The difference between staffing and search.
Why the two are distinct disciplines, and why the distinction is most expensive precisely where it is least visible.
By Elena V. Marlowe, Partner
There is a quiet confusion at the centre of most hiring conversations, and it costs more than anyone admits: the assumption that staffing and search are the same activity at different speeds. They are not.
Staffing answers a question of supply. A role is open; the market contains people who could fill it; the task is to move one of them into the seat with acceptable friction. Speed is a virtue here. A great deal of necessary work is staffing, and it should be done well.
Search begins somewhere else.
Search begins with a question staffing never asks: not who is available, but who this ought to be.
The distinction matters most at the senior level, where the cost of a wrong hire is measured in years of strategic drift, not weeks of lost productivity. A general counsel who is merely adequate does not announce the error.
A real search is slower by design. It declines to circulate a candidate without consent, because the people worth hiring are rarely looking. It asks harder questions than the client expected, and sometimes concludes the role itself is wrong before any name is discussed.