Urgent vs. Important: How Tech Leaders Make Smart Hiring Calls Under Pressure

Some weeks feel like a blur of alerts, demos, last-minute fixes and… hiring?

Yeah, right.

In fast-moving tech teams, especially those building on complex platforms like Salesforce, it’s normal for hiring to take a back seat. You’re constantly solving today’s problems, and the idea of thinking long-term feels like a luxury. But here’s the thing:

If you only hire when things are already broken, it’s too late.

Hiring is never just a checkbox on your to-do list. It’s one of the most strategic decisions you make, especially when your team is scaling and the pressure is high.

Here’s what we’ve seen work for leaders who manage to hire well even when everything feels urgent:

1. Don’t wait for “the perfect moment” … it won’t come

You’re always going to be in the middle of something:

⚡️ Sprint reviews

⚡️ Fires to put out

⚡️ The next big release

⚡️ Your VP asking for an update you forgot to prep

The truth? There’s no such thing as a calm week.

The smartest leaders we work with treat hiring like a product backlog item, it has to move forward every sprint, no matter what.

That might look like:

• Reviewing one candidate a day (instead of blocking out 3 hours you’ll never find)
• Delegating technical screening to someone you trust
• Blocking 30 minutes a week just to reflect on what roles you really need filled next quarter

Hiring in chaos doesn’t work. But building hiring into your rhythm? That’s where the magic happens.

2. Separate what’s urgent from what’s essential

You’ll always have something screaming for your attention, but some of the most important things speak quietly.

Like:

🧠 Is our tech team built for what’s coming?

👀 Do we have people who can step up, not just ship code?

🤯 Are we unintentionally burning out our strongest developers?

These aren’t fires you see right away.

But if you ignore them, they will explode.

The best leaders make space to think about these questions regularly, even in the middle of chaos. Because they know that hiring isn’t about filling a gap. It’s about building a team that can grow with the product.

3. Bring in support before it’s a crisis

There’s a moment when you realize:

“This is too much for our team. We need help.”

But by then, you’re already behind.

That’s why some leaders bring in outside support early — not because they’re desperate, but because they’re strategic.

We’ve seen teams bring in:

• Senior developers to cover urgent deliverables while they keep hiring calmly
• Salesforce architects for a few months to unblock critical features
• Nearshore engineers to extend their team’s capacity without the overhead of a long search

It’s not a shortcut, it’s smart capacity planning.

Final thought: Hiring isn’t a fire to put out. It’s your fire prevention strategy.

Your team can handle a lot, but only if you give them the support they need to keep going.

So if you’ve been pushing hiring to “next week” for a while… maybe this is your sign to bring it back into focus.

Even just one small step today can save you a lot of pain tomorrow.