Hiring Guidelines

You can't ask if someone is disabled, but it is permissible to ask if he or she will be physically able to perform the job's essential functions. Past addictions are off-limits, but you do have a right to know about current addictions to illegal drugs.

Once you have made your decision, Jim Del Rosso says, practice fairness, not favoritism. Be objective, fair, and consistent.

Reward achievers and challenge slackers, but once you have made performance expectations clear, sit back and allow everyone an equal opportunity to succeed.

“The best executive,” Theodore Roosevelt once wrote, “is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he [or she] wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”