🔭 When Employers Don’t Know What They’re Looking For…

We continue exploring situations where hiring managers ask recruiters or agencies to “keep looking” for candidates.

There are various reasons for such a request: uncertainty about the role or the desire to find a “superstar” (who may not exist at all).

Today, let’s talk about cases where the employer has an unclear vision of the candidate they need, leading to a search without concrete criteria.

😨 This can damage a company’s HR brand and increase expenses as hiring is costly.

Here’s how to identify the problem.

1️⃣ The company realizes they don’t need a new hire after all

This can happen when:

— The current employee is good enough compared to the external candidates.

— The existing team is covering the responsibilities of the new role.

💼 NEWHR case study. A client wanted to fill several roles, including a digital marketer and an SMM specialist.

“During the briefing, it turned out they didn’t actually need one [SMM specialist], as another position was already covering those tasks”,

says Ekaterina Veselkina, IT recruitment lead at NEWHR.

Some companies have positions that remain open for years, yet the business continues to develop without anyone in those roles.

On the market, these positions can become running jokes, and relevant candidates eventually stop considering them seriously. For the employer, this isn’t funny — it’s a risk to their HR brand.

2️⃣ The hiring manager says: “I can’t choose a candidate” / “I don’t know who we need”

This suggests that the manager is operating on intuition, with no clear selection criteria. With this approach, the candidate search could go on indefinitely and still lead to no hire (only expenses).

In such cases, the request to “keep looking” signals the need to first clarify hiring goals, create a well-defined job description, and outline the role’s business value.

It can help to conduct team meetings and brainstorming sessions about the position, draft a detailed brief, and consult with experts.

💙 NEWHR Recruiting can help you find tech talent at any level to suit your business needs. To reach out, fill out the form on our website or email us at contact@new.hr