Leadership Recruiting Knowledge Center
What to Do When You Can’t Find the Right Leadership Candidate
By Mark Jones
Founder & Managing Director
Introduction
A leadership position has been open for months. Your team has reviewed dozens of résumés, interviewed several candidates, and invested considerable time in the search. Yet the position remains unfilled.
Some candidates have the right experience but don’t seem like a good fit. Others have leadership potential but lack a particular qualification. A few promising candidates have declined to move forward.
Meanwhile, the responsibilities of the vacant position haven’t disappeared. Other leaders are absorbing the workload, important decisions are being delayed, and the organization is feeling the effects.
At some point, the question changes from “Where can we find more candidates?” to “Why aren’t we finding someone we can hire?”
When a leadership search stalls, the answer isn’t necessarily to search harder. It may be time to reconsider what you’re looking for, where you’re looking, and how you’re evaluating the candidates you find.
At a Glance
When you’re struggling to find the right leadership candidate:
- Identify where the search is breaking down. Are you struggling to find qualified people, attract their interest, or move them through the hiring process?
- Revisit the position requirements. Separate qualifications that are essential for success from those that are simply preferred.
- Evaluate the opportunity. Make sure compensation, responsibilities, and career potential are competitive.
- Expand your candidate pool. Look beyond active job seekers, familiar industries, and traditional career paths.
- Reconsider previously rejected candidates. Some may deserve another look if they were eliminated for nonessential reasons.
- Examine your hiring process. Delays, changing expectations, and indecision can cause strong candidates to lose interest.
- Consider a different recruiting approach. An experienced leadership recruiting partner can bring new candidates and a fresh perspective to a difficult search.
1. Determine Why the Search Isn’t Working
Before making changes, identify where the search is breaking down.
Not every unsuccessful leadership search has the same problem. A company struggling to identify qualified candidates faces a different challenge than one that consistently interviews strong people but never makes a hire.
There are three situations I see most often.
You’re Not Finding Qualified Candidates
Your recruiting team is reviewing résumés and conducting initial conversations, but few candidates meet the requirements.
This may indicate that the search is too narrowly focused, the qualifications are unnecessarily restrictive, or the recruiting effort isn’t reaching the right people.
It may also mean that the combination of experience, skills, and industry knowledge you’re seeking is unusually difficult to find.
You’re Finding Qualified Candidates, but They’re Not Interested
The candidates appear to have the right backgrounds, but they’re unwilling to consider the opportunity.
Compensation may be an issue. So might location, responsibilities, reporting relationships, or concerns about the company’s direction.
Sometimes the problem is simply that the organization hasn’t communicated why a successful leader should leave a good position to join it.
You’re Interviewing Candidates, but Nobody Gets Hired
This is often the most frustrating situation.
Candidates appear qualified on paper. They perform reasonably well in interviews. Yet every candidate seems to fall short of someone’s expectations.
One interviewer questions industry experience. Another wants stronger technical skills. Someone else believes the candidate lacks executive presence.
The result is a series of interviews without a hiring decision.
Before expanding the search, determine whether the problem is finding qualified people or reaching agreement on what makes someone qualified.
That distinction should guide what happens next. Understanding why leadership searches fail can help organizations recognize problems early and avoid repeating the same mistakes.
2. Revisit What the Position Actually Requires
One of the first things I examine when a leadership search isn’t producing results is the position’s requirements.
Job descriptions often begin with a reasonable set of qualifications. Then additional requirements are added as hiring managers, executives, and other stakeholders contribute their preferences.
Industry experience becomes mandatory. A particular educational background is added. Experience with specific software is required. The candidate must have managed a certain number of employees or worked for an organization of a particular size.
Individually, these requirements may seem reasonable. Collectively, they can eliminate candidates who are fully capable of succeeding in the position.
The solution isn’t to lower your standards. It’s to distinguish between qualifications that are necessary for success and those that would simply be nice to have.
