The year we didn't hire anyone
Nobody remembers cutting the trainees in 2009. Ten years on, it is who is missing from every senior shortlist. The long read on downturns and the people we never hired.
Thoughts · How hiring works
How hiring decisions really get made.
What sways a panel, what a CV is actually for, and where senior appointments come apart.
External hires aren't braver. They're just easier to justify.
Boards go outside for a director role far more often than the market justifies. It usually isn't because the external candidate is better. It's because promoting from within means someone has to explain, out loud, why the internal favourite lost.
The hiring decision is usually made by minute five
Panels believe they are weighing the whole interview. Most have already decided, and spend the rest of the hour confirming it.
The CV is the wrong document
The CV rules senior candidates out well and rules them in badly. Three calls in one week showed why executive search should be built on evidence, not employers.
You spent six months hiring them and six days landing them.
Boards run immaculate six-month searches and then abandon the hire on day one. Senior placements rarely fail on capability. They fail on the landing, and almost nobody resources it.
I have never been taken through a bad reference. That should worry you.
Reference checks at senior level have become a ritual that confirms decisions instead of testing them. Here is how to take one properly.
A counter-offer is the cheapest way to keep you, not the best reason to stay
When your resignation lands, money appears fast. The thing that made you look in the first place almost never moves at the same speed.
The best people in UK construction are rarely looking
They are heads down delivering a major programme, trusted by their board, and not scrolling job boards on a Tuesday night.