Why Do Hiring Managers Keep Moving the Goalposts?

You think you are bad at judging candidates. You are not. A manager rejected one person as 'too junior.' Then rejected the next as 'too senior.' That is not your failure of judgment. That is a mind that has not been made up yet. Here is the truth you may not want to hear. The job description was never finished. 'What we're looking for' gets written after each interview, not before it. You are chasing a target that moves, because no one has agreed to fix it in place. This is fixable. Not by reading people better — you already do that well. Fix it by refusing to run another search until the criteria are named, ranked, and written down for everyone to see.

◆ How this problem reads on the two dials

GuidanceKnowledge

More coaching

Some to learn

1:1 with AureliusWith others (a Pod)

Mostly you & the coach

A little with peers

The insight — this is a process problem, not a people problem — is short to teach; the real work is building and enforcing a written process, which is coaching.

How the two dials adapt to you →

What’s really going on

The candidates are not your problem. A hiring manager who cannot name what they want before they see it — that is your problem. You cannot read minds that have not made themselves up. Stop searching until the criteria are written down and agreed to. That is within your power; their indecision is not.

🔒 What you’ll build togetherUnlock by starting

A moveBefore you open a role again, make the hiring manager rank three must-haves in writing. Do not search until they do.

A moveAfter every rejection, ask them directly: 'What changed since we agreed on the criteria?' Write down the answer and send it back to them.

A moveBuild one scorecard per role. Score every candidate against the same written criteria — no gut feel added after the fact.

A moveWhen criteria shift twice in one search, stop and say it out loud: 'We do not actually know what we're looking for yet.'

A moveTrack how many times the criteria changed per hire. Bring that number to your own manager, not your frustration.

What changes unlock by starting

Fewer wasted searches and interviews that go nowhere.
A written record showing the pattern was never about your judgment.
Hiring managers forced to decide before they meet people, not after.
Less self-doubt about your ability to read candidates well.

One object, two jobs: a public answer to a real problem, and — the moment you start the chat — Aurelius’s live plan for your version of it.