I work with genuinely impressive businesses. Well-run, commercially strong, real opportunities to offer. And I watch them struggle to hire. Not because great people don't exist, but because the same handful of patterns keep showing up. All of them avoidable.
The best people aren't on job boards
The candidates who will actually move your business forward are not refreshing job boards. They're being approached. They might consider the right opportunity if it's put in front of them by the right person at the right time, but they aren't coming to you.
When businesses default to posting and waiting, they're fishing from a pool that excludes most of the people they actually want. Job advertising works for volume hiring and graduates. For senior roles, it consistently underdelivers.
The brief is the problem
Most job specs I receive have been written by committee, contain everyone's wishlist, and describe someone who doesn't exist at the salary on offer.
Over-specified experience filters out the most interesting candidates in favour of the most conventional. Packages benchmarked below the role's actual complexity tell good candidates that the business either doesn't know the market or does and is hoping to get lucky. Vague cultural descriptors mean nothing. Every business says they want someone entrepreneurial but structured. None of that tells me who will actually succeed in the role.
A good brief is specific, honest about the challenges, and grounded in market reality.
The process loses the best people
I see it constantly. Strong candidates identified. One clearly exceptional. Then the process stalls. Diaries don't align. Feedback is vague. A third stage gets added.
Meanwhile the candidate, who always had other conversations running, accepts something else.
Speed is a signal. It tells candidates how a business operates and how seriously it values this hire. Businesses that move decisively win talent. The ones that don't, don't. It really is that simple.
Employer brand matters more than you think
Before a strong candidate agrees to a first conversation, they've already done their research. LinkedIn, profiles of people who've left, their own network. What they find shapes whether they engage at all.
A sparse online presence, no visible culture, and short average tenure at senior level will quietly kill your pipeline before it starts. The businesses that consistently attract great people have a clear identity and a reputation that precedes them.
What the businesses that hire well do differently
They treat hiring as a strategic priority. They're clear on what they want before the search starts. They move when they find the right person. And they're honest about the role, which the best candidates respond to.
They also invest in working with people who actually know their market. Not just posting and hoping.
If any of this sounds familiar, I'm always happy to have a straightforward conversation about where things are going wrong.
Naomi Slakmon is the founder of placed., a specialist executive search consultancy operating across real estate, developer and construction sectors in MENA and London.