Focus on What the Leader Must Accomplish
Rather than beginning with a list of credentials, consider what the person needs to deliver during the first 12 to 18 months.
For example:
- Does the organization need someone who can build and develop a leadership team?
- Is the priority improving operational performance?
- Will the person be responsible for entering new markets or accelerating growth?
- Does the role require leading an organization through significant change?
Once those objectives are clear, it’s easier to identify the experience and capabilities that matter most.
A candidate who has successfully led a similar transformation in another industry may be more valuable than someone with extensive industry experience who has never faced the challenges your organization needs to address.
In our article, Are Your Hiring Criteria Eliminating Your Best Leadership Candidates?, we explain how separating non-negotiable qualifications from strong indicators and preferences can prevent organizations from overlooking capable leaders.
The objective is to hire someone who can succeed in the role, not necessarily someone whose résumé matches every line of the job description.
3. Determine Whether the Opportunity Is Competitive
Finding a qualified leadership candidate is only part of the challenge.
You also have to give that person a compelling reason to consider the opportunity.
Many of the strongest leadership candidates are already employed. They’re performing well, have established relationships, and aren’t actively looking for another position.
They may be willing to listen, but that doesn’t mean they’re willing to leave.
Compensation Must Reflect the Responsibilities
If the position carries substantial responsibility but offers compensation below what comparable leaders are earning, attracting experienced candidates becomes difficult.
This doesn’t mean every company must offer the highest salary in its market.
However, compensation should be consistent with the scope of the position, the level of accountability, and the experience required.
Bonus opportunities, long-term incentives, benefits, and flexibility can also influence a candidate’s decision.
Responsibility Must Come With Authority
Experienced leaders want to understand what they’ll be expected to accomplish and whether they’ll have the authority and resources to do it.
A company may describe a position as a significant leadership opportunity while retaining most decision-making authority at the ownership or executive level.
That disconnect can make an otherwise attractive position difficult to fill.
The Opportunity Must Offer Something Worth Pursuing
For some candidates, that means greater responsibility. For others, it’s the opportunity to build a team, influence strategy, improve an operation, or work more directly with ownership.
Privately held and growing companies can offer opportunities that larger organizations sometimes cannot.
But those advantages need to be clearly communicated.
An employer may believe it has an excellent opportunity. The candidate ultimately decides whether that opportunity is worth leaving a successful position to pursue.
4. Expand the Search Beyond the Obvious Candidates
When a leadership search stalls, organizations often respond by posting the position again, expanding advertising, or reviewing additional applications.
Those activities may generate more résumés, but they don’t necessarily produce better candidates.
The problem may be that the search is reaching the same population of people.
Look Beyond Active Job Seekers
Many successful leaders aren’t searching job boards or submitting applications.
They’re focused on their current responsibilities and may not have considered making a career change.
Reaching these individuals requires identifying people with relevant accomplishments and approaching them directly.
The conversation is different from responding to an application. Before discussing qualifications, you have to establish why the opportunity might be worth considering.
Our article, How to Recruit Passive Leadership Candidates, examines why these individuals require a different approach.
Consider Adjacent Industries
Industry experience can be valuable, particularly in highly specialized or regulated businesses.
But it isn’t always essential.
A leader who has successfully managed complex operations, built high-performing teams, or improved profitability in one industry may possess capabilities that transfer well to another.
The question is whether the candidate understands the underlying business challenges and has demonstrated the ability to address them.
Look Beyond Traditional Career Paths
Not every successful leader has followed a predictable progression of titles and responsibilities.
Some have developed substantial leadership capabilities in smaller organizations. Others have managed responsibilities that exceed what their job titles suggest.
An overly narrow focus on titles, company size, or industry background can cause these candidates to be overlooked.
In How Do Leadership Recruiting Firms Find Candidates?, we explain how a more deliberate search process can identify qualified individuals who may never appear in a conventional applicant pool.
Expanding the search doesn’t mean compromising on essential qualifications. It means recognizing that capable leaders don’t all have identical backgrounds.
