Across health, housing and community services, organisations often tell us the same thing:
“We’ve advertised everywhere — no one suitable is applying.”
But when a role stays vacant for months, it’s rarely just a candidate shortage. More often, it’s a structural recruitment issue.
The myth of the “skills shortage.”
Yes, the sector is facing workforce pressure. But many hard-to-fill roles don’t fail because there are no candidates — they fail because the role, process or expectations haven’t kept pace with reality.
Common issues we see include:
The role scope has quietly expanded beyond one person’s capacity
Position descriptions that reflect legacy responsibilities rather than current needs
Salary bands that don’t align with risk, complexity, or accountability
Recruitment processes that are too slow for a competitive market
In senior and specialist roles, good candidates are rarely unemployed — they’re weighing up whether a move is worth it.
Hard roles need deliberate recruitment
Difficult-to-fill roles — particularly in housing, mental health, DFV, and disability services — require a different approach.
This means:
Being clear about what success looks like in the role
Understanding which skills are essential and which can be developed
Being honest about challenges, not overselling the opportunity
Designing interview processes that assess capability, not just experience
Organisations that rush or shortcut this process often end up restarting it six months later.
The cost of getting it wrong
Leaving a role vacant is costly — but filling it poorly is worse.
The true cost includes:
Increased pressure on existing staff
Reduced service quality or compliance risk
Lost trust with stakeholders and funders
Burnout at the leadership level
In frontline services, these impacts are felt quickly and deeply.
A better question to ask
Instead of “Why can’t we find anyone?”, a more useful question is:
“Is this role genuinely set up for success?”
At Be Recruitment, we work with organisations to step back and examine not just the candidate market, but the role itself, its design, expectations, leadership support, and long-term sustainability.
When these pieces align, even the hardest roles become achievable and less of a revolving door.
