The Hiring Problem That Isn't Going Away

Last week’s issue was a symptom check. Five sentences you might recognize about your own business, and which one-page tool to run first. One symptom did not make that list, because there is no one-page tool for it.

“We can’t find people.”

If that is your issue this fall, you are not imagining it. In RSM’s fourth-quarter 2025 survey of middle market executives, 84% of the firms planning to hire expected filling those positions to be at least somewhat challenging. Two years earlier that number was 66%. The problem is not going away, and I do not think another job posting is the answer for most of the owners reading this.

Both Sides of the Table

I have sat on both sides of that table.

I was the CFO of a national non-profit where, over ten years, the staff grew from 12 people to 100. That is a lot of hiring.

Then in 2020, the entire nine-person leadership team I was part of was laid off, me included. I sent resumes to over 100 companies and got two interviews. I learned that there are scenarios you cannot plan for. I also learned what it feels like to be the person deciding which business to say yes to.

Here’s what I have come to believe from both chairs. The market decides how many people are looking. It does not decide which business they pick, or whether they stay. That second part is yours.

So here are four things I hear owners say about hiring, and what I think is actually true.

”It’s the labor market.”

Partly. The survey numbers are real, and a tight market makes every opening slower to fill. But the market is the same for you and for the business down the road that is hiring your people away. The market explains why it is hard. It does not explain why one business fills a seat and keeps it while another fills the same seat three times.

Blaming the market is comfortable because it feels like there’s nothing to do about it. That is exactly why it is worth being suspicious of.

”We need a better job posting.”

A posting describes a job. A good candidate is evaluating a business.

They may not say it that way, but that is what the first few weeks are. The new hire is finding out whether the priorities are clear, whether anybody actually owns anything, and whether the owner knows how to allocate resources. A posting can promise all three. Only the business can deliver on the promise, and it starts proving it on day one.

Last week I told the story of a planning meeting that produced thirteen priorities with no names on them. The ending was a different team in the same building. Nobody wrote a job posting for that. The business wrote it, one unowned priority at a time.

”It’s about pay.”

Pay matters, and that’s a given. Pay below what the job is worth and you will lose people, and no weekly rhythm fixes that.

But pay is the price of the seat. It gets someone to come in and sit down. What keeps them there is whether the seat makes sense to them: a priority with their name on it, the authority to finish it, and a place every week where their work gets looked at without anyone getting looked down on.

One more thing a team watches, and owners underestimate how visible it is. I was the CFO on a weekend when we had maxed out our line of credit and didn’t have enough money to make the next week’s payroll. We were thankful to have enough deposits over the weekend to cover payroll. Here’s what I’ve seen since, sitting inside other owners’ businesses: a team notices when the owner is sweating payroll, long before anyone says a word. An owner who knows the cash position thirteen weeks out is not just calmer. The whole team is.

”Good people are all taken.”

The people you already have were good enough to hire. The cheapest hire you will ever make is the one you do not have to make because someone stayed.

And your current team is the best recruiting channel you have, or the worst. People send their friends into a business they would recommend. They quietly steer them away from one they would not. That referral either happens or it does not, and no job board changes that.

What a Business People Want to Run With Looks Like

Strip out the corporate speak, and I think it comes down to three things a person can see from inside the business within a month.

Every priority has one name on it. Not a committee, not a department. One person who was asked, who agreed, and who has the authority to get it done. That is the same rule from the thirteen-priorities story, and it is the same rule that makes a new hire feel like they’ve become part of something bigger rather than being dropped into a whirlwind.

At risk is a decision, not a verdict. When someone’s assigned priority goes yellow, the team asks what has to change, not who is at fault. Two weeks ago I wrote about the week the scoreboard first makes someone look bad. How you handle that week is when your team decides whether to be honest with you. In my experience, the ones who cannot be honest with you are the ones who start looking.

The owner knows the numbers. Not every line of the P&L. The cash position, the three priorities, and what done looks like for each. A team can run hard for an owner who knows where the business stands. It is exhausting to run for one who is guessing, because everyone supporting them has to guess too.

None of that requires a hiring budget. It requires a page, a meeting, and a habit. Which is why I say the answer is rarely another job posting. The posting is where a hire starts. The business is where it is decided.

The Test

Three questions before you write the next posting:

• If your newest hire described your business to a friend this weekend, could they name the company’s top three priorities and who owns each one?
• When was the last time someone on your team posted an honest at-risk status, and did it turn into a decision or into a defense?
• Has your team ever learned the business was tight on cash by watching you, rather than by hearing it from you?

If you cannot answer the first one, start there. Three priorities, one name each, and a plain sentence for what done looks like. That one page is free at alinement.com/brief/tools/priority-owner-grid, and it is the page a new hire is really reading in their first month, whether you wrote it down or not.

Did you ever leave a job because you didn’t see how you fit in for the long haul? Share your thoughts.

P.S. Next week: what your banker sees when they look at your business. The five numbers a lender reads first, explained in owner language, and how to close the gap between your view and theirs.