Why Traditional Hiring Fails to Identify Top Talent

The Rise of Skills Gaps and Mismatched Hires

Corporate hiring success rates linger near 50 percent, yet most organisations repeat the same rituals. Traditional recruitment relies on structured interviews and polished CVs, which reveal presentation skills rather than real competence. Consequently, mismatched hires become the norm.

Skills gaps appear when job requirements shift faster than assessment methods. A candidate with a decade of experience may still lack the digital abilities needed today. This is where pro match recruitment offers a different path! It focuses on verified practical capabilities instead of rehearsed responses.

• Memory-based interview answers do not predict on-the-job performance.
• Academic credentials often lag behind industry demands.

The price of a wrong hire includes wasted salaries, disrupted teams, and lost opportunities. Traditional methods perpetuate this cycle because they measure confidence in a room, not competence in a workflow. Evaluating candidates through actual tasks reduces the guesswork that plagues standard hiring.

How Unstructured Interviews Lead to Poor Decisions

Most hiring managers walk out of an interview with their minds already made up. Thirty minutes of polished conversation has that effect. But the confidence is rarely justified! Unstructured interviews, where questions change with each applicant, measure performance in a room, not performance on the job. They reward quick thinking and charm while ignoring actual capability.

Research shows unstructured interviews have almost no predictive validity for job performance. Candidates who answer confidently rank higher even when their skills are inferior. This is not a minor flaw. It is the reason organisations cycle through employees and wonder why nothing improves.

Consider what an unstructured interview actually tests:

• The ability to recall stories on command
• The ability to read what the interviewer wants to hear
• The ability to project confidence under pressure

None of these predict whether someone can complete a task or solve a problem. That is why pro match recruitment focuses on demonstrated ability rather than self presented narratives. With pro match recruitment, the emphasis shifts from storytelling to evidence. A candidate can rehearse a perfect answer. They cannot fake a completed project. That distinction changes everything.

The True Cost of a Bad Placement on Company Culture

One bad hire costs more than the salary. The true cost of a bad placement shows up in team morale, whispered frustrations, and quiet resignations. South African managers often measure the damage in recruitment fees, but the real cost comes from colleagues who take on the extra work. A single mismatched appointment lowers productivity across an entire unit for months.

Traditional hiring fails to identify top talent because it rewards presentation over performance. A polished CV and a confident handshake carry more weight than a portfolio of actual work. In a market where qualified people compete for fewer roles, that error costs more. Pro match recruitment anchors hiring decisions to demonstrated evidence, opening doors for capable people that interviews tend to shut.

Limitations of Resume Screening in a Digital Economy

A resume is a fossil of a past self. In a digital economy, tools evolve in weeks, but most CVs lag behind. That gap explains why traditional hiring fails to identify top talent. It filters on presentation rather than proof.

The limitations of resume screening in a digital economy are concrete. Resumes capture job titles, not the quality of thinking behind them. They exclude anyone who cannot shrink their achievements into recruiter-friendly buzzwords. A candidate who rebuilt a broken workflow over six months has no standard phrase for that. The software passes them over.

• Resumes are self-reported, with no mechanism for verifying actual impact.
• They reward longevity, not adaptability, a costly error in fast-moving sectors.

Pro match recruitment changes the equation by evaluating evidence of work, not curated declarations. Capable candidates who lack polished CVs finally get a fair hearing.

Shifting From Reactive Hiring to Strategic Talent Acquisition

A vacancy rarely appears by accident. It usually signals a failed hire, a poorly defined role, or a planning shortfall that went unnoticed. Traditional hiring answers this failure with urgency. It fills the gap with whichever candidate appears most ready. Speed becomes the only metric.

Strategic talent acquisition inverts this logic:

1. Define the organisational destination.
2. Identify the capabilities required to get there.
3. Verify those capabilities through evidence.

Pro match recruitment supports this method. I have seen too many organisations default to haste when strategy would serve them better. Reactive hiring relieves short-term pressure. Strategic acquisition builds long-term capability. These are not the same task, and confusing them is expensive.

The Core Principles of Precision Candidate Matching

Aligning Job Requirements With Behavioral Competencies

Every job description contains hidden assumptions about behaviour, and most hiring managers never uncover them. Pro match recruitment breaks those assumptions apart, turning vague expectations into measurable traits. Aligning job requirements with behavioral competencies requires dissection of each task into its core demand.

