Hiring Isn’t That Hard. It’s Just Being Done Badly.

Most hiring problems aren’t about the lack of great candidates. They're about the lack of clarity, context, and commitment.

We’ve all heard the usual lines.

• “It’s a really tough hiring market.”

• “The right people just aren’t out there.”

• “No one wants to work anymore.”

These statements have become go-to excuses. But when you look around, it’s clear that talent is out there. Qualified, capable, even quietly excited about the right opportunity. The problem is, many of them don’t make it past the first brush with the hiring process. They encounter disjointed comms, slow responses, vague briefs, and companies that don’t seem to know what they want. And so they quietly walk away.

Hiring well isn’t difficult. It requires:

1. Clarity on what you're hiring for,;

2. Structure around how you'll assess; and a

3. Basic level of commitment to move with purpose.

But somewhere along the way, that got lost. Instead, we now have processes built for internal convenience rather than candidate experience.

• The job spec is a wishlist.

• The timeline is "whenever someone has time."

• Feedback comes only after nudging.

And then we wonder why it's hard.

The issue isn’t the market. The issue is a lack of structure, ownership, and shared urgency. Somewhere along the way, we started treating hiring like an administrative task, not a strategic function. The fundamentals haven’t changed, we’ve just stopped following them. And then we wonder why it’s not working.

---

---

The Job Description: Where Precision Goes to Die

There was a time when job descriptions were built through conversation. Recruiters and hiring managers would sit down together and ask the questions that actually mattered.

• What does this role exist to achieve?

• What outcomes are expected in the first year?

• Which skills are absolutely essential, and which can be developed on the job?

• What compromises are possible if the perfect candidate doesn't materialize?

That level of detail and negotiation led to job specs that reflected reality. They were grounded in the work that needed doing.

Today, the average job spec feels like it was written by a committee of hopeful optimists and then forgotten until someone needed it in a hurry. It’s common to see a laundry list of overlapping or contradictory requirements, framed by aspirational language that tells you everything except what the person will actually be doing. In some cases, the spec isn’t even for a real role. It’s a cut-and-paste job from a position someone hired for two years ago.

The issue isn't laziness. Hiring managers are busy. They're often laser-focused on their own domain and don’t have the wider context of what’s feasible in the current market. That’s not a criticism. It just means someone needs to bridge the gap. And that someone is (or was) the recruiter.

An experienced recruiter doesn’t just take an order. They guide the intake conversation, ask difficult questions, and push for clarity. They help shape a version of the role that can attract real candidates in real time. But when that part is skipped, when the spec is treated like an admin task rather than a strategic one, the damage is immediate.

The Interview Process: Velocity > Volume

Once a job spec is in place, the natural next step should be to move swiftly into interviews. That’s the theory, at least. The reality is often far less structured. CVs are submitted, and then everything stalls. Hiring managers disappear into packed calendars, feedback drips in days later, and interview slots remain unconfirmed until candidates have already lost interest or accepted offers elsewhere.

Most hiring teams want to hire well and quickly. But without a clear framework from the outset, even the best intentions are undercut by scheduling delays and decision paralysis. And in hiring, timing matters more than most people think.

Momentum is not a nice-to-have. It is the difference between hiring someone great and restarting a search. When a candidate is engaged early, they’re open, curious, and attentive. But attention is fragile. If the process stretches out too long or feels disjointed, their interest fades. Other conversations take priority. The moment is lost.

What’s often missing is a shared understanding of pace and ownership. Before any CVs go out, there should be a plan:

1. We’ll have 3 to 5 profiles by next Friday.

2. Interviews will happen the following week.

3. Feedback will come within two days of each stage.

These small agreements create rhythm. They set expectations and signal seriousness. To a candidate, it shows that the company is aligned and capable. To the internal team, it removes the ambiguity that slows everything down.

Ultimately, the strongest offers aren’t always the ones with the highest salary or the flashiest perks. The company that moves with confidence, clarity, and speed is the one that wins. Decisiveness earns trust.

