During these years I've used LinkedIn, I've had at least two situations where individuals I didn't know and had never met thanked me by e-mail for forwarding them to such-and-such and who told me that they just took a new job as a result. Knowing I was able to help someone is such a great feeling.

In terms of recruiting through it, Accellent has advertised positions and done some searches on it. I have found contractors through LinkedIn. I've also developed leads in an interesting way. Because I sit at the hub of a lot of messages that get moved, I often see notes from people who are looking for jobs. Sometimes these are relevant to positions I or someone else in my company is recruiting for, so I'll reach out and say, "I forwarded this for you but wanted to let you know that we too have an opening that you might be interested in."

I think LinkedIn is a great tool. The people who run it have become somewhat over the top in terms of trying to control stuff — which is frustrating to many of us who are just trying to help people — but I can't keep up with multiple LinkedIn-type tools. I tried for a while. I was a member of several of the various systems, but it just took too much time so I've focused on LinkedIn.

Is there a characteristic you prize most in a candidate or a hire?

By far, integrity is the most important value that candidates can demonstrate. If they fail to demonstrate integrity, it will end the interview and any chance of them being hired. It will also end a person's career working for me. I've had that happen a couple of times.

Two and a half years ago, I hired a direct report, a very senior individual in my company. At the time, we were retrofitting a new office building. I flew in to see how the project was going, and I found that someone changed the building plans so that a large window would go in the server room so people could look in on it. Windows in server rooms are a throwback to the "big iron" [mainframe] days. I didn't think we had any business "advertising" our servers this way — they were simply machines that got stuff done for everyone else in the company. I also knew that our server rooms weren't as neat and organized as my staff and I would have liked them to be, and that such a window would make my staff feel like they were under scrutiny. I commented to my direct report that I thought the window was a mistake and I asked how it got there. He gave me some double-talk about it being on the plans, which I knew wasn't the case. I later concluded that this new employee had in fact authorized the change, yet he never fessed up. His failure to be truthful to me was the beginning of the end. Shortly thereafter, I instructed him not to sign agreements with a particular telecom vendor. I communicated this to him in writing. I found out later that he defied my instructions. After that, he was gone in four weeks. That was probably the toughest firing decision I ever had to execute because he had only just started, was a director-level employee and was very well paid.