The hiring process should be a well-oiled machine—strategic, decisive, and efficient. Instead, for many organizations, it’s a black hole—a slow, painful process that drags on for months, swallowing productivity, draining morale, and costing you top talent.
This is especially true for executive and leadership roles, where delays in hiring don’t just inconvenience your team; they cripple your business.
- Decisions stall.
- Key initiatives lose momentum.
- Competitors seize opportunities while you hesitate.
Why does this happen? Because internal recruiters have no real competition. No urgency. No external pressure. And in many cases, no accountability for the opportunity cost of a drawn-out hiring process.
The result? Unfilled roles weaken your business while your competitors pull ahead.
If you’re tired of waiting, it’s time to demand urgency, set clear expectations, and take control of the hiring timeline. Because speed wins—and the best leaders don’t wait.
Why Internal Hiring Teams Move So Slowly
Most internal recruiters aren’t slow because they’re incompetent—they’re slow because they are overwhelmed
Here’s why:
✅ Process Over Outcomes: Many internal hiring teams are bogged down by bureaucratic processes and policies that prioritize compliance over speed.
✅ Lack of Impact: They don’t feel the direct impact of an unfilled role the way executives and teams do. It’s your business that suffers, not theirs.
✅ Misaligned Priorities: Internal teams often juggle multiple roles across different departments. They’re not laser-focused on your highest-priority executive search the way an external specialist would be.
Simply put—without external pressure or clear accountability, there’s no real urgency to move faster. And that’s a problem.
Breaking Free from the Hiring Black Hole
If you want faster hiring and better talent, you need to rethink how you approach executive recruitment.
Here’s how to take back control of the hiring timeline:
- Set Non-Negotiable Hiring Deadlines
Stop treating hiring as an open-ended process. Treat it like any mission-critical business initiative—with clear deadlines and measurable progress.
- Define a strict timeline for each stage of the process.
- Hold internal teams accountable for meeting those deadlines.
- Measure time-to-hire and track it like a key business metric.
Speed is a competitive advantage. Use it.
- Stop Overcomplicating the Process
Many companies get stuck in analysis paralysis, dragging out hiring decisions with endless rounds of interviews, assessments, and internal debates.
🚨 Reality check: If you need 10+ interviews to decide on a leader, your hiring process is broken.
Instead, streamline it:
- Keep the process concise but effective (3-5 interviews max).
- Set clear decision-making criteria upfront.
- Empower hiring managers to make final decisions quickly.
Great talent moves fast. Your hiring process should too.
- Bring in External Experts Who Deliver Faster Results
If your internal teams can’t move fast enough, outsource executive hiring to specialists who can.
External recruiters have skin in the game. Their success depends on delivering results—fast.
Unlike internal teams, they:
✅ Move with urgency—because their reputation depends on it.
✅ Have deep networks of top executive talent.
✅ Are laser-focused on filling your role—without internal distractions.
When speed matters, bringing in external experts isn’t just an option—it’s a competitive necessity.
- Make Hiring a Priority at the Executive Level
Recruiting isn’t just an HR function—it’s a business-critical strategy.
CEOs, COOs, and department heads should be actively involved in ensuring leadership roles are filled quickly and effectively.
- Hold hiring teams accountable.
- Remove internal bottlenecks.
- Treat hiring delays like missed revenue targets—because that’s exactly what they are.
When leadership prioritizes hiring speed, the entire company follows suit.
