Nowhere fast

Greg Wyatt • February 24, 2024

Seneca once said,

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.”

If you don’t have a clear goal, no plan will likely be effective.

The mistake a lot of recruitment makes, particularly for key hires, is in establishing what that goal is.

“We need to fill this job. What are the duties? Let’s get someone on board who can do it.”

But the goal is rarely to fill a vacancy.

The goal is to solve a business problem through the people you employ.

Harder to measure when fill rate and other such metrics are quantitative. Yet a qualitative outcome that can be transformational.

Take an Administrator role, and let’s say it’s a newly created position for a start-up.

The hiring manager will see the need for someone to do their admin, and form a job description around the duties.

But in a start-up environment, these duties can be various and many, becoming a list that is impossible for any one person to fulfil expertly.

And the hire is typically someone who can fulfil part of the role, with a great attitude, because the rest of the skills required can be learnt.

This often works well enough, unless the reality of the role proves different to what what was expected. And sometimes roles change with time, so that hire now might not be right in future.

Look at the same task in a different way.

What problems does an Administrator solve?

I use this example because it’s pretty straightforward and I’m sure we’ve all felt the pain of getting caught in admin.

An Administrator

  • takes away the administrative burden from the hiring team

  • frees up their time to do their job while saving them on opportunity cost, technical debt and the real-life cost of a salary spent doing unnecessary activity

  • knows to keep sufficient stocks of coffee

However, I also use this example because it isn’t a static hire.

The Administrator of now, is different to the role in 12 months time as the start-up grows.

Looking forward, the duties held by the exec team that are manageable now make less sense to run with. Such as admin-led HR, Health and Safety, Facilities Management.

So the future problem this solves may also be an opportunity:

  • this is a role that will grow with the company, allowing you to grow your career around your strengths.

Any role has dimensions beyond a job description. Even if it will never change in scope that is a fundamental aspect of the role.

An Administrator who wants to grow in their career isn’t going to hang around if that role doesn’t grow.

Whereas someone who enjoys admin, and doesn’t have plans to scale their career, might be the perfect hire now and in future.

Both might be great candidates, for very different jobs that have the same JD.

Outcomes are a time-laden dimension that runs throughout recruitment.

Another example - let’s say you need to implement a quality & compliance framework within 12 months from now, to enable a successful product launch.

When will you need your Quality Manager to start?

If a Quality Manager is on three months’ notice, not uncommon in the UK, the hypothetical earliest they could start is 24 May 2024, leaving you 9 months.

But how long does your recruitment process take?

Let’s say three stages of interview, which you can do over three weeks.

How long does it take you to flesh out your requirements before hitting the candidate market?

How long did it take you to find an acceptable shortlist of candidates to interview?

How long does it take to generate the offer paperwork for the successful candidate, have them read it, and then tender their resignation?

Maybe that will take three months, meaning you may only have six months to achieve your goal.

How long will it take your new employees to get up to speed, and learn everything they need to know before they can start putting a fit-for-purpose structure in place?

Or did you just want an off-the-shelf package that gets you the letters, but doesn’t do its job?

Perhaps you instead need an interim who can parachute in at short notice and get you what you need, before hiring a business-as-usual Quality Manager once the framework is in place.

Questions that should be probed now, rather than be opportunities missed in future.

Yet how many recruitment processes for such a key hire, instead prefer 5 CVs by Friday, as long as they match the job description?

As a final example, I interviewed a TA Manager recently who worked for a restaurant chain.

They had awful staff turnover at one of their sites, and the outcome they wanted was a stable workforce, who enjoyed what they do and gave better service to their customers.

Straightforward outcomes, so why weren’t they being achieved?

The answer, she said, came with spending a couple of days on-site to see the work environment. The one area they didn’t have staff turnover was the management, and the management was the reason for staff turnover.

With a new management team brought in, the rest of the problems took care of themselves.

Had they only relied on their job descriptions, they would have continued to have the same turnover issues.

Which no doubt would impact their customers.