In my consultancy work, I’ve seen how this approach removes guesswork. A role demanding ‘team collaboration’ might truly require high conflict tolerance, while a ‘self-starter’ position needs proven autonomy under ambiguous deadlines.

Three principles anchor this practice:

• Role-specific behavioural evidence, not general traits
• Job requirement weighting by consequence, not convenience
• Competency validation through past daily actions, not hypothetical responses

Each principle forces conversations that base decisions on evidence, reducing early-stage mismatches. For pro match recruitment, this alignment turns a hire into a predictable outcome. The result: better retention and stronger performance metrics.

Assessing for Cultural and Value-Based Compatibility

Thirty percent of new hires exit within the first year because of values misalignment rather than incompetence. Precision candidate matching examines the alignment between a person’s natural tendencies and your team’s daily operating customs. In South African businesses, I study how candidates make decisions under pressure and which workplace moments drain them.

Pro match recruitment centres on three principles that separate performance from potential:

• Evidence of values drawn from real workplace decisions
• Cultural weighting matched equally with technical ability
• Compatibility verified through structured team dialogue

A candidate who fits your environment performs 24% better than one with marginally stronger credentials but divergent values. The precision lies in measuring these signals before the offer, not after the resignation.

Distinguishing Between Teachable Skills and Non-Negotiables

When I evaluate candidates for South African businesses, I separate what can be taught from what cannot. A candidate can learn a new software system or refine their reporting style within weeks. But the instinct to own a mistake, the willingness to ask for help, or the ability to remain candid under pressure, these are not trainable. They are either present or absent.

Pro match recruitment relies on this distinction. I look for evidence of non-negotiables in past decisions, not in rehearsed answers. For example:

• A candidate who admits a failed project and explains their part in it
• Someone who challenges a client’s demand because it conflicts with company policy

These signals reveal character. Teachable skills show up on a CV, but non-negotiables show up in behaviour. That is why precision matching weighs both equally.

The Role of Soft-Skill Evaluation in Long-Term Success

In precision candidate matching, the core principle is simple: a hire is not a transaction, it is a prediction. Every placement predicts how someone will perform, adapt, and collaborate over years, not just through a probation period. Pro match recruitment treats this prediction as a discipline, not a hope.

Soft skills often determine whether that prediction holds. A candidate with sharp technical ability but poor emotional regulation will struggle to sustain relationships with clients or colleagues. Pro match recruitment evaluates soft skills by observing how a person reacts under pressure, how they communicate ambiguity, and whether they take ownership without being asked.

• How they describe conflict in previous roles
• Whether they credit others or claim sole credit
• Their reaction when challenged on a point

These observations carry more weight than rehearsed answers. Character reveals itself in moments of friction, and that revelation shapes long-term success.

Using Structured Data to Predict On-the-Job Performance

Every hire is a forecast. In South Africa, pro match recruitment uses structured data to make that forecast accurate. Structured data captures measurable signals: task simulations, situational judgement scores, and verified employment outcomes. These signals feed a model that correlates with on-the-job performance. This method reveals who will thrive, not merely who interviews well.

The core principles are straightforward:

• Apply the same evaluation to every candidate.
• Measure against explicit performance criteria.
• Check past placements against actual results.
• Adjust the model when predictions miss.

In my experience, this sequence gives recruiters a defensible basis for each decision. It converts hiring from a subjective guess into a documented process. That is the power of structured data! For teams facing tight talent markets, pro match recruitment offers clarity when certainty is scarce.

Balancing Speed of Hire With Accuracy of Fit

A hiring manager once told me that a vacant role costs more than a wrong hire. That math rarely holds up. Speed fills seats, but precision keeps them filled. The tension between velocity and validity is where recruitment processes break. Moving fast without a clear target produces quick regrets. Moving slow without structure produces missed opportunities. The core principles of precision candidate matching acknowledge both forces.

• Define success before advertising the role.
• Calibrate evaluation methods to measure that success directly.
• Monitor time-to-hire alongside quality-of-hire.

Pro match recruitment treats speed and accuracy as partners. In South Africa, this balance is critical. A fast hire who fails costs more than a slower hire who stays.

