The Perfect Candidate

I have come to determine that there is no such thing as the perfect candidate. There will be some compromises made. It might be salary, it might be experience or it might be location. In this market we are seeing positions that are impossible to fill due to one requirement or another. This seems to happen when a position is either newly created, or, the incumbent has retired and the company seeks to refill the position without realizing that there really isn't another one just like them.

Many of these survivors of the various corporate ups and downs that perpetuated in the latter baby boom era, did so because they adapted. They took on roles that were previously held by someone who got the pink slip. One person may well have been doing the function that was previously done by three people or at least should have been. The net result is that this person was not replaceable when he left. There really was no one out there who had all of his skills or experiences. Your competitors may well have multiple people doing various parts of this role but not the whole thing. This is going to force hiring managers to look to compromise. They are going to have to decide which attributes are most important and realize that they may have to accept most but not all of what they were looking for. If you are a hiring manager suffering this frustration, I ask you to revisit the requirements you looked for, then decide what you need most. This may help ease the crunch. There are good people out there, but it took decades to create the last guy or girl, and it may well take some time to grow the next one.