A niche identity-governance role, open a year, closed in thirty days.
Two firms and a year in, we had half-decided the person did not exist. Recruise found them in a month. It was never a volume problem.
The outcome, in numbers.
The situation
Some roles quietly become “impossible”. This was one: a SailPoint IdentityIQ developer the client had been hunting for more than twelve months, through two prior partners, with nothing to show for it. The skill is genuinely scarce, the pool is thin, and the fit had to be exact.
Volume sourcing had already failed twice. Throwing more profiles at the role was never going to change the outcome — the problem needed to be understood before it could be filled.
What we did
We treated it as a consulting problem, not a requisition to blast. We broke the role down to its real requirements, ran a demand-supply analysis on the specific skill in the market, and mapped where that talent actually sat rather than who happened to be applying.
Candidates were assessed on technical depth and business fit together, which moved the search from volume to precision — a small, right shortlist instead of a large, wrong one.
- 01 A role breakdown against the real technical and business requirements.
- 02 A demand-supply analysis of the specific identity-governance skill in-market.
- 03 Precision mapping of the hidden pool, by capability rather than job title.
- 04 A shortlist screened for technical depth and business fit together.
The outcome
The role that had stayed open for more than twelve months closed in thirty days, with a candidate who fit on both the technical bar and the business context.
The engagement made the wider point for the client: the profile they had been told did not exist did exist. It had just needed to be found by insight rather than volume.
If a case like this looks like your problem, that's usually a sign.
Send us a brief or just describe what you're dealing with. We'll come back with one observation — even if we don't end up working together.