| You post a job and within days, you have hundreds of applicants showing interest. So far so good! But then you start reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, and determining who should move forward. Next thing you know, it’s months later and you still haven’t found the right person.
I’ve seen this play out throughout my career, and even more so lately as employers contend with high application volumes, AI-polished résumés, and a harder time identifying the candidates worth pursuing.
When a search drags on like this, it’s usually a sign that something in the process needs a closer look. Here are four places where I generally see things start to break down:
1. You Started Your Search Before Defining Success
You know you need to fill a position, so you define the experience, skills, and qualifications a candidate should have. But what are those requirements based on? If you haven’t established what success looks like in the role, you end up evaluating candidates against a list of qualifications without knowing whether they’ll lead to the outcome you need.
The Solution:
Start with the end in mind. Fast forward six to 12 months after the hire is in place. What would tell you that you made the right choice? What is this person doing well in the role? What have they accomplished for the organization? What problems are they solving that prompted you to hire in the first place? Once you know what you need the hire to achieve, you can work backward to identify the experience, skills, and attributes that will help them get there.
2. You’re Trying to Find Another Version of Your Best Employee
When a great employee leaves, they naturally become the benchmark for their replacement. You start looking for someone with the same experience, skills, personality, and approach to the job. But no two people bring the exact same attributes to a role. Add in the fact that your former employee may have been there for years, and you could be trying to recreate someone who was doing a very different version of the job you need to fill today.
The Solution:
Use your former employee’s success as a reference point, not a model to replicate. Identify the qualities that helped them succeed, then look at what the role now requires. Keep the search open enough to recognize strong candidates who may bring a different background, working style, or set of strengths than what you’re accustomed to.
3. You’re Looking at Skills Without Considering the Environment
You’re finding candidates who check the right boxes in terms of experience and technical qualifications, but none of them feel quite right when it comes time to make the hire.
The Solution:
Before you start interviewing, identify the soft skills, emotional intelligence, and personal attributes that are important for this particular role, team, and leader. Maybe you need someone who can navigate difficult conversations, work independently, adapt quickly, or build relationships across departments. Knowing those qualities ahead of time gives you something specific to evaluate during the interview, rather than relying on a general sense of whether someone feels right.
4. You Haven’t Considered What the Candidate Is Looking For
You can find someone who’s a great fit for the role and still lose them because the opportunity doesn’t meet what they’re looking for. Compensation, flexibility, leadership, responsibilities, growth opportunities, and other factors all influence whether a candidate is interested enough to pursue the role.
The Solution:
Look at the role from the candidate’s perspective. What would make someone you want to hire interested in this opportunity? Understanding what your target candidates value can help you identify where the role may need to change and how to position it when you go to market.
If your search keeps coming up empty, it may be time to bring in a staffing partner who knows the talent market in your niche. I recently had a client come to us after spending months trying to fill a position. They’d received more than 300 applications and spent several man-hours reviewing less than half of them. After interviewing 10 candidates, they still hadn’t found the right person. We helped them narrow the search around what they truly needed and fill the role in less than 2.5 weeks.
A niche staffing partner can help you focus your search before the overwhelming influx of résumés land in your inbox. If you’re struggling to fill a role, let’s talk about what’s getting in the way. |
