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Hiring Complexity Series #2

What do we actually needs?

As business grows, there comes a moment when we realise we can't keep doing everything ourselves: the workload has increased, the team is stretched, and it feels obvious that we need another person. So we start writing a job description, we discuss job titles, we think about where to advertise, we imagine the type of person we're looking for. It feels like we're making progress, but sometimes, in our urgency to recruit, we move straight to finding people before we've fully understood what the organisation actually needs.

The question becomes: What if the first people decisions aren't about recruitment at all?

Are we trying to fill a role, or solve a problem we haven't fully defined?

Recruitment is very good at finding people, it is much less effective at creating organisational clarity.

When we're unclear about the problem we're trying to solve, we often expect the recruitment process to provide the answers. Job descriptions become lists of responsibilities rather than a clear explanation of why the role exists. Interviews focus on experience instead of exploring how someone will help the organisation move forward. New hires arrive only to discover that expectations continue to evolve because we're still figuring them out ourselves. None of this necessarily means we've hired the wrong person, more often, it means we've recruited into an undefined challenge.

The consequence isn't just a difficult recruitment process, it's an organisation that hasn't yet translated a business need into a capability it can intentionally build.

Should we define the role, or define the capability first?

The most important people decisions often happen before recruitment begins. Before asking "Who should we hire?", it's worth asking ourselves a different set of questions: "What problem are we trying to solve?", "What will the organisation be able to do once this capability exists?", and "How will we know that this recruitment has been successful?"

Answering these questions doesn't just produce a better job description, it creates clarity for everyone involved, from the hiring manager to the successful candidate.

Here's the shift: instead of starting with "Who do we need to hire?", start with "What capability does the organisation need to build?". Recruitment becomes much easier when it's no longer searching for someone to fix an undefined problem, but helping the organisation build a capability it has already recognised it needs.