The Market Isn’t Broken, But the Context Often Is

There’s a quiet assumption baked into many hiring processes: that hiring managers know what the talent market looks like. Not just for their role, but more broadly. What’s available, what’s realistic, what’s changing. That assumption rarely holds up.

Hiring managers are experts in their function. They know what great performance looks like inside their team. They can identify the gap that needs to be filled. But unless they’re recruiting constantly, they often don’t have a clear or current view of what the external talent market looks like. They may not know what competitors are offering, where demand is spiking, which skills are increasingly hard to find, or which adjacent industries are quietly producing the kind of talent they need.

And that’s fine. It’s not supposed to be their job. That’s where recruiters come in. Or rather, should come in. Market context used to be one of the core values a good recruiter brought to the table. They’d translate business need into market-aware strategy. They’d push back when expectations were unrealistic. They’d provide examples from real candidate conversations.

But in many cases now, that step is either skipped or neutered. Recruiters aren’t given the time, space or authority to challenge assumptions. The intake becomes passive: a job title, a few bullet points, and a "go find me someone" request. The result is a search guided by hope rather than external data.

What good looks like is grounded realism. It’s about setting expectations early, with examples and data. It’s saying, “You can absolutely get this person, but here’s what it will cost,” or, “You may need to compromise on X to get Y.”

Without context, hiring becomes an endless mismatch between desire and reality. And nobody wins that game.

The Feedback Loop: Where Good Candidates Go to Disappear

Even with a well-defined role and a properly structured interview process, hiring can still fall apart in the final and often most overlooked phase: feedback. This is the moment where candidate engagement is either reinforced or quietly eroded.

Feedback frequently arrives late, is overly vague, or disappears altogether. Sometimes it’s because no one wants to deliver bad news. Other times, internal alignment is missing and decisions stall. The impact, though, is always the same. Candidates begin to feel like they’re on the outside looking in. They question whether they were ever seriously considered or if their time was just part of a box-ticking exercise.

It’s easy to forget that feedback is one of the few signals candidates have about your company’s decision-making and culture. They’re not behind the scenes, so they only see what you show them. If that picture is unclear or inconsistent, it raises doubts. And for strong candidates, doubt is all it takes for them to walk away.

The fix is simple in theory but requires commitment:

1. Treat feedback like any other critical stage in the process.

2. Set expectations.

3. Create internal SLAs.

4. Make it a norm that feedback is shared within 24 to 48 hours. Stretching it to 72 is already pushing the limits.

Beyond that, you risk sending the message that urgency only applies when it’s convenient.

Candidates who don’t hear back quickly don’t wait around. They move on. They remember the experience and share it. For companies working hard to build a reputation for excellence, slow feedback can quietly undo it all.

Hiring is about trust, and trust is built in the details. Feedback is one of the most important of those.

Despite all the noise about talent shortages and market challenges, the truth is simpler: most hiring issues are not about talent at all. They are the result of unclear briefs, inconsistent processes, delayed feedback, and a lack of shared accountability between stakeholders. These are not unsolvable problems.

Hiring well requires doing the fundamentals with intent. That means:

1. Starting with a clear, realistic job brief.

2. Setting a timeline, sticking to it, and aligning everyone involved.

3. Giving candidates timely feedback and treating their time with respect.

4. Bringing real market data into the room so decisions are grounded,

This isn’t about rewriting hiring as we know it. It’s about tightening the basics. The companies that do this consistently make better hires. They move faster, they lose fewer candidates, and they build stronger teams.

Hiring isn’t hard. What’s hard is acknowledging that the breakdown usually starts from within. But the upside is just as clear. Once you fix the process, the outcomes improve. And they stay that way.

---

At StratEx - Indonesia Business Advisory we partner with companies to audit end-to-end talent acquisition processes. If you're interested in hiring more effectively, contact us for more info.