A client asked me for a favour - to give some advice to one of his suppliers about a key vacancy. Could I spend half an hour giving them a steer and please no hard sell?

I spoke with the CEO the next day. They felt they had a reasonable view on their CxO requirement, having done initial research on the market. My call with him was to share an impartial view on whether they were taking the right approach, which was timely considering an agency briefing they had had that morning.

I started with some pointers around different recruitment approaches, and what level of advice and support he should expect, recommending he avoid an overly transactional supplier, which might be indicated by them saying ‘great role, we’ll send 5 CVs by Friday’.

He laughed given this proved exactly what was said by the agency an hour earlier, on accepting the job description as it stood.

I highlighted one problem with their statement - in not asking the right questions first to establish the context and their specific needs, those five CVs might end up being for the wrong vacancy. With assumption comes the prospect of setting off down the wrong path.

Not ideal for a role that might shape the future of their company.

To get it right first time, start with the right first principles – everything flows from there.

We put their job description to one side and discussed in detail the objective of the role, how it would progress over time, how it fit in with the leadership team, their culture, and what good should look like in a candidate.

Which wasn’t the role described in their documentation, compiled from publicly available information relating to a job title that didn’t reflect their needs, but was understandably a closest fit from the traditional job titles available. It’s hard to know what you don’t know.

My recommendation was that they needed to get their documentation right first, with clarity on their needs before talking to agency suppliers.

A first principle that proves critical so often, thinking on all those problem vacancies whose documentation were the crux of their problem, yet weren’t so problematic after all once we nailed it down.

“Is that something you can do for us?”

Yes, it was. I rewrote the job description, with a new title, filled in the gaps with my own report, and got the right person on board through a multichannel approach within 4 weeks.

No hard sell, a good partnership, but no CVs by Friday.