Sometimes you need to start interviewing people to work out who you want. Though girls are tricky…

I interviewed my first potential COO this week. To be honest I was slightly bounced into it by that recruitment agent I met a while back, given that I haven't totally decided what the profile should be yet. Then again, I figured seeing someone would actually help on that score - I quite often use a recruitment process to work out exactly what I want. (I imagine this isn't exactly best practice, and I suspect my HR woman would probably have a coronary if she knew. But what the heck).

So there I was, on Tuesday, interviewing this girl. I have to admit, she started at a fairly major disadvantage being from a recruitment agency. I do try to ignore it; to tell myself that the important thing is getting the right person for the job, whatever it takes. But it's quite hard not to think about the fact that hiring this person would cost me some exorbitant five-figure sum, to be paid in full within thirty days of her joining. Just what my cashflow doesn't need at the moment. The result is that I can't look at her without seeing pound signs flicker across her forehead. It's a bit like looking at a chocolate bar in a vending machine.

Anyway, she was actually very nice, this girl. We had lots in common - we're from the same neck of the woods, we went to university around the same time and did quite similar courses, and we took the same sort of graduate job. She's currently working at a start-up that's apparently about to get dumped by its venture backers, so everyone's bailing out as fast as they can. So if nothing else, this allowed me to pat myself on the back for not taking that VC cash a couple of years ago (at the time I couldn't move for VCs offering me money, along with grandiose promises of high-profile non-execs and wholly unnecessary perks - they seem to have gone quiet lately, believe it or not).

But I had a couple of other concerns, as well as the cash thing. We got on like a house of fire, but I worried afterwards whether that meant we might be a bit too similar. If I'm going to hire into the senior management team, it would be useful to get someone who can offer something a bit different. A girl would actually be good, just to balance out the raging balls of testosterone that are Ace and Mammon. But not one that’s just like me, perhaps.

Secondly, the big difference between me and this girl was that although we're about the same age, she's been married for three years (she brought this up, I hasten to add, I didn't ask – I’ve learned my lesson from last time). And inevitably, that makes me worry about babies. I know you’re not supposed to admit to this sort of thing these days, but hey, there's got to be some advantage to having an anonymous blog. Let's be honest: maternity leave is a serious pain in the proverbial for a business this size (and even more so for smaller businesses, of course). I can’t afford to hire a senior person on a big salary and then have her disappear for an indefinite period, forcing me to do this whole process again and find someone else to do the job on a short term basis. It’ll just mean more work for me, which is precisely the opposite of what this appointment is supposed to achieve.

So for all three reasons, I think she’s probably a No. Though as you can imagine, I’ll be largely focusing on the second reason when I give my feedback.