Managers decide daily about recruiting new people into their organization and sometimes in times of economic turmoil they decide to let people go. The issue of fairness is at the heart of these decisions. In the present study we are interested in exploring the perceived fairness of six decision rules in the context of hiring and firing. 306 participants responded to one of two different versions of a scenario based questionnaire. Half of the participants answered questions about the fairness of six allocation decision rules by which hiring for a job took place, and the other half rated the same rules for firing. In general, contribution rules were deemed much fairer than the equality rules. In the case of hiring, respondents considered the contribution of ability as the fairest rule while in the firing condition the contribution of effort was rated as the fairest rule.