You're hiring and you can't afford for it to take this long.

An open seat in a dense team isn't a vacancy. It's a weight-bearing wall that's missing.

In a leaner org there's no slack to absorb it. The work doesn't get redistributed. It just doesn't get done, or the people closest to it break trying. And when they break, they leave. Now you're not filling one role. You're in a spiral.

Hiring is broken and everyone knows it

AI has broken the hiring signal on both sides simultaneously and most companies are still running a process designed for a different environment.

The resume pile is nearly unreadable. Every application looks polished. The signal that used to separate strong candidates from weak ones has been buried under a uniform layer of generated content, while genuine candidates get lost in mass autorejections. The interview process is being gamed in ways that weren't possible two years ago: AI-assisted responses, candidates presenting credentials that don't survive first contact with the actual job, founders who ran a thorough process and still ended up with someone who couldn't perform the role.

Running the same process into this environment produces the same slow, expensive, unreliable results. Just with more applications to sort through.

What actually helps

There's no perfect solution to an arms race. But there's a meaningful difference between a hiring process designed to generate real signal and one that isn't designed at all.

Skills-based evaluation tests actual capability rather than self-reported competence. Interview architecture that goes beyond conversation into observable work surfaces what a polished application can't fake. Role definition clear enough that the right candidates self-select in before they reach your desk reduces the volume problem before it starts. None of this is immune to gaming, but it's considerably more resistant than unstructured interviews and gut feel.

The process will need to keep evolving as the environment does. What matters now is building something intentional enough to adapt, rather than running the same broken process and expecting different results. And underneath all of it, a system that doesn't require the founder to be the bottleneck in every decision. People don't scale. Systems do.

What this looks like in practice

A build sprint produces a hiring system designed for the current environment: role definition, candidate screening architecture, skills-based interview design, and structured evaluation tools that generate real signal regardless of how polished the application looks.

For founders who want hands-on support through an active search, embedded fractional HR means I'm in the process alongside you, helping identify the genuine candidates from the generated ones and keeping the decision honest.

What I bring to this

I've built hiring infrastructure across more than 125 organisations. I understand what the current environment is doing to the hiring signal and I know how to build something more resistant to it. What that looks like depends on the role and the market you're hiring in. This isn't template work.

If your hiring is taking too long and costing you more than it should, that's the conversation to have before the next role opens.