can call them on the phone and talk to them. So I gnore the little theories and go with what really matters.”

There are more great lines in the article. If you’re in a position to hire staff then at the very least it’s a great article to read and see if you need to revamp your process.

[story]: http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-dont-hire-unlucky-people “I don’t hire unlucky people”