Leveraging Technology to Enhance Your Picking Process

How AI-Driven Screening Improves Shortlist Quality

A hiring manager spends hours each week deciding who deserves a conversation. The shortlist is often built on urgency and instinct, so promising candidates fall away before they reach an interview in South Africa, where talent pools are tight and opportunity is uneven.

AI-driven screening changes this pattern. It compares thousands of data points from each application, weighs them against the role’s real demands, and ranks candidates by alignment. This is pro match recruitment in its purest form. The technology absorbs the heavy analysis, and the human keeps the final say. A selection process that runs on evidence rather than guesswork becomes possible.

Implementing Blind Hiring to Reduce Unconscious Bias

A surname should not predict a career, yet bias often shapes shortlists before any interview. In South Africa’s competitive market, blind hiring disrupts this pattern. Technology can strip identifying details from applications, leaving only the evidence of what a candidate has actually accomplished.

In pro match recruitment, structured assessments and standardised scoring take the place of instinct. Recruiters evaluate every applicant against consistent criteria. The technology processes the volume, while humans interpret the results with context.

Blind hiring works through deliberate design:

• Automated CV anonymisation removes names, addresses, and school names
• Uniform evaluation criteria apply to every applicant
• Decision logs reveal patterns that individual reviewers miss

The process becomes stronger when technology and human judgement function as a coordinated system.

Choosing the Right Assessment Tools for Your Industry

Few processes I have encountered in recruitment are as underrated as the choice of assessment tools. The wrong tool wastes hours and misleads decisions. In pro match recruitment, the goal is to measure what matters for your specific industry, not what looks impressive on a vendor demo.

Start by mapping your core tasks to test formats. For technical roles, use work samples. For customer facing positions, situational judgement tests work better. The technology should score consistently, but your team must review the outputs for context. A tool that works for banking may fail for retail.

• Match the assessment to the role’s actual demands
• Check for local validation in South African workplaces
• Review how the tool handles language and cultural nuance

Your picking process becomes sharper when technology handles the admin and humans handle the judgement. That balance defines effective pro match recruitment!

Integrating Predictive Analytics Into Your Recruitment Funnel

There is a quiet shift happening in how South African companies identify their next great hire. We used to rely on a stack of CVs and a gut feeling during a single interview. Now, the picking process itself can be guided by data that reveals patterns we might otherwise miss. By filtering candidates through software that learns from past successes, recruiters can focus their energy on the final stages of engagement while the system handles the initial heavy lifting.

This does not mean handing over the entire hiring strategy to a machine. It means using the signals to inform our judgment. A robust system will flag candidates whose traits align with your historical top performers, but the human element remains vital for interpreting the nuance. When your tech stack supports this balance, the path from application to offer becomes far less chaotic. The goal is to let the software surface the strongest possibilities, allowing your team to invest their limited time in building a relationship with the right person.

Integrating predictive analytics into your recruitment funnel allows you to see beyond the paper trail. Instead of merely reviewing a list of previous roles, the technology can score candidates based on how their documented behaviours might translate to your specific environment. In a market like ours, where many roles require adaptability, the analytics can offer a glimpse into problem-solving approaches and resilience. This creates a selection process rooted in long-term potential rather than immediate impression.

The true advantage emerges when the data guides your next move.

– The system identifies patterns from your current workforce.
– It ranks applicants based on probabilities of success.
– It surfaces talent that might otherwise be overlooked.

With this clarity, your team can prepare more targeted interview questions and verify the cultural fit in a meaningful way. Pro match recruitment then becomes a deliberate strategy, where each step is informed by evidence. The race to secure top talent is competitive, but predictive tools give your organisation a steadier footing. We are moving toward a hiring reality where technology removes the guesswork and opens the door for sharper human collaboration. This is the new standard for building a resilient team.

Automating Admin Tasks to Focus on Human Judgment

Talk to a South African recruiter about what undermines their picking process and they will point to the inbox. The endless scheduling, the chasing of references, the sorting of identical CVs. These tasks drain energy that should go toward understanding a candidate’s thinking. Automating that admin is not a betrayal of the human touch. It is how we get time back! Pro match recruitment depends on this shift. When the software handles the administrative burden, the recruiter can focus on dialogue, nuance, and gut instinct sharpened by experience. We stop being clerks and start being strategists.

