One of the most challenging and important tasks an entrepreneur confronts when he is commencing a business is finding the right people for specific work. Just as you cannot fit square pegs in round holes, the wrong workers will spell doom for the business and hence it is of prime and crucial importance that the right people are found.

The quality of the people on your workforce rolls will have a ripple effect on the overall performance of every department of the company, be it sales, production, marketing or product development or public relations. But how do you get it right?

Members of the Forbes’ list of ‘America’s Most Promising Companies’ were posed this question and their answers could help unlock the timeless vagueness of how to hire effectively. These companies have been on the upsurge and are growing at rapid speed, which makes unraveling this mystery even more imperative and important.

Last April three companies from the Forbes list sat and discussed this issue, moderated by Joni Fedders, President of Clay Mathile’s Aileron Institute.

All agreed on one point, that it was not easy and that it was really, really very difficult to find the right people. However, they said that working within the constraints the difficulties posed, there were three ways in which companies could get the employees they need, when they need them.

33-year old Alan Martin CEO of CampusBookRentals said “Part of the art is recognizing that you need to find new people in the first place. I think it’s easy to get pretty comfortable with the team that’s around you.”

Recognizing the need early, gives you to time to search for them. Many entrepreneurs defer taking on a new employee for as long as possible, not wanting to add to the payroll. Don’t over-recruit, but it is worthwhile to anticipate your recruitment needs to avoid last-minute scurrying that could make you end up with a less-than-best employee.

Even if the new recruitment can wait, a new employee can bring fresh ideas and thoughts into the business and clear the cobwebs that were clouding new initiatives and challenges.

Christopher Irion CEO of E-Cycle said that there is a classic dilemma that confronts many of America’s Most Promising Companies. He said, that like in his company, growth means that new recruitment is required. His company, for example is on track to add at least 100 people over the next year. But says Irion, merely hiring isn’t adequate – companies also need the logistical infrastructure to digest the new recruits.

Even as new openings were created, e-Cycle “just didn’t have the HR bandwidth to get it done,” he recollected. It was important, he said, to create a logistical framework for HR work, prior to hiring.

Last year, Smashburger was named as America’s most promising company. Its founder and Chief Concept Officer Tom Ryan calls it the “people business.” The company has developed its own system of identifying and hiring the right personnel, both at the corporate level and across its 170 locations.

Candidates are put through verbal and analytical skills tests and they are assessed for their decision making prowess. This ensures that the company’s locations across the country have the right people. “We think that’s going to give us a distinctive level of advantage in the marketplace,” Ryan says.

It is a misnomer that, there are job-seekers clamoring over one another and hence, workers are easy to find. Top talent is not available in abundance and companies desperately compete with one another to find them – it is indeed a challenge to find the perfect people for positions that make a difference.