It’s perhaps the talent shortage we created ourselves. A cry is being heard through the halls of corporate boards, human resource managers, and management meetings: “We just can’t find good people.” We are, by any measure, faced with an unparalleled talent shortage. This is such a prevalent theme that we have come to accept it as a reality we can no longer avoid.
However, what if this scarcity is not something we are witnessing, but something we are actually manufacturing?
The issue, more often than not, is not one of talent but rather a failure of search criteria. We are not searching for human beings. We are on a hunt for “unicorns”, a mythical entity. This is what is known as “perfect candidate syndrome”, and most recruiters don’t know how to write a job description without making it into a wish list.
We all know this document. It is the one that demands an impossible combination of qualifications, experience, and skills. It seeks a senior-level strategist who is also an expert-level coder; a creative visionary who is also a meticulous data-entry specialist; or, in the classic example, 10 years of experience in a technology that has only existed for five.
This article argues that this “wish list” approach is not just a minor frustration but a profound strategic failure. It is mathematically flawed, financially damaging, and a significant barrier to diversity and inclusion.
Most critically, for any organisation dedicated to building a truly engaged workforce, it is a fundamental failure of the core principles that make a workplace thrive. It is an act of disengagement at the first point of contact.
The mission of Engage for Success is to encourage people and places to succeed; however, this is not what a job description like this does. This is what prevents a vast pool of qualified, capable, and outstanding individuals from pursuing a career, as it informs them that they will never meet the standards.
The Impossible Maths of the Perfect Candidate
These wish lists are typically created by hiring managers in hopes of finding the best, expecting that being more specific about what they want will lead to a better outcome. This actually sets up a statistical trap because it confuses specificity with impossibility. They are setting a statistical trap for themselves.
Recruitment is an exercise in probability. Every must-have requirement on a job description acts as a filter on the total talent pool. Managers often see these filters as additive, but mathematically, they are multiplicative.
This is what compound probability is all about. Consider a reduced talent pool where 10% of applicants possess Skill A (such as proficiency with Python) and 20% possess Skill B (such as 10+ years of sales experience within specific industries). A manager seeking to hire someone with Skill A or someone with Skill B has a strong 30% pool to select from.
The “unicorn” job requirement, on the other hand, requires Skill A and Skill B. The chance of someone having both independent skills is not 10% + 20% (30%). It is 10% of 20%, which is a mere 2%.
Finally, we can incorporate a third must-have criterion, such as fluency in three languages (representing 5% of the talent pool). The calculation now becomes 0.10 × 0.20 × 0.05 = 0.001. This is 0.1%.
As we layer on these stringent, independent requirements—degree, specific amount of experience, and unique software skills—we are delving into a compound probability problem that exponentially limits our pool of talent. If you were to put these layered qualifications into a probability calculator, you would see how unlikely it is for one candidate to fill every one of them. We are, quite literally, hiring for a statistical impossibility.
This flawed maths is then automated and operationalised by our own tools. This is where the problem scales from a manager’s flawed wish list to a systemic organisational failure. Research from Harvard Business School and Accenture, an international study that surveyed 8,000 workers and 2,250 executives across the US, the UK and Germany, indicates that over 90% of large employers utilise an applicant tracking system (ATS) to filter and rank candidates.
The same research finds that “a large majority (88%) of employers agree that qualified highly skilled candidates are vetted out…because they do not match the exact criteria.” As many as 80% of business leaders admit that more than half of all highly skilled candidates are similarly disqualified by these rigid filters.
The ATS, programmed with our unicorn logic, becomes a statistical guillotine. It creates a vast pool of hidden workers—qualified, capable people who are rendered invisible to us by the very systems we built to find them.
The Diversity, Integrity, and Financial Costs of the “Wish List”
This self-inflicted talent shortage is not only inefficient but also a powerful engine for exclusion and a significant financial drain. The “wish list” job description is inherently biased because, by its very design, it weeds out applicants who do not conform to a narrow, traditional mould.
This is most visible in the phenomenon of “degree inflation”, where a university degree is used as a lazy proxy for talent—a barrier identified in the Harvard and Accenture study. As these requirements favour credentials over potential, they automatically filter out a greater percentage of candidates from marginalised groups who may be subject to systemic barriers to higher education.
However, the harm goes beyond just filtering people out; it actively drives them away. This is because modern talent views these dogmatic and exclusivist criteria as indicators of a non-inclusive culture.
The data confirms that candidates are voting with their feet. According to the Randstad Workmonitor 2025, 48% of talent worldwide would refuse a job offer if the values of the organisation do not correspond with theirs. This trend intensifies among younger generations: Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z Survey reveals that 39% of Gen Zs have turned down employers entirely due to ethical misalignment.