A simple list of what to hand over:

• Interview scheduling and calendar coordination
• Initial application sorting and screening messages
• Reference request follow-ups

That leaves room for the part that matters: asking the candidate why they solved a problem a certain way, and actually listening.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls When Adopting Recruitment Software

Technology whispers promises of efficiency, yet it can suffocate the very instincts we rely on. The picking process becomes a shadow-play when software begins to dictate rather than serve. I have watched teams adopt tools that bury candidate nuance beneath a mountain of metrics. The algorithm flags a profile, but it cannot hear the tremor in a voice that speaks of resilience. True pro match recruitment demands we remain the ones holding the lantern.

Beware the common pitfalls:

• Over-reliance on automated shortlists
• Ignoring candidate experience within the digital funnel
• Treating data as gospel rather than a trail of clues

The software should sharpen our instincts, not replace them. When the screens glow with endless profiles, I still ask the question that matters: who is this person, really? That is where pro match recruitment lives.

Building a Candidate Experience That Attracts the Right Fit

Clear Communication as a Filter for Serious Applicants

Most hiring processes repel the very candidates they claim to attract. In South Africa, skilled professionals abandon applications that feel vague or transactional. The candidate experience is a filtration mechanism, not a courtesy. It determines who stays engaged and who quietly withdraws.

Clear communication filters early. When a job description states exact responsibilities, work environment, and performance expectations, uncertain applicants remove themselves. That saves your team from chasing false positives!

• Explicit salary ranges eliminate speculative applications.
• Defined reporting lines expose hierarchy preferences.
• Concrete deliverables reveal discipline and effort tolerance.

Pro match recruitment relies on this honesty. Candidates who self-select out prevent wasted interviews, while those who remain show genuine alignment. We have watched this honesty transform hiring pipelines.

Designing Skill-Based Assessments Over Traditional Interviews

A job posting is a promise. When it promises ambiguity, the wrong people arrive. The candidate experience starts before the first interview. It lives in the job description, the application portal, and how quickly a human responds.

Skill-based assessments change the dynamic. Instead of asking candidates to narrate their past, invite them to prove it. A practical simulation reveals far more than polished answers. It exposes how someone thinks under pressure and whether their output matches their claims. A strong assessment should include:

• Tasks that mirror the real role’s daily challenges
• Clear success criteria shared before the exercise begins
• A fixed time limit to simulate genuine work conditions

Pro match recruitment depends on this evidence. Candidates who underperform remove themselves. Those who succeed arrive with proof, not promises. The experience itself becomes the filter for pro match recruitment.

Showcasing Career Paths to Align Expectations

Candidate experience is not decoration. It is the first evidence of how your organisation treats people. A smooth application process with transparent timelines tells a candidate they matter. Pro match recruitment starts when candidates feel respected enough to show their true capabilities.

Showcasing career paths does more than attract applicants. It aligns expectations. When people see where a role can lead, they self select. They evaluate whether the journey fits their own ambitions. This alignment reduces early turnover and increases engagement.

• Clear growth milestones for each position
• Real stories from employees who advanced
• Visible skills development opportunities

These elements build trust. Trust invites the right fit to apply and deters those seeking only a paycheck. In pro match recruitment, the experience becomes the message.

How Transparent Salary Ranges Reduce Early Dropout

Let us talk about the salary range. Many companies treat it as confidential. They hide it until the final interview, then reveal it with unnecessary drama. This approach does not build trust. It builds a resignation letter.

Transparent salary ranges signal that your organisation respects a candidate’s worth. When people see the numbers early, they engage with the role instead of wondering if the process ends in disappointment. This clarity reduces early dropout because candidates make informed choices from the first interaction. In pro match recruitment, salary transparency acts as a filter. It deters applicants who would never accept the offer, and attracts those who align with the budget.

Candidates who drop out quietly share one trait: they felt misled. In pro match recruitment, hidden numbers turn a decision into a gamble. Post the range. Update it when the market shifts. Treat the negotiation as a conversation, not an ambush.

Using Feedback Loops to Improve Each Hiring Cycle

Every hiring cycle leaves behind a trail of signals. Candidates who withdraw, accept elsewhere, or finish your process carry perspectives that spreadsheets miss. Feedback loops collect these perspectives and turn them into real adjustments. I have watched hiring teams treat this input as an afterthought. The candidate experience in pro match recruitment improves when applicants see their comments shape the next round.

