Diamond in the Rough

How to Hire and Develop Otherwise “Unqualified” Applicants Into Loyal, Dedicated, Long-Term Employees

Some of your best future hires won’t make it past a first CV screen. This guide shows you how to find them.

1. Why “Perfect on Paper” Hiring Is Costing You Your Best People Why filtering for experience alone leaves you fighting over the same small, expensive pool of candidates. How rushed, distracted interviews push you into the wrong decision, whether you say yes too fast or no too soon.

2. What a Diamond in the Rough Actually Looks Like The traits that predict long-term performance better than a polished CV, and the so-called “red flags” that often aren’t.

3. Interviewing and Trialling for Potential, Not Just Experience Questions that go beyond the job to reveal real character, a short working trial, and a simple scoring system for objective decisions.

4. A Development System That Turns Potential Into Performance A 14-day foundation plan built for people starting from a lower experience base, so confidence grows from day one.

5. Retention: Protecting the Investment You’ve Made Why the first three months are the highest flight risk, how a development budget keeps people, and why underpaying a high performer is a gamble.

6. Widening Where You Look Where to find overlooked talent, from job centres and colleges to second-chance partners, and why widening your pool isn’t lowering your standards.

Includes a 30-day action plan to put it all into practice. Free to download.