[MUSIC PLAYING] - What do you do when you have two candidates that are both good? First of all, this is a great problem to have. You've got two very talented candidates. You've interviewed them. They both look great on paper. You get along with them. You like their personality. Now what? What do you do? 

So it's really important that first of all, you've looked at all the facts. You want to make sure you've looked through the résumés, you've looked through their job history, that you're making an apples-to-apples comparison. But if you still find yourself unable to make a decision, it's very important that you think long term. 

Think about which candidate is going to be the most beneficial to your company as a whole over the long run. Who's going to be the candidate in the next two, three, four years that's still with you, that is having a positive influence on the rest of the team, not just their own department? So think about that. 

A lot of times, this is going to come from understanding the soft skills and understanding the factors outside of what you can pick up on a résumé. So hopefully, you've done a good job in your interview picking up on things like the culture fit, their dreams and aspirations, where they see themselves in five years, any talents or any exposure to other industries that would be beneficial for them to do their job, being able to communicate effectively with other departments. 

If I'm hiring a marketing manager that also has sales experience, that's going to be beneficial because they can talk to the sales department, things like that. So when you get to the point where you're trying to make a decision and you've got two people that seem like they're fairly equal, look outside of that immediate job that they'd be performing. And look at the secondary and tertiary skills. Look at those soft skills outside of what they would need for their everyday job duties. And think long term.