By looking at the outcomes you want from your recruitment, you can assess how realistic they are against your context and needs.

You can work back realistically to find the optimal path.

And if that path isn’t right for whatever reason, you can course correct at the outset, rather than get lost along the way.

No one wants to go nowhere fast.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. I have capacity for one new client in March. Get in touch if you want to benefit from better outcomes in your recruit, and to see if we might be a good fit.

Why five? Innovation from Iteration, pt 1

By Greg Wyatt • February 26, 2026
So here were are, the start of a new series. This series may be around 10 editions, looking at the things other industries do that we can implement into recruitment. These were written 3 years ago, right at the start of the AI zazzle, and in some ways have dated quite a bit. In others, the way in which they haven't dated at all, because the principles of how we live our business lives can be universal. So, I'm not sure yet, how much editing I'll do, whether there will be any inclusions, or whether I'll leave articles intact, as a moment in time. I've learnt all of these notions from candidates and clients, as I came to understand the function of their vacancies. Hearing about the daily practice from people doing jobs, I couldn't help but notice the same relevance in recruitment. So while these articles are hardly comprehensive, perhaps they'll make you look at your candidates differently, in what we can learn from them, and how that might improve our recruitment. Why five? December 2022 Ask anyone involved in active recruitment what their key problems are, and they’ll likely talk about skills shortages and candidate behaviour. On the face of it, problems which are out of our control, worthy of complaint with little opportunity to find improvement. But what if these were issues that weren’t entirely out of our control? What if we could apply a replicable process to understand what’s really going on, and how we can make a difference? Fortunately, we needn’t invent the wheel, as other industries have already done this for us. One such is 5Y, or Five Whys, a problem-solving technique that was developed by Toyota in the 1930s. It's part of the Toyota Management System that has inspired much of my work. Five is the general number of “Why?”s needed to get to the root of a problem. Often you can get to the heart of the issue sooner, sometimes later. Often there are multiple root causes. More than just solving problems, it’s about establishing practical countermeasures to prevent these problems from coming up in future. 5Y is an example of Toyota’s philosophy of “go and see”: working on the shop floor to find out how things work in practice to find ways for iterative improvement. This isn’t a theoretical idea to try out on a whim – it’s based on grounded reality and almost always works. There are two costs – time and accountability. Here’s a practical example, then a recruitment one. (Names have been removed to protect my identity) Problem 1 : The children were late for school. Why? Traffic held us up. Why? We left the house late. Why? The children weren’t ready on time. Why? Their school uniforms weren’t prepared. Why? We hadn’t set them out the night before. Here the countermeasure is to get everything ready the night before, rather than blame traffic for being late. Perhaps we might have gotten to school on time without heavy traffic, but that is an element out of our control. Of course, here there is another root cause – very naughty children – but better to focus on the simple changes. And sometimes traffic is the root cause after all, once you’ve ruled out other elements in your control. (2026 note: my eldest now often drives my youngest to school. A time laden solution I hadn't considered three years ago. Now I don't care if they're late 😆) Problem 2: Candidates keep ghosting us. Why? They weren’t committed to responding. Why? They didn’t accept my requirement for a response. Why? They saw no value in my requirement. Why? I didn’t create an environment where this requirement has value ( root cause 1 ). Or because they are very naughty candidates, with a bad attitude. Why have we allowed someone with a bad attitude in our recruitment process? Because we didn’t prequalify them well enough ( root cause 2 ) The first root cause is something we can work on by giving candidates what they need, building trust, and working to mutual obligations. There are many ways to do this – I’ve already talked about examples in previous newsletters. It comes down to good candidate experience and reciprocity. The second root cause requires us to work harder at understanding candidate needs, aspirations, behaviours and attitudes at the outset of a recruitment process. There’s a reason for their behaviour. We can be accountable for finding it. That’s no mean skill to develop, yet an essential one for anyone whose core responsibility is recruitment. And it’s hard to do in a transactional volume process, so the question then becomes, does your process help more than it hinders? You can apply 5Y to any issue you come across, as long as you are prepared to be accountable. At worst you may find that the things that were out of your control are at fault. In this case, you are at least armed with good information to report to your stakeholders, by ruling out other possibilities. What’s the point of doing all this? For me it’s continually improving how I recruit, with the consequence, in the example above, that I am rarely ghosted at all. And you can 5Y any issue you come across. Are poor agency CV submissions their fault, or in part down to your briefing and process? Are skills genuinely scarce, or is your requirement unrealistic? Is it true that your agency hasn’t listened to you, or do you engage the right partners in the right way? 5Y has the answers. Regards, Greg

