Shifting Job Description Requirements

A moving target restarts your search every time. The candidates you already found were right for a job that no longer exists.

Your pipeline shrinks with every new requirement, and the people you’ve already talked to start to lose interest.

And the client starts to wonder whether you understand the role, when the role is the thing that keeps moving.

When requirements change after every submission, it looks like the hiring manager can’t make up their mind. Usually they’re doing something else: working out what they want by reacting to real people.

The job description they signed off on was a list of skills and years. It never said what this person has to get done, so there was nothing firm to hold the search to.

Each candidate you send shows them something they didn’t know they cared about. A gap becomes a new must-have. A strength becomes the new bar.

The job was never defined before the search started, so it’s getting defined now, one submission at a time.

• New requirements show up only after the hiring manager has seen a candidate.
• The added requirements were never in the job description.
• The hiring manager describes the ideal candidate differently each time you talk.
• Candidates they liked earlier would now be ruled out by the new requirements.
• Other people in the process ask for things the hiring manager never mentioned.

• The business really changed. A reorganization, a new strategy, or a budget change moved what the role needs to do.
• A new decision-maker joined. Someone with different priorities now has a say in the hire.
• The market answered back. The candidates available made the original wish list look unrealistic, so the client is adjusting.