#HiringManagers #JobSearch #TechCareers #M365Engineer
Hey there, hiring managers! 👋 Have you ever found yourself in that tricky situation where you’re on the lookout for your ideal candidate, perhaps even a "unicorn," but the search is stretching on for months? Or do you eventually decide to settle for a "good enough" option just to fill the position? 🤔
I recently had an experience that got me pondering this. I went for an interview about 1-2 months ago for a System Engineer/M365 Engineer role that had a laundry list of required skills:
- ADFS
- GPO
- File Server
- DFS
- DNS
- Azure Migration
- M365
- MgGraph
- Conditional Access
- SSO
You get the gist—this was a tall order! Honestly, I didn’t have high hopes, and after I heard back that I wasn’t being considered anymore, it left me wondering.
So, here are my thoughts:
- Unicorn vs. Good Enough: Are hiring managers truly patient enough to wait for that perfect fit?
- Time Investment: How much time is too much while searching for that elusive candidate?
- Realistic Expectations: Should job descriptions be more aligned with what candidates can realistically offer?
💡 Let’s chat: What has your experience been like? Have you waited for the perfect candidate or made a decision because the position needed to be filled? Please share your stories or any tips that could help others in the same boat!
It’s really interesting to see how different organizations handle their hiring strategies. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Varies.
For Sr Roles, I’m pretty fucking picky.
Jr, good enough is good enough, its really about personality.
Depends on what role. For any senior, and especially leadership role, the wrong person could be worse than no person so I’m willing to wait. For tech jobs, I’ll take anyone who has a good personality and seems trainable.
I’m not a hiring manager, but I have an opinion.
Nowadays, it seems there are so many candidates out there that employers can get their unicorn candidates and not even have to wait too much.
I’ve been in so many interview processes and made it to final rounds where I have 90% of the requirements/qualifications, just to get a rejection email. So my only guess is they found someone who met 100% of the requirements, or were even closer to that than me.
That’s not a unicorn, although if they were looking for someone to do all that for 60k, that job would indeed go for months without being filled.
Hire slow, fire fast. It’s a popular mantra for a reason. Getting the wrong person in your org can be a fucking disaster. Everyone is going to have a different idea of who the right person is.
Unicorns rarely exists. I wouldn’t say I go for “good enough” but I absolutely settle for “almost there and can get there with some time”. Also large companies often have hiring windows so if you don’t hire fast enough you can lose the position.
Not a hiring manager but I’ve seen jobs that I’d fit in perfectly and they’ve declined me, I accidenatly apply for the exact same job 6 months later and get the error message “sorry you’ve already applied for this job” this hasn’t happened once or twice it’s happened about 10-15 times over around 100 applications so I’m guessing most of them either wait or just don’t want to fill the position due to budget reasons but then again don’t want decline anyone because they’ll lose their budget. pretty fuckint stupid how it works imo.
I settled when I was in that role, because I had a limited budget all the time, and I couldn’t afford the unicorn.
I ended up hiring one on accident, (he had a masters in biochemistry working on his PHD, and got bored and wanted to be in IT. A legit genius, hard worker, friendly and humble) but the rest of the time I settled.
I wait until I find the best fit. Good enough at my work doesn’t really work. I don’t need them to know everything but I need them to have initiative and willingness to learn. My upper level guys are for sure unicorns but I’ll take an A tier if I can’t find a S tier. I do not really go below that level though.