How to find good staff?

How do you find good staff for forums? Or even so, when is the right time to start adding staff?

When I ran my music forum, it was about a month or so until I hired my first quality control expert (staff member). Myself and my co-owner ran the site for a good month and a half alone and built content, advertised, and focused on improving the forum to the best of our abilities to attract new users to the forum.

When I hired my staff, I learned that the best quality users that show a lot of insight and knowledge on the subject at hand become great moderators. I had two people that contributed great content to the site and within two months they were both working for me.

Come to find out, they were amazing people and really did help the forum out to a great extent. They created more new content, helped develop new ideas to improve the site, and most importantly became good friends as well.

How do you find good staff?

Well said Kino, it's always good to have staff members to know the topic, so they can always actively engage in creating content. It's also good to have them know the software that you are using, as while you may put them through training, it can be tedious when time is limited.

I found staff for one of my old forums basically the same way you did.
Even though its easier to let members apply for staff, it's better to wait and see if they can contribute to the forum.