Map the Market. Jobseeker Basics XVIII

By Greg Wyatt • February 23, 2026
What follows is Chapter 21 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's a good example of how a job search is an inverted recruitment exercise, but also how the same principles from recruitment can be applied in a job search. Market mapping is one of the first steps of a search process in what is often called headhunting. Here though, instead of an exercise that helps find a person for a job, you help find a job for you. This can be in one chunk, at the outset, and iteratively, as you learn more information. It's a great example of how LinkedIn can be used as a data repository, given the vast majority of professionals are present here. And if they are present here, the insight that is their careers is too, allowing you to identify potential viable employers, who works there, and therefore where else they may have worked, with further potential hiring managers. The snake that eats its own tail. Try doing the iterative work above, every time you come across someone new, whether in an application or in networking . You can use this to build out your network, identify companies to contact proactively. Simon Ward and I will talk more on this in our LinkedIn Live on Tuesday February 24th at 1pm GMT. You can join us, and view the full recording afterwards, here: Is The Nature Of Networking Changing for Job Hunters? If you happen to read this as a hiring authority, market mapping is one of the invisible processes in a structured search. It can often take me 80 to 100 hours to fully map a role for potential viable candidates, given I try to find non-traditional candidates as well as those that are easier to find through sourcing. 21 - Map the market Market mapping is a common activity in executive search. Why wouldn’t you adopt the same approach in your inverse of a recruitment exercise? The idea is to fully understand your market, so that you are better able to navigate it. This is a summary chapter because market mapping is both a strategic and a tactical exercise. I’ll cover some of the How of mapping in Part Three. There are three ways in which to map the market. The vacancies you are qualified for This is about determining which vacancies you should focus your attention on. In which domains does your capability directly apply? This could be context related, if your expertise is in start-ups, growth, downsizing or other contexts. It could be industry related - your process manufacturing expertise might directly apply in food, plastics or pharmaceuticals. It could be job related, with the right applicable skills. Establish where there is a market for you, and if what you offer is needed by that market. Advice on the transferable skills trap (p55) and whether you are qualified (p178) to apply will help. The geography of your job search Where are all the employers and vacancies that you can sustainably commute to? A geographical map can help you target opportunities by region. What resources are available to help you with this map? Searching online for local business parks, even driving around them, can give a list of viable companies to contact. Directories and membership hubs. Local newspapers, social media stories. If you see a company you like the look of, say from an advert, search on their local post code. Who else might be there? The chapter on doorknocking (p241) has more ideas. The people of your network Every time you come across someone you might build a relationship with, connect with them on LinkedIn. Then check out their career history. Who else have they worked with? Where else have they worked? This works for peers, hiring managers, and recruiters - a headhunter in one company may well have worked in a similar domain in a previous one. Is there anyone at these previous companies you should introduce yourself to? What about their listed vacancies? Building out a map of relevant recruiters to develop relationships with (if they answer the phone) can lead to vacancies. Treat it as an iterative exercise. Check out the chapter on networking (p236). This map isn’t just about potential opportunity. It’s also about information that might be helpful now and in future. This might be for job leads. It might be industry insight you can share through content. It may even be topics for conversation in interviews or with peers. Make sure you track it in the right way, whether through Notion, Excel or other resources you have available. With any information, check it is accurate, then prune appropriately. Prioritise on degrees of separation (closest first) and context fit (where what you need is most closely aligned with what you offer).