You’ve been searching for months. You’ve read hundreds of resumes, sat through countless interviews, and you’re still no closer to a signed offer letter than you were when the role first opened. You officially have a stalled search on your hands. It’s easy to blame the market, the talent pool, or your recruiter.

But sometimes the search stalls because of decisions you’re making, not because the right candidate doesn’t exist.

Here are the signs you might be sabotaging your own sales recruiting efforts, and how to fix it before it costs you another quarter.

1. The Position Has Been Open for More Than Six Months

Six months is a long time. You could move across the country and make new friends in that stretch. You could close a $100K deal. There’s a decent chance you’ve celebrated a birthday and taken a vacation since this search started.

So why haven’t you hired anyone?

We had a client who spent six months nitpicking candidates. One showed up one minute late to the office, and that was enough for him to say no on the spot, he told the candidate to leave. He spent the next year recruiting for that same role and eventually got fired over it.

In that same window, we had another client who took a different approach. He’d note the gaps in a candidate’s background and hire them anyway. He kept his standards high, but he wasn’t dead set on all-or-nothing hiring, and it gave him a real advantage. His team became diverse, high-producing, and creative. His reps stuck around, and he rarely had an opening after the first year, because his people didn’t leave.

If your answer for why the role’s still open is that you haven’t found a candidate with the right skills, you might be overthinking your next sales hire. It’s important to hire for the primary skills the role needs, but you’re rarely going to get every skill and attribute on your wishlist. Depending on your company, your compensation, and your recruiting reach, you may need to settle for 80% of what you originally wanted, and that’s not always a bad trade. Sometimes the perfect candidate isn’t actually the right hire.

2. You Keep Focusing on What Candidates Lack

Hiring people isn’t like hiring a robot. They come with personal lives, preferences, quirks, and personalities, all bundled together and impossible to separate from their skills.

We had a client who spent six months nitpicking candidates. One showed up a single minute late to the office, and that was enough for him to say no on the spot, he actually told the candidate to leave. He spent the next year recruiting for that same role and ended up getting fired himself.

In that same stretch, another client took a different approach. He noted the real gaps in a candidate’s background and hired them anyway. It didn’t mean he lowered his standards, he just wasn’t dead set on all-or-nothing hiring. He could see the imperfections without letting them stop him from moving forward.

That gave him a real advantage. His team turned out diverse, high-producing, and creative, with reps who stuck around and performed. After his first year, he rarely had openings on the team at all, because his reps didn’t leave.

Sound familiar? If you’ve ever met a candidate who could be perfect for the job, except:

→ You don’t love how much they talk sometimes.
→ They’re a little loud.
→ They overuse the phrase “you know.”

…you might be overthinking your next sales hire.

Depending on how targeted the talent pool is, you may not have many choices if you want to keep a narrow set of skills or domain expertise as the top priority. Some of the softer traits might need to be overlooked.