A specialist manufacturer had been bought by a much larger group, and the new owners wanted something the business had never really needed before. Someone to go out and sell.

For years the work had come to them. Enquiries arrived, the team handled them well, and nobody had to go hunting.

Then the owners changed.

There was spare capacity in the factory, targets to hit, and a plan to take existing products into markets nobody there had ever approached. None of that happens on inbound enquiries.

Three problems stacked on top of each other

First, the brief. They wanted specific customer experience and specific product experience, not a general technical seller.

Fair enough.

But every extra requirement shrinks the pool, and this pool was small to start with.

Second, the location. The office isn't near any large town or city, and plenty of otherwise excellent people simply won't take a job with that commute.

Third, the number of people with a say. Stakeholders across several European sites all wanted a view on who got hired. Reasonable enough, but it means a candidate has to satisfy more than one person's idea of the right hire.

What we tried, including what didn't work

We came at it three ways. An advert, a proper search of our own database, and some targeted approaches to people working for competitors.

The headhunting let us down, which surprised us, because it usually works on a brief this tight. What happened is what often happens when you tap someone on the shoulder who wasn't looking. They know they're wanted, so the money they'll move for goes up. The numbers came back well above where the role sat and there was no sensible way to close the gap.

So the advert had to do the work. The first version didn't land. Neither did the second.

We rewrote it three times. Each rewrite changed what we led with, based on who the previous version had actually pulled in rather than on a hunch. The third one brought in three decent applications and we put all three forward.

The awkward bit at the end

Only one of them made it to final interview.

The client had wanted a comparison at that stage, which is fair. Nobody enjoys making a hiring decision with a sample size of one. There was a real conversation about whether to hold out and see who else turned up.

What settled it was the cost of waiting. Good candidates don't sit still. Holding on for a second name would most likely have meant losing the first one, and then starting again with a fourth advert. They made the call and hired him.

The whole thing ran to about two months. Longer than our average, and we'd rather it hadn't been. But they were after an unusual combination, and two months looking for something unusual isn't the same as two months of nothing happening.

Why a specialist mattered

Two things, really.

One was understanding the product. Knowing what they actually make, and where else that capability gets used, tells you which industries to fish in. It also tells you which products elsewhere in the market do a similar job, so you know whose salespeople are worth talking to even though they've never sold this exact thing. Without that you're guessing, and a guess gets you a longlist of people whose CVs happen to say the right words.

The other was stubbornness. The temptation on a role like this is to run the process once and, when it doesn't land, reach for a reason. The brief, the salary, the location. All three are easy things to say, and all three have the advantage of not being your fault. Rewriting the advert a third time is unglamorous work and nobody thanks you for it. It's also where this job was won.

If you've got a sales role that hasn't responded to advertising, the advert is usually worth another look before the salary is.

Sitting on one? Have a word with us and we'll tell you what we'd change first.