A few months ago, we were ready to begin work on a Senior Marketing Manager position where the HM initially insisted that he required a candidate that had their MBA from one of the top five business schools and had worked at one of the top three companies in our industry.  Rather than just going off and searching for this proverbial ‘needle in a haystack’, we decided to have a detailed discussion with this HM regarding his actual position requirements and also gave him our frank assessment that his schooling and company requirements would severely limit his candidate pool and would certainly exclude some very well qualified candidates.  Although he was still reluctant, he finally agreed to interview candidates that met his position’s qualifications but did not necessarily come from his list of schools and companies.

I’m sure you can guess how this story ends..six weeks later the HM hired a candidate that had neither come from one of his top five schools nor had worked for one of his top three companies.

Sometimes an upfront discussion regarding the HM’s true requirement priorities and a candid evaluation of the ramifications of certain limiting requirements can be a huge determining factor in the subsequent success of a search.