The problem with having options You have interviewed six people. Two of them are genuinely good. Both could do the job. Both interviewed well. Both have the right experience. And now you are stuck. I see this constantly with people running their own thing. They spend weeks going back and forth, asking friends, running another round of interviews, hoping something will become obvious. It rarely does. The issue is not that you lack information. The issue is that you are using the wrong criteria to decide. Why gut instinct fails here Most hiring advice tells you to trust your gut. I think that is half right. Your gut is useful for spotting red flags. It is less useful for choosing between two people who both seem solid. At that point, gut instinct is just pattern matching against people you have worked with before. That is not necessarily relevant to this role, this team, this moment. I worked with someone last year who had two strong candidates for an operations role. She kept saying one candidate "felt" more right, but could not articulate why. After we talked it through, the real reason emerged: that candidate reminded her of herself ten years ago. That is not a hiring criterion. That is nostalgia. The three questions that actually matter When I help people through this decision, I ask three things: What is the hardest part of this role in the first 90 days? Not the job description. The actual hard bit. The thing that will determine whether this hire succeeds or struggles early on. Maybe it is learning your systems quickly. Maybe it is managing a difficult client relationship. Maybe it is working without much oversight. Once you know that, ask yourself which candidate is better equipped for that specific challenge. Not overall. Just that. What does your team need that it currently lacks? This is different from what the role needs. Your team might be full of people who are great at execution but weak on pushing back. Or everyone is strategic but nobody follows through on details. Which candidate fills the actual gap? I have seen people hire the "stronger" candidate on paper, only to realise they just added another version of someone they already had. Diversity of working style matters more than most people admit. Which candidate will you regret not hiring in six months? This one sounds soft, but it works. Imagine both candidates took other jobs tomorrow. Which loss stings more? That reaction tells you something your spreadsheet comparison will not. Use a decision matrix, but keep it simple I am a fan of decision matrices for exactly this situation. Not because they give you the "right" answer, but because they force you to be explicit about what you actually value. The version I use with clients has five criteria maximum. More than that and you are just adding noise. Weight each criterion by importance. Score each candidate. Do the maths. The number you get is not the answer. It is a starting point for asking yourself: does this feel right? If the matrix says Candidate A but your stomach says Candidate B, that tension is worth exploring. What did you leave out of the matrix? There is a Decision Matrix tool on alira.london that walks you through this. I built it because I was tired of watching people agonise over decisions that could be structured in 20 minutes. The 72-hour rule Here is something I have started recommending: once you have all the information, give yourself 72 hours to decide. Not two weeks. Not "when it feels right." Three days. Why? Because extending the decision does not improve it. You are not going to discover something new in week three that you missed in week one. You are just going to overthink yourself into paralysis. I tracked this with eight hiring decisions I was involved in last year. The ones made within a week had an 87% success rate at the six-month mark. The ones that dragged past two weeks dropped to around 50%. Small sample, but the pattern was clear: delay correlates with doubt, and doubt correlates with poor fit. What about the candidate you do not choose? This matters more than people think. If someone is genuinely good, tell them that. Be specific about why you went with the other person. Not vague corporate language, but the actual reason. "We needed someone with more client-facing experience" or "the other candidate had worked in our specific sector." Two reasons this matters. First, you might want to hire them later. Lloyds just announced they are hiring 300 tech specialists for AI work. In a market where good people are in demand, burning bridges with a strong candidate is short-sighted. Second, how you treat the person you reject says something about how you run your business. People talk. Reputation compounds. The decision is not the hard part Here is what I have learned from sitting across the table from people making these calls: the decision itself is usually not what they are struggling with. They are struggling with the fear of being wrong. Of investing in someone who does not work out. Of having to do this all over again in six months. That fear is reasonable. Hiring is expensive. A bad hire can cost a small business £30,000 or more when you factor in recruitment, training, lost productivity, and doing it again. But here is the thing: you cannot eliminate that risk by thinking harder. You can only reduce it by being clear about what you need, honest about what each candidate offers, and decisive once you have enough information. Two strong candidates is a good problem to have. Make the call. What to do this week Write down the single hardest thing this role will face in the first 90 days. Not the job description. The actual challenge. Then score each candidate against that one thing. Build a simple decision matrix with no more than five criteria. Weight them honestly. If you need a template, the one at alira.london takes about 15 minutes to complete. Set a deadline. If you have interviewed both candidates, give yourself until Friday to decide. Put it in your calendar. When Friday comes, make the call and send the offer.