I was sure I knew what was wrong with my lawn.
We’ve fought weeds for years, and I’d decided it was a watering problem. I spent two summers treating it like one.
Then a new company sent me a report after their first treatment. Chinch bugs.
Not the thing I’d been solving at all. And I’ve watched companies do exactly this with hiring for twenty years.
The Three Reasons Companies Give Me First
When a client calls about a role that hasn’t filled, there’s almost always an explanation waiting for me before I’ve asked a single question.
It’s nearly always one of three:
- “The compensation expectations are unrealistic.”
- “There’s no talent out there.”
- “Nobody wants to work anymore.”
I want to be fair to all three, because sometimes they’re right.
Compensation genuinely is the problem when a company is sitting fifteen or twenty percent under market for a skill combination that maybe forty people in Alberta hold. That’s not a perception issue, that’s arithmetic, and no amount of better storytelling fixes it. If you haven’t looked hard at what your total compensation package actually offers beyond base salary, that’s a reasonable first place to look.
Talent scarcity is real too. There are searches where the pool genuinely is a few dozen people province-wide, most of them employed and content, and the honest answer is that this will take five months and there’s no clever way around it.
So I’m not dismissing any of it. What I’ve noticed is what happens when we test those explanations.
Why the Obvious Answer Is Usually the Comfortable One
Look at those three reasons again and notice what they have in common.
Not one of them is about a decision the company made.
The market is too expensive. The people don’t exist. The workforce has changed. Every one of those places the cause somewhere outside the building, which means the fix is either impossible or someone else’s job. There’s nothing to change internally, nothing to admit, no meeting where somebody says we got this part wrong.
That’s exactly why they arrive first. Not because people are lazy or dishonest, but because those are the explanations that don’t cost anything to hold.
Watering more was the same kind of answer for me. It cost nothing. It required no new information, no admission that I’d misread the situation for two summers, and no conversation with anyone who might know more than I did. It just happened to be wrong.
What We Actually Find When We Dig
Here’s what turns up instead. Some version of this accounts for the majority of stalled searches I’ve been brought into.
It’s often the title. A company is recruiting for a Process Engineer but the job as written is really a Reliability Engineer, or a Project Engineer with a heavy commissioning component. The people who’d be excellent at it are searching different words, so they never see the posting. The talent pool wasn’t small. It was just standing somewhere else.
It’s frequently requirement stacking. This is the one I see most in Calgary, particularly in finance and technical leadership roles. Three skill sets get written into one job description because three different people contributed to it, and the combination doesn’t exist in one person at the salary attached. Each requirement is reasonable on its own. Together they describe someone who isn’t out there.
Sometimes the process is losing people. Candidates are interested, they interview, and then two weeks pass with no word. I’ve had strong candidates take other offers during that silence, not because the other role was better, but because someone else made them feel wanted and this company made them feel like a file. The pipeline wasn’t empty. It leaked.
Sometimes it’s reputation, and this is the hardest one to raise. A company has a history in a small market. Someone left badly, a project went sideways, or a manager has a name among people who’ve worked for him. Nobody inside the building brings this up, because everyone inside the building already knows and has stopped noticing.
And sometimes the search is aimed at the wrong pool entirely. Looking for someone who has done this exact job in this exact industry, when the person who’d do it best is somewhere they wouldn’t have thought to look.
Is It the Title, or Is It the Job?
The two most common causes are worth separating, because one is cheap to fix and one isn’t.
Title mismatch is the cheap one. You change the words, the posting reaches different people, and the search restarts on better footing within a week. What surprises clients is how much difference this makes for how little effort. Clear, industry-standard job titles aren’t a branding exercise. They’re a findability question. If your title is clever, internal, or invented, the right people are not typing it into a search bar.
Requirement stacking is the expensive one, and not because it’s technically hard. It’s expensive because fixing it means somebody has to decide what you’ll live without:
- Which of these three things can this person learn in the first year?
- Which one can the team cover?
- Which one is genuinely non-negotiable?
That’s an uncomfortable meeting, and it’s why the requirement list often stays exactly as it is for another three months. But no search survives a job description that describes a person who doesn’t exist. You either find out now or you find out in November.
Worth checking too: what the posting communicates beyond its requirements. The language you use tells candidates a great deal about the environment they’d be walking into, often more than you intended.
How to Run the Diagnostic Yourself
You don’t need a recruiter to start this. Before you rewrite the posting or raise the salary, sit down and answer five questions honestly.
- How many people in Alberta plausibly hold this exact combination?
Not roughly. Actually think it through. If the number is under fifty, your timeline expectations need to change more than your compensation does. - What happened to the last three people who sat in this seat?
If they all left inside two years, the problem you’re solving isn’t recruitment. - Where in the process did candidates actually drop out?