Measure the interaction points. Application length, response time, interview structure, post-offer communication. Each stage creates friction or flow. Teams that review this feedback before opening the next role make sharper decisions.

A closed loop treats candidate comments as operational data. It turns quiet frustration into visible improvement. That is how a hiring cycle becomes something candidates remember for the right reasons.

Creating a Seamless Onboarding That Confirms the Match

An employee who feels invisible during onboarding often never quite arrives. That is why the candidate experience must extend beyond the offer letter. In pro match recruitment, every interaction filters for fit. The right person notices the precision, the honesty, and the pace.

Onboarding is where the promise is confirmed. A seamless induction aligns the job description with the daily reality. It validates the match through small moments. The first login, the first team meeting, the first project. These details carry more weight than any pitch.

We treat this as a two-way evaluation. Candidates assess us while we assess them. The strongest pro match recruitment outcomes happen when both sides feel certain by the end of week one!

Measuring the Success of Your Matching Strategy

Key Metrics Beyond Time-to-Hire That Matter

Time-to-hire alone cannot validate a placement. I have watched recruitment teams hit their speed targets and still suffer through costly exits within the first year. The true signal lives in what happens after day one. For pro match recruitment, success demands a closer look at the outcomes once the person is embedded in the role.

Focus on the measurements that reveal fit over time:

• First-year retention rates for each placement
• Manager satisfaction ratings at the 90 day mark
• Observed performance against role specific criteria

These indicators speak louder than any hiring timeline. If retention weakens, your screening is not catching attrition risks. If manager feedback turns sour, you are likely favouring skills over workplace reality. Track these numbers consistently, and pro match recruitment becomes a stable practice rather than a hopeful guess.

Tracking Retention Rates by Hiring Source

Retention rates by hiring source expose the true character of your pro match recruitment. A candidate who arrives through a referral often stays longer than one pulled from an aggregator feed. That difference is measurable, and it should guide your sourcing decisions.

Track each source independently. Look at the 6 month mark, then the 12 month mark. Patterns will emerge. Some sources deliver people who settle in and grow. Others produce hires who leave before their probation ends.

Consider what the data tells you:

– Referrals tend to align with workplace culture.
– Professional networks bring candidates with realistic expectations.
– Job boards generate volume but weaker commitment.

When retention weakens, examine the source first. Your pro match recruitment depends on this feedback loop. The insight lives in the comparison, not in any single hire. Adjust the mix, measure again, and let the numbers steer the next move. I have seen this pattern hold across South African industries, from financial services to manufacturing. The sources that look cheapest upfront often cost the most in replacement spend.

Calculating the Return on Investment of Better Matches

Measuring the success of your matching strategy requires more than a glance at the hire date. You need to calculate the return on investment of better matches across the full employment cycle. Track productivity ramp-up time, training costs absorbed, and the value created before a candidate reaches full output.

In South African markets, where skills scarcity drives competition, the cost of a mismatched hire compounds quickly. Think about the supervisor hours lost to correction, the strain on peers, and the quiet erosion of team morale. These costs rarely appear on a balance sheet.

To assess pro match recruitment outcomes properly, isolate these figures:

• Time from hire to full productivity
• Training spend per successful placement
• Manager intervention hours in the first quarter

Better matches shorten the first metric and lower the second. The third remains the hidden signal. When you measure these consistently, the financial case for improved matching becomes undeniable. I have watched this approach sharpen hiring decisions across multiple industries in this country. The numbers speak clearly!

Surveying Hiring Managers for Post-Placement Feedback

A signed offer letter is not a confirmation of fit. The real signal comes from hiring managers who observe the new employee daily. Surveying them after placement turns anecdotal impressions into structured evidence. I have seen this practice expose mismatches that performance reviews miss entirely.

Post-placement feedback should probe specific behaviours, not general satisfaction. Ask about decision quality under pressure, collaboration patterns, and alignment with team norms. These answers feed directly into your pro match recruitment strategy, sharpening future candidate evaluations. For pro match recruitment to improve, this feedback must be collected consistently, not sporadically.

• Did the new hire ask for clarity when instructions were ambiguous?
• How quickly did they integrate into informal communication channels?

Consistent feedback from managers creates a repository of ground truth. Over time, this data reveals which assessment methods actually predict workplace success.

