The role needs ten years’ experience. Six of the eight tasks need none.

Vacancies that stay open for months are often not hard to fill: they are badly specified, and the specification is a record of how work accumulated rather than a description of a job.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The role needs ten years’ experience. Six of the eight tasks need none.

A role has been open for five months. The spec asks for a decade of sector experience, commercial judgement, technical depth, client-facing polish and a willingness to handle the administration that comes with it. Everyone agrees the person is hard to find. Fewer people ask whether the person exists. Specs like this are rarely designed. They are usually transcribed, from the person who left, or from the calendar of the person currently drowning. What gets written down is the accumulated residue of who happened to be available when each new…

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