By Ron Dermady, Vice President of Operations at Hunter Crown, LLC
Every search begins with a job description. Most of them are wrong.
Not because the company made a mistake, but because the document no longer reflects what the role actually requires. Teams evolve. Expectations shift. Leadership changes. But the job description remains untouched, recycled from the last hire or copied from a competitor’s post online.
The result? Companies go to market asking for someone who no longer exists or worse, someone who can do the job on paper but is completely wrong for the current situation.
Where the Disconnect Happens
We see it every day.
A utility needs a Maintenance Supervisor to reduce downtime and lead a crew through a modernization project. The job description talks about preventive maintenance and equipment logs, but nothing about change management, shift leadership, or conflict resolution.
An engineering firm wants a Business Development Manager to grow their municipal footprint. The posting is filled with buzzwords about technical acumen but ignores the real ask: someone who can get in front of procurement officers, simplify complex value propositions, and open political doors.
A treatment plant wants an Operations Manager to step in after a quiet but respected leader retires. The job description lists scheduling, compliance, and inventory. It says nothing about navigating a team that is uneasy, undertrained, and unsure how to trust the next person in charge.
These are not edge cases. They are standard.
A Piece of Paper Does Not Tell the Whole Story
Job descriptions are reference points. They are not blueprints. When recruiters or hiring managers rely on them blindly, they miss the context. They miss the nuance. And they miss the chance to hire for what the job actually is today, not what it used to be.
That is why our intake calls are non-negotiable. We ask real questions. We dig past the bullet points. We want to know:
What problem is this person being hired to solve?
What will success look like in the first six months?
What happened to the last person in the role, and what did you learn from it?
Who is making the decision, and what matters most to them?
Once we have those answers, we can build a search around reality, not assumptions.
Final Thought
You can post a job description, collect resumes, and hope something sticks. Or you can get honest about what you actually need and run a focused search with clear expectations and strong alignment.
At Hunter Crown, we do not take job descriptions at face value. We do the work to understand the role behind the posting. That is the difference between sending resumes and making placements that last.
If your team is ready to hire based on truth, not templates, we are ready to help.