When a senior search runs long, the delay is rarely in finding people. It is usually in the decisions around them: a brief that changes halfway through, a shortlist that waits a week for feedback, three interview rounds booked a week apart.
That matters because a slow process costs you twice. The business runs longer without the person it needs, and the strongest candidates, who often have other options, lose interest or accept another offer. Cutting corners on assessment isn’t the answer, because most of the lost days were never spent assessing anyone.
See where the days go
A senior search has seven stages, and the business doing the hiring controls most of them.
- Brief
Hiring manager and CEO
The two disagree about the role, and nobody finds out until the shortlist arrives.
- Search
Search partner
Approaches wait for a salary range or a sign-off that should have come with the brief.
- Shortlist
Hiring manager
The shortlist sits in an inbox, and feedback comes a week later.
- Interviews
Interview panel
Each round is booked separately, around diaries, a week or more apart.
- Decision
Hiring manager and CEO
A debrief without written scores ends in a request to see one more candidate.
- Offer
CEO, finance and HR
Pay above the agreed range needs approvals nobody arranged in advance.
- Notice
The candidate's employer
Often months for a senior role. It can rarely be shortened, so plan around it.
The hiring business controls five of the seven stages. Their length varies from search to search, so the figure shows where time is lost, not how much.
The pattern is the same in most slow searches: the work itself takes days, and the waiting between steps takes weeks. Waiting is the part you can cut without lowering the standard.
Take your last senior hire and write down the date each stage started and finished. The gaps between the dates show where your time went.
Settle the brief and the pay before anyone is approached
The most expensive delay is the one that sends a search back to the start. It happens when the hiring manager and the CEO want different people and find out only when they see the shortlist. Our 15 questions to answer before a search are designed to bring that disagreement out in the first week.
Pay is the other common restart. If the salary range isn’t agreed, either approaches wait for it or candidates go through interviews and then turn down an offer they could have ruled out at the start.
Agree the brief, the salary range and who signs off the offer before the first approach.
Book the interviews before the shortlist arrives
Diaries are where senior searches lose the most time. A CEO, a CFO and a board member, each with a full calendar, can turn three interview rounds into six weeks.
Hold the slots in advance. When the search starts, block interview time in every panel member’s diary for the weeks the shortlist is expected, and release it if it isn’t needed. Run the rounds close together, ideally on consecutive days, and ask each interviewer for written feedback within 48 hours.
Agree the interview dates when you agree the brief, and treat them as fixed.
Keep the assessment that predicts, and drop the rest
Speed shouldn’t come from assessing less carefully. It should come from assessing in a way that works the first time, so you don’t need another round to feel sure.
Research on selection methods points to the same answer. In a 2022 re-analysis of decades of studies, Sackett and colleagues estimated how well common methods predict job performance. Structured interviews, where every candidate is asked the same questions and scored against the same guide, came out highest. Unstructured conversations scored less than half as well, and years of experience in a job predicted very little.
| Method | Validity |
|---|---|
| Structured interviews | 0.42 |
| Job knowledge tests | 0.40 |
| Work samples | 0.33 |
| Cognitive ability tests | 0.31 |
| Assessment centres | 0.29 |
| Situational judgment tests | 0.26 |
| Unstructured interviews | 0.19 |
| Years of job experience | 0.07 |
Average operational validity: how closely scores on each method track later job performance, after statistical corrections. 0 means no relationship and 1.00 a perfect one. These are averages across many jobs, not forecasts for one hire.
Source: Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens (2022), Journal of Applied Psychology, Table 3
The figures are averages across many jobs, most of them not senior roles, and they are lower than older estimates such as Schmidt and Hunter’s 1998 review. They show which methods tend to predict better, not how well any one interview will work. The ranking still matters for a senior search: a structured interview gives you better evidence than an unstructured one, often in less time.
Structure also saves time directly. Google reports that using prepared questions, interview guides and scoring rubrics saves its interviewers an average of 40 minutes per interview. That is the company’s own figure.
Write the questions and the scoring guide once, before the first interview, and use them for every candidate.
Decide in one meeting, with the offer ready
The last delays come at the end. A debrief where interviewers talk before they have written anything down often ends in “let’s see one more”, and an offer above the agreed range waits for approvals nobody arranged.
Collect written scores before the debrief, and make the decision in that meeting. Have the offer approved in principle before the final interview, so it can go out the same week. Notice periods for senior roles are often long, and you can’t shorten someone else’s contract, so start that clock as early as you can.
Book the debrief for the day after the last interview, and have the offer signed off before it.
Speed comes from decisions, not shortcuts
A senior search can’t be rushed at the stages that need care: the brief, the search and the assessment. It can lose much less time at the stages that need a decision or a diary slot. Most of those decisions can be made before the first candidate is approached.
On our searches we agree the brief, the pay range and the interview dates with the client before we approach anyone. Our Head of HR search page explains how that works.
Sources
- Paul R. Sackett, Charlene Zhang, Christopher M. Berry and Filip Lievens, “Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range”, Journal of Applied Psychology 107(11), 2040–2068, 2022: https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000994
- Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, “The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings”, Psychological Bulletin 124(2), 262–274, 1998: https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.262
- Google re:Work, “A guide to structured interviewing for better hiring practices”, updated March 2026: https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/a-guide-to-structured-interviewing-for-better-hiring-practices