Companies are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to staffing. Common wisdom holds that in recessionary times businesses should reach first for the low-hanging fruit of cost cutting, including layoffs.

But companies that emerge from the tough economic times poised to grow and prosper will be those that have the talent to make it happen. Consultants and staffing firms are ratcheting common wisdom up a notch, suggesting that the big winners when the economy starts growing again will be companies that recognize this is a period of opportunity to hire top-quality job candidates.

According to a survey of in-house corporate recruiters by Jobfox, an Internet career site, more than three-fourths of in-house corporate recruiters say the recession offers an opportunity to bring in higher quality talent to their organization over the first half of 2009. But 53 percent of respondents expect their companies to hire fewer new employees during the first six months of the year compared to the same period a year ago.

New hires must be the best and the brightest — and staffing cuts should be approached with surgical precision; the key players on that surgical team should be the CFO and the head of human resources. The relationship between finance and HR should be top of mind, according to Jeff Schwartz, principal, Human Capital, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Any company that has done much talent planning will have a good view of their critical workforce. HR should be encouraged not to spread cuts in a ‘peanut butter way,’ but to have a strategic view of human capital,” he said.

He believes that finance should remind HR that this is a good market to obtain critical talent. “But the downside is that your stars are out there in the market too. Poaching goes on in critical skill areas. It almost runs counter to the notion that when companies are trying to cut back they need to find ways to create strong relationships with top performers.”

This is particularly important in the finance function. “Institutional knowledge of the financial organization is so critical now, and CFOs are aware of that and are more concerned with not just retaining talent but also where the next generation of talent will come from,” said Sanford Cockrell, Leader, Deloitte’s CFO Practice. “They want to make sure talent is developed appropriately within the organization.”

And that, of course, takes time — and money.