Harvard Business Review on Finding & Keeping the Best People

The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad

by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Boris Groysberg, and Nitin Nohria

WHEN ECONOMIC CRISIS HITS AND companies focus on cutting costs—or on their very survival—they slash hiring. But if history is any guide, in the first few months after the upheaval subsides, hiring quickly becomes a front-burner issue.

Consider the period following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when the economic outlook appeared dire. In rapid succession, the U.S. initiated the war in Afghanistan, Enron’s house of cards fell, other corporate scandals ensued, the SARS scare struck Asia, and the Iraq War began. The economy was in recession, and struggling firms retained only their strongest people. But even before ...