If you are struggling to recruit, try reframing what you think “good” looks like in a candidate.

“Wrong sector experience”

While you might reject on the grounds of wrong functional experience, approach or process, if you reject purely on the grounds of sector, you don’t know your own vacancy well enough.

If the skills set and context is right, and unless there are specific compliance requirements, isn't everything else learnable?

“Overqualified: flight risk, threat to management.”

How can you make use of those additional qualifications; how can you sustain their interest? Why is it a threat - can't we benefit from hiring people that are more skilled than us?

“Part-time won’t work: the job won’t get done”

Why not? There’s a huge candidate pool that aren’t able to commit to a 9 to 5. You’ve already seen that some roles can be fulfilled from home. Why not consider people with other time commitments or look at job shares?

“Liked her but not enough experience”

If you’ve been recruiting for 6 to 12 months, how much might that inexperienced person have learnt in that time?

What might that look like compared to someone that does have the experience, but brings a toxic approach?

Of course, these might still be legitimate reasons for a “no”, yet the common link between these and other typical rejections is assumption.

And we all know what “assume” means.

It means you should be asking better questions.