Using Exit Interview Data to Refine Future Criteria

Separating from an employee is often treated as an administrative chore, a final signature on a form. Yet every exit interview is a confession, a final testament to whether your pro match recruitment truly held. Those who leave know precisely where your selection process blinded you, and they have no incentive to soften the truth. Their words identify the gaps between what you assessed and what the role demanded.

When you treat departures as failures instead of intelligence, you discard the most candid data you have. The scores from your assessments, the impressions from your interviews, they all appear in a different light once someone hands in their resignation. A structured exit interview turns that moment into a mirror for your entire matching strategy, a place where assumptions about fit are either validated or demolished.

Use the same behavioural questions you ask hiring managers in post-placement surveys. that symmetry creates a before and after picture of the same person, seen from opposite ends of the employment lifecycle.

– What organisational norm pushed you out?
– When did you first sense the role was misaligned?
– Which task felt beyond your capacity at the start?

Compare these answers with the exit reasons recorded on your HR forms. The reasons rarely match, and that mismatch shows where your pro match recruitment failed to distinguish between teachable skills and inherent traits. Patterns emerge across multiple exits: a particular manager, a certain team, a recurring job description. Each pattern is a directive to revise your candidate evaluation criteria, then apply those revisions to the next search. Success lies in merging both data sets so your matching strategy treats the end of the employment relationship as seriously as its beginning. The gaps between expectation and reality, collected over time, become the raw material for sharper job profiles. Treat every exit as a lesson, then watch your next hire stay.

Future-Proofing Your Talent Decision Framework

The Shift Toward Continuous and Internal Talent Mobility

Your organisation’s next great hire might already be on the payroll! The shift toward continuous and internal talent mobility changes how we view career progression. Instead of waiting for a vacancy, you can map skills and aspirations in real time. This approach reduces the risk of external mismatches and builds a more resilient workforce.

I have seen pro match recruitment support this by aligning internal candidates with emerging opportunities. When you prioritise mobility, you retain institutional knowledge and boost engagement. A talent decision framework that adapts to changing needs ensures you are never caught off guard by sudden departures or shifting project demands.

Preparing for Hyper-Personalized Candidate Outreach

Personalisation has moved from a nice-to-have to a necessity in South African talent acquisition. Yet many decision frameworks still treat every candidate as a uniform profile. That approach is already outdated.

Future-proofing requires a talent decision framework that adapts as workforce expectations shift. Hyper-personalised candidate outreach builds on behavioural data and career motivations. It speaks to an engineer in Johannesburg differently than a nurse in Cape Town, and that distinction matters.

Pro match recruitment helps by aligning outreach to individual drivers. Consider what matters:

– communication preferences
– career acceleration triggers
– values that anchor loyalty

These signals make outreach feel intentional. Candidates respond when they sense genuine alignment. A rigid framework ignores this, while a future-ready one embraces it.

Ethical Considerations in Algorithmic Candidate Ranking

Algorithmic ranking can sharpen talent decisions, but it carries ethical weight. A model that learns from past placements may inherit historical bias. In South Africa, where employment equity is a legal and moral touchpoint, that risk demands attention. Pro match recruitment depends on transparent, auditable criteria. Candidates should understand why they advanced or did not.

• Bias audits at regular intervals
• Explainable outputs for every decision
• Human review points before final offers

These guardrails protect fairness while preserving speed. Future-proofing your framework means treating algorithms as tools, not arbiters. Accountability stays with people. That is how trust survives in an automated hiring landscape.

Combining Human Intuition With Machine Precision

The best talent decisions feel calibrated, not chaotic. Pro match recruitment works when humans and machines stop arguing over who is smarter and start dividing the labour. Machines process noisy data, patterns, the history of thousands of placements. Humans interpret the nuance, the hesitation in an interview, the energy a candidate brings into a room. Neither alone survives contact with reality.

Some tasks should stay stubbornly human. Interpreting why a candidate stumbles on a question about resilience. Sensing when a polished answer hides a real gap. Deciding that a quieter applicant brings the balance a loud team needs.

• Machines flag patterns; humans challenge them.
• Machines rank candidates; humans question the ranking.
• Machines reduce bias; humans verify it stayed reduced.

That division is a partnership, not a compromise. The algorithm narrows the field. The hiring manager widens it again. This friction produces better outcomes than either side delivers alone!