There is a particular kind of vacancy that resists every intervention. The brief has been rewritten twice, the package increased once, and two search firms have produced shortlists the board found underwhelming. The conclusion reached is that the market is thin.
Occasionally it is. More often the role has been designed by accumulation. A responsibility was added when one person left, another when a department was absorbed, and the specification now describes a person who would need three separate careers to have acquired the experience listed.
The test is simple and uncomfortable. Take the specification and mark each requirement against the people who currently do that work somewhere in the market. If no single organisation combines the top three requirements in one role, the role does not exist in the market, and no amount of searching will locate it.
The second test is about decision rights. If the role reports into two people, or owns a target without owning the resource that delivers it, strong candidates will withdraw at second interview. They do not usually say why. They say the timing is not right.
Where the design is the problem, the fix is not a better search. It is a decision about structure: split the role, move a responsibility, change the reporting line, or accept a different profile and build the missing capability underneath. That decision costs a conversation. Continuing to search costs a further quarter.
This is the reason our advisory work sits ahead of our search work. A search that begins with a role nobody can hold is a defensible process producing an unusable result.
If no single organisation combines the top three requirements in one role, the role does not exist in the market.
