The problem is not finding candidates: why hiring fails before the search

 When a hire goes wrong, the leadership conversation almost always starts in the same place: we couldn't find the right profile, the market is tight, there aren't enough candidates. It is a comfortable explanation, because it puts the problem outside. And it is almost never the real one.

 A Leadership IQ study of 5,247 hiring managers found something uncomfortable: 89% of hires that fail do so because of attitude and fit, not technical competence. Only 11% fail for lack of skills. In other words, in the vast majority of cases you found someone capable, and it still went wrong.

 That breaks the usual frame. If the failure is not in the skill, it is not in the search. It is upstream.

The failure lives upstream

 Hiring badly is rarely a sourcing problem. It is a clarity problem. Before opening a process, the organization has to answer two questions that seem obvious and almost never truly are: who exactly do we need, and what for.

 Not the job title. The real problem that person has to solve, the decisions they will make, how their success will be measured at twelve months, what has to be non-negotiable and what is trainable. When those answers do not exist, the process starts anyway, but it searches blind. You optimize the speed of a search whose destination no one defined. And yes, you find candidates. Plenty of them. The problem is that none of them answers a question you never asked.

Why it repeats

 Sourcing is visible and clarity is not. A slow process is seen, measured, blamed. Missing definition shows up on no dashboard until the person is already inside and not working. By then the cost is paid, and the market takes the blame again.

 The result is an expensive loop: define poorly, search well, hire fast, fail late, repeat. Every turn costs time, money, and the credibility of the function in front of the business.

Where to look

 The useful question is not how we find more candidates. It is where our process breaks before the search even begins. That answer is not in the market. It is inside, and it can be diagnosed.