Finding the perfect candidate for any job is never easy. Not only do they need the right level of experience and knowledge as well as look as though they will be dedicated, wishing to grow and learn in the way you would like them to, but they also need to have the right personality to not just suit the job but also the team that will be around them.
Finding someone that exactly fits all the criteria you may have usually seems to be totally impossible. So the biggest question is: what is the best thing to sacrifice to make sure you get the most suitable person for the role?
It may come as a surprise, but in many cases it may actually be the skills and know-how that are less important when finding the right candidate. So long as they can prove they have the capacity to undertake the roles that are needed, the exact skill set may not be as necessary as you might think and instead one of the more important aspects will be ensuring that they can fit into your team seamlessly.
No matter what skills they need, it is likely to be far more beneficial in the long run to put them on a course. Unless those skills will take many months or years to accrue, then paying to give them the skills they need will probably be the best way to go. From Sage courses to an executive PA course, giving the perfect candidate the skills they need can actually be fairly cheap. Not only that, but an executive PA course may well leave them with far more focussed skills than experience alone might whilst Sage courses and the like will undoubtedly help to make sure that they are completely up to date with new technology and learn the exact applications you need them to learn.
So, when looking for the perfect candidate, see if the right course is cheap enough to make finding the right candidate much, much easier.