5. Take Another Look at Candidates You’ve Already Rejected
When a company can’t find the right leadership candidate, the natural reaction is to look for someone new.
But before restarting the search, I recommend reviewing the candidates who have already been considered.
Some may have been eliminated for reasons that deserve reconsideration.
Perhaps a candidate came from a different industry. Another lacked experience with a particular technology. Someone else had managed a smaller organization than originally envisioned.
Those differences may be important. But were they significant enough to justify eliminating an otherwise qualified leader?
Reconsider Why Each Candidate Was Rejected
Review the strongest candidates who didn’t advance and ask:
- Did the candidate lack a qualification essential to performing the job?
- Was the decision based on a preference rather than a requirement?
- Did the interview reveal a genuine concern about leadership ability?
- Was the candidate eliminated because their background differed from what we originally envisioned?
- Would we evaluate this person differently based on what we’ve learned during the search?
This exercise isn’t about reversing every previous decision.
Some candidates were eliminated for legitimate reasons and shouldn’t be reconsidered.
But when a search has continued unsuccessfully for months, it’s worth determining whether the evaluation process has been too restrictive.
Evaluate Accomplishments, Not Just Credentials
A candidate’s ability to lead people, make sound decisions, solve difficult problems, and deliver results deserves substantial weight.
Those qualities aren’t always apparent from a résumé.
Our article, How to Evaluate Leadership Candidates Beyond the Résumé, discusses how to assess the leadership capabilities that matter after the initial qualifications have been established.
Before concluding that the right candidate doesn’t exist, make sure you haven’t already interviewed someone capable of doing the job.
6. Examine Whether Your Hiring Process Is Driving Candidates Away
Sometimes an organization identifies a strong candidate but loses that person before making a decision.
This happens more frequently than many hiring executives realize.
A candidate completes an initial interview and receives positive feedback. A second conversation goes well. The hiring manager expresses interest.
Then the process slows down.
Another executive wants to participate. Someone is traveling. The team needs additional time to compare candidates. A decision that could have been made within days stretches into weeks.
Meanwhile, the candidate continues exploring other opportunities.
By the time the company is ready to move forward, the person has accepted another offer or decided to remain with their current employer.
Delays Send a Message
Candidates pay attention to how organizations conduct their hiring processes.
Long periods without communication can create doubts about the company’s interest, decision-making ability, and internal alignment.
For someone considering leaving a secure leadership position, those concerns matter.
Changing Requirements Create Confusion
Another common problem occurs when the definition of the ideal candidate changes during the search.
After interviewing several people, the hiring team decides it wants different experience, a stronger technical background, or a different leadership style.
Occasional adjustments are reasonable as an organization learns more about the market.
But repeated changes can indicate that the stakeholders never reached agreement on the role’s priorities.
Make Sure Someone Can Make the Decision
Before beginning a leadership search, organizations should establish who will participate in the evaluation process and who has final hiring authority.
Interviewers should understand the qualifications they’re responsible for assessing.
Their feedback should be specific, timely, and tied to the requirements of the position.
A hiring process that repeatedly delays decisions or changes expectations can make a candidate shortage appear worse than it actually is.
7. Know When It’s Time to Change Your Recruiting Approach
There comes a point when continuing the same recruiting activities produces diminishing returns.
The same candidates keep appearing. Applications aren’t improving. Interviews aren’t resulting in offers. The position remains vacant while the business continues operating without a key leader.
At that point, the organization should reassess its recruiting strategy.
That doesn’t automatically mean engaging an outside recruiting firm.
Sometimes the solution is to clarify the role, adjust compensation, or improve the internal decision-making process.
But other situations require a different approach to identifying and engaging candidates.
When Outside Recruiting Expertise Can Help
An experienced leadership recruiting firm can provide more than another source of résumés.
A recruiting partner can help an organization:
- Evaluate whether its requirements reflect the available talent market.
- Identify candidates outside its existing networks.