When emerging talent willingly chooses to withdraw, they are not unqualified. They are making an informed decision. Our job description has successfully communicated to them that our organisation is not a place where they will feel valued.
The Integrity Gap: A Failure of the Four Enablers
For an organisation committed to engagement, this is where the problem moves from a flawed process to a crisis of identity. The Engage for Success movement is built on The Four Enablers: Strategic Narrative, Engaging Managers, Employee Voice, and Organisational Integrity.
The unicorn job description represents a profound failure of at least two of these enablers.
First, it is a textbook example of organisational integrity failure. This enabler is defined by a simple, powerful concept: the values on the wall are reflected in day-to-day behaviours. It is the “say-do” attitude.
Consider the say-do gap of the wish list job description:
- We SAY (on our careers page, in our company values): “We are an inclusive employer. We value diversity. We are a great place to work.”
- We DO (in our job description): We write a document that actively filters out the 39% of Gen Z talent who reject non-inclusive cultures.
This is the very definition of a say-do gap. It breaks the trust that is foundational to engagement.
Writing a Job Description for Skills-First Hiring
The antidote to the wish list is a fundamental shift in mindset: from hunting unicorns to developing talent. This is a skills-first approach.
A skills-first model is a process that focuses on verifiable skills and competencies, rather than relying on proxies such as degrees, arbitrary years of experience, or previous job titles.
This is not a charitable strategy. It is a high-performance talent strategy with a clear, data-driven business case. Not only does it boost retention, but it also fixes the talent pool. A skills-first approach is the mechanism for repairing the integrity gap. It is the say-do alignment. It is the tangible, behavioural proof that our organisation values people for what they can do and who they can become, not for the arbitrary credentials they have collected.
Actionable Steps to Stop Hunting and Start Building
Auditing and transitioning over to a skills-first approach requires a series of specific changes that do not involve a complete overhaul. This approach changes the job description into an inclusive engagement instrument.
1. Conduct a Wish List Audit
Go through your current job descriptions and divide every requirement into two columns:
- Prerequisite Skills: The 2-3 non-negotiable skills or competencies required on day one.
- Trainable Skills: All other things that an intelligent, motivated, and curious individual can learn on the job.
Action: Remove the trainable skills column from the “Requirements” section. Move them to a new, more engaging section titled “What You’ll Learn” or “In Your First Year, You Will Grow In…”
2. Focus on Problems, Not Proxies
Translate your requirements from lazy proxies to the actual competencies you need. Stop listing credentials and start describing the problems the candidate will solve.
| Before: Wish List Requirement (The Proxy) | After: Skills-First Alternative (The Competency) |
| Must have a bachelor’s degree, or equivalent, in Marketing. | Demonstrable skills in market analysis, campaign management, and digital analytics (acquired via work, certifications, or a degree). |
| 5-7 years of experience in sales. | Proven ability to manage a full sales cycle, from prospecting to closing, and build strong client relationships. |
| Expert-level proficiency in Python, R, and SQL. | The ability to query complex databases, analyse the results, and build models to solve specific business problems. |
| A high-performing developer who can contribute effectively from day one. | We are looking for a collaborative developer who is proficient in XYZ. |
3. Reform the Interview Process
How to write a skills-first job description, then? It must be followed by a skills-first interview. Get rid of the generic recall-style interview questions (“Tell me about a time…”) and replace them with brief skill exercises that test the candidates’ skills directly applicable to the job.
A pro-tip for truly embracing the spirit of an Engaging Manager: Share your interview scenarios ahead of time. This is not cheating. A high-stress interview tests a candidate’s response to anxiety. A prepared, collaborative interview tests their actual skill and critical thinking. This simple change is a powerful signal of a supportive, psychologically safe culture.
4. Audit Your Automated Filters
Your new, inclusive job description is useless if your ATS is still operating on the old, flawed logic. Go into your system and review your knockout filters. Are you still automatically rejecting candidates for employment gaps (a filter the Harvard study identified as a key barrier) or for not having a specific degree? Turn those filters off.
From Perfect Candidate to Thriving Team
The perfect candidate is a myth. The talent shortage is largely a construct of our own flawed processes. We have built wish lists based on faulty maths, armed automated systems with those lists to exclude qualified people, and, in the process, created a say-do gap that fundamentally breaches our organisational integrity.
The goal of recruitment is not to find a perfectly engaged individual. The goal, in line with the EFS mission, is to build the conditions that inspire people and workplaces.
By replacing a flawed mathematical wish list with a human-centric, skills-first invitation, we close the integrity gap. We strengthen our strategic narrative. And we take the first, most critical step toward building a workplace where everyone has the opportunity to bring their best self to work, every single day.
Author: Magdalena Tula – Head of People Operations & Agata Flak – Translator and SEO Copywriter for Omni Calculator
Photo credit: Stockcake
