Higher and hire are homophones and easily confused words. Spell-check in word processing programs doesn’t check homophone errors. What spell-check does is look for the words that aren’t in its internal dictionary, and words that aren’t spelled like those in its internal dictionary. If you used a word that exists and that word is spelled correctly, spell-check continues scanning. Spell-check doesn’t ask about context. Autocorrect on phones is also clumsy in its attempts to guess what you want to say next.
Higher is an adjective and an adverb. For clarification, it’s an adjective when you talk about higher interest rates, higher education. It’s an adverb when you say the lost balloon climbed higher and higher into the sky, or someone’s aiming higher than most with his career goals.
Hire is a verb, it means to select someone to perform work for you, or on your business’ behalf.
The following sentence uses both words correctly:
Hilda was told a candidate’s higher education made all the difference when companies wanted to hire. She had yet to see that theory confirmed in her own experience as a job seeker.
Kathleen W Curry 