Not “we didn’t get good applicants,” but specifically: how many applied, how many got a first conversation, how many reached a second interview, and where did the number fall off a cliff? The shape of that drop tells you almost everything. - Who else is hiring this same profile right now, and what are they offering?
In a market this size you’re usually competing with three or four companies for the same short list, and they know it even if you don’t. - What does this posting look like to someone outside your industry?
Give it to someone outside your company and ask them what the job is. If they can’t tell you, neither can a candidate.
Catch It Before You See the Damage
The part of the chinch bug conversation that stuck with me was the timing. July and August is when they show up. Treat them then and it’s a treatment plan. Wait until the lawn browns and you’re paying to kill the bugs and repair the damage, which is a bigger job and a longer one.
Hiring works the same way, and companies almost never treat it that way.
Diagnosing a stalled search at week two costs you a conversation and a rewritten posting. Diagnosing it at month four costs you the four months, plus the restart, plus the candidates who are no longer available, plus whatever the vacancy did to the team covering the work. A restarted search burns the calendar twice, and the second run is harder, because the good people in a small market have already seen this posting once and decided against it.
Worth being clear that a slow search and a broken search aren’t the same thing. Some roles legitimately take five or six months with nothing wrong in the process; I’ve written about what a realistic timeline looks like for a specialized search. The signal isn’t elapsed time. It’s whether the shape of what’s happening matches what you’d expect:
- Nobody applying at all points at the posting or the title.
- Lots of applicants, none qualified points at the description.
- Strong candidates who reach the final stage and decline points at compensation, the process, or the company itself.
Three different patterns, three different causes. Treating them as one problem called “we can’t hire” is how companies end up watering a lawn that has bugs in it.
Why the Diagnosis Is the Part I Enjoy Most
People assume the interesting part of recruitment is finding candidates. Some days it is. But the part I actually look forward to is the first real conversation with a client about why something isn’t working, the one where we stop trading assumptions and start looking at what’s in front of us.
That conversation is where searches get won. Everything after it is execution.
My lawn didn’t need more water. It needed someone to look at it properly and tell me what was actually there. I’d been solving a problem I didn’t have, confidently, for two summers, and I’d have kept going indefinitely if somebody hadn’t handed me a report.
Most hiring problems are the same. The answer isn’t hiding. Nobody’s looked at it yet.
Ready for a Different Conversation?
If you’ve got a role that hasn’t filled and you’re fairly sure you know why, that’s exactly when a second opinion is worth having. Sometimes the explanation you’re holding is the right one, and we’ll confirm it and get on with the search. Often it isn’t, and finding that out in week two rather than month four changes everything about how the rest of the year goes.
We recruit Process Engineers, Electrical Engineers, SAP and finance professionals, safety leaders, and project and contracts roles across Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatchewan. But the part that makes those searches work is usually the conversation before any of it starts.
If your lawn is brown, so to speak, get in touch. Let’s find out what’s actually going on before we start treating it.
Wrong Hiring Problem FAQs
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Why can’t we find qualified candidates for our open role?
Usually one of four things: the title doesn’t match how candidates search, the requirements describe a combination that doesn’t exist at your salary, the process is losing people between stages, or you’re aimed at the wrong pool. Genuine scarcity is real but less common than assumed. The way to tell them apart is to look at where candidates actually drop out. No applicants at all points at the posting or title. Plenty of applicants and none qualified points at the description. Strong candidates who reach the end and decline points at compensation, the process, or the company.
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How do I know if our salary is actually the problem?
Look at where you lose people. If candidates decline before the first conversation, salary probably isn’t it, because they never got far enough to discuss it. If you’re losing people at offer stage, or candidates ask about range early and disappear, that’s a compensation signal. The other check is competitive: find out what two or three comparable Calgary companies are paying for the same profile right now. If you’re within range and still losing people, the money isn’t your problem.
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What does it mean when a job posting gets lots of applicants but none are qualified?
Almost always that the posting is written broadly enough to attract everyone and specifically enough to describe no one. It’s a description problem, not an interest problem. High volume with low quality usually means the title is generic, the requirements are listed without weighting, or the posting reads as a wish list rather than a job. Being more specific reduces volume and raises quality, which feels counterintuitive until you’ve watched it work.
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How long should we wait before changing our hiring approach?
Check the shape at three to four weeks, not the outcome. You won’t have filled a specialized role by then and shouldn’t expect to. What you should have is a pipeline with a recognizable pattern. If nobody has applied, or if every person you’ve spoken to has been wrong in the same way, that’s diagnostic information worth acting on immediately. Waiting until month three to admit something isn’t working costs you the whole quarter.
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Should we lower our requirements or raise the salary?
Neither, until you know which one is binding. Those are two different problems with two different costs, and companies often change the cheaper one first and are then surprised when nothing improves. Work out what’s actually stopping the search, then decide. Frequently the answer is a third option that costs far less than either: change the title, fix the interview timeline, or widen the industries you’ll consider.