Your next great hire may have the wrong job title

A role stays open. The shortlist is disappointing. The natural response is to search harder: more channels, more recruiters, more candidates.

But there is another question worth asking: would your current criteria recognise a capable person from an unexpected background?

Consider a hypothetical operations role. The job description asks for three years in the same industry and experience with a particular system. Yet the difficult work involves investigating exceptions, recognising when to escalate, and explaining decisions clearly.

Industry knowledge may matter. Familiarity with the system may save training time. But neither automatically demonstrates those capabilities.

Someone in insurance claims, logistics or customer complaints might have relevant experience—even if their CV never uses your preferred job title.

Separate what is essential from what is familiar

For one hard-to-fill role, divide your criteria into three groups:

• Needed from day one: capabilities or qualifications required to do the work safely and effectively.
• Learnable after joining: knowledge and tools that a realistic onboarding programme can teach.
• Assumed to matter: requirements whose connection to performance you have not established.

The third group deserves scrutiny. Ask hiring managers for concrete examples: when did this requirement make a difference to someone’s performance?

Then consider where else people might have developed the essential capabilities.

A broader search needs a clear standard

Opening the search to different backgrounds still requires evidence.

Structured interviews offer one practical starting point: candidates answer predetermined questions and their responses are assessed against common standards. The US Office of Personnel Management describes this approach in its guidance on structured interviews.

The opportunity is to broaden who gets considered while keeping the standard for the work clear.

At Pontiq, our starting question is: what must this person be able to do, and where else could they have learned to do it?