- Approach successful leaders who aren’t actively seeking employment.
- Assess candidates with relevant experience from different industries.
- Identify obstacles that may be discouraging qualified candidates.
- Maintain communication and momentum throughout the hiring process.
An outside perspective can be especially valuable when an organization has spent months searching without making meaningful progress.
In When Should You Use a Leadership Recruiting Firm?, we discuss the circumstances in which outside recruiting expertise can make the greatest difference.
The objective isn’t simply to increase recruiting activity. It’s to improve the quality of the search and the decisions that follow.
A Recruiter's Perspective
One of the challenges in leadership recruiting is helping hiring executives distinguish between the candidate they originally pictured and the person who can actually succeed in the role.
Most searches begin with a fairly specific idea of the ideal candidate.
The hiring manager has a particular background in mind. There may be preferred industries, company sizes, career paths, or educational qualifications.
Those expectations often come from legitimate business needs.
But as the search progresses, it sometimes becomes clear that the original profile is unnecessarily restrictive.
I’ve seen hiring teams place considerable emphasis on whether someone has worked in the same industry or held an identical title, even when other candidates have demonstrated the leadership abilities the position requires.
That doesn’t mean industry knowledge or relevant experience should be ignored. Some positions demand very specific expertise.
The challenge is determining which qualifications are truly necessary and which simply make a candidate more familiar or comfortable to the hiring team.
A leader who has successfully built teams, improved operations, managed change, or delivered measurable business results may bring more value than someone whose background appears to be a perfect match but whose accomplishments are less convincing.
I also believe hiring executives sometimes underestimate how much they can learn from the candidates they reject.
When several capable people are eliminated for different reasons, it’s worth examining whether the organization is evaluating candidates against a realistic standard.
The purpose of leadership recruiting isn’t to find someone who checks every box.
It’s to identify the person most capable of delivering the results the organization needs.
That distinction becomes especially important when a search has stalled.
8. Five Questions to Ask Before Restarting Your Leadership Search
If your organization has been unable to fill an important leadership position, don’t automatically begin another round of recruiting.
First, take an objective look at what’s happened.
1. Are We Clear About What This Leader Must Accomplish?
Identify the most important business outcomes the new leader must deliver.
Make sure those objectives—not an unnecessarily long list of qualifications—are driving the search.
2. Have We Made the Requirements Too Restrictive?
Review the qualifications used to screen candidates.
Determine which are essential and which may be excluding capable people without improving the likelihood of a successful hire.
3. Are We Offering an Opportunity That Strong Candidates Will Consider?
Evaluate compensation, responsibilities, authority, and career potential.
Consider the opportunity from the perspective of someone who is already successful in another organization.
4. Are We Reaching the Right Candidates?
Determine whether the recruiting strategy extends beyond job postings and active applicants.
Consider whether candidates from adjacent industries or less conventional career paths should be included.
5. Are We Making It Too Difficult to Hire Someone?
Review how candidates move through the interview and selection process.
Look for unnecessary delays, inconsistent evaluation criteria, and disagreements among decision-makers.
Make sure qualified candidates receive timely feedback and that the organization is prepared to act when it finds the right person.
Finding the Right Leader May Require a Different Approach
An unsuccessful leadership search doesn’t necessarily mean the right candidate isn’t available.
The problem may be overly restrictive requirements, an opportunity that isn’t competitive, a search that isn’t reaching the right people, or a hiring process that makes it difficult to reach a decision.
Before investing additional time in the same approach, examine what’s preventing the search from moving forward.
Sometimes the solution is to expand the candidate pool. Sometimes it’s to reconsider someone who was previously eliminated. And sometimes it’s to recognize that the organization needs to change how it defines and evaluates leadership talent.
The right leadership candidate may not be the person you originally envisioned. But that person still needs to have the experience, judgment, and ability to deliver what your organization needs.
Continue Learning
Explore our core guides to leadership recruiting, the search process, and choosing the right recruiting partner.
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