Push Hiring Makes Its Own Market

3 min read

The hiring market moves people when they need to leave, not when they want to.

A working market moves things to where they are worth most. The hiring market, for roles where who fills the seat changes what the role delivers, mostly does not. People move when something pushes them out, not when something better exists. I have watched it work this way for thirty years, including the years running internal talent teams, and the pattern has not changed.

The price is not posted

In a working market, what is on offer says what it is. Most job descriptions do not. They say what the role requires, describe the person wanted, and ask the reader whether they qualify. What the role offers is disclosed late, near the offer, if at all: what they would own, who they would report to, where the seat leads, the band.

Two groups read the same posting and ask different questions. The willing ask whether they qualify, and the posting answers them. High performers with options ask whether the juice is worth the squeeze, and the posting never says what the juice is. People who cannot price a move do not make one. They stay where they are.

The cost of entering

Suppose they reply anyway. A posting that gives neither side enough to judge fit leaves the interview to do that work, and the interview does it as an audition. The willing agree to it, because an exit is worth the same whatever the job turns out to be. High performers with options are being asked to set down their career equity and re-prove themselves for a role nobody has described. Many decline. The market loses them twice: at the posting, then at the invitation to interview.

The market clears on need

So movement happens when people are pushed. High performers with options move later, when a restructure, a new manager or a role that has stopped growing pushes them. They arrive as push candidates, asking the question the posting asked. Nobody became a worse candidate. A push was the only thing that moved them, because nothing else was offered.

Matches that would have suited both sides are never made, because one side never described itself. The people best placed to fill a role are, at any moment, mostly employed and not looking. The market only sees the ones who have to move.

The second loop

Companies bring in recruiters to reach the people the posting does not: employed, not looking, not reading job boards. The recruiter writes the outreach from the posting, because the posting is all they have been given. It arrives shorter and asks the same question. High performers with options give it the same answer they would have given the posting, and the replies come from the willing again. The recruiter’s pipeline now agrees with the company’s, and two sources that agree look like confirmation. The loop has run twice, and each run is presented as proof of the other.

The loop

Push postings reach the people who need to leave. They apply. Their applications look like the market. The next posting is written for that market.

It is a causal loop. Each turn produces the evidence for the next. Applications arrive, interviews fill, roles close. Every number the process reports is a count of the willing, and it reads as proof the process works. The people who read the posting and stayed left no record, so nothing in the report argues for a different posting.

When most hiring runs on push, most movement is pushed movement. High performers with options learn that looking for a job means auditioning for a role nobody has described, so they wait until they have to. Hiring teams see a market of people who need to leave and conclude that this is the market.

One posting

Breaking the loop does not need the market to change. It needs one posting that answers the other question: what the role offers, what they would own, where it goes next, the band. It is read by the same people as every other posting. The difference is that it gives the ones who were not leaving a reason to reply.