The role is urgent. The approvals pass through three teams.

A position opened in a subsidiary: local HR prepares the request, the hiring manager backs it, finance checks the budget, and a regional function confirms the salary band. Each step has a reason, but together they take time. The scenario is illustrative: it describes a type of flow, not a specific company.

The search starts without the budget being committed and then stalls halfway. The salary band is only clarified at offer stage. Nobody can say who gives the final approval, and the request is redone in another format for one more team.

The possible causes, to be checked separately: the same information is requested twice in different places, the decision thresholds are not written down, or the order is missing — the steps run in parallel and contradict each other.

You map the actual route of a request, from the need in the team to the approval, with every step and every person. Then you mark what is a mandatory control — budget, salary band, compliance — and what is a duplicate approval, added at some point and left in the flow.

Mandatory controls are not bypassed or shortened; they are put in order, documented once, and the flow gets an owner. Escalation criteria are agreed in advance, so that urgency is not handled through improvised exceptions.

Example: the headcount is approved, but the right candidate asks for a package outside the band. If internal policy allows it and the approved conditions have not changed, the exception can be reviewed separately, with a justification, by the competent authority. It is then confirmed which approvals remain valid and what has to be redone.

The concrete step: separate the approval of the role from the approval of the offer. They are two decisions, with different data and with decision-makers who do not always coincide.

You track the time spent at each stage and the number of times the same request is redone. These are process indicators: they show where the request sits, not that hiring got better.

How do we shorten the flow without weakening the control? + −

Not by removing the checks, but by removing their repetition. The same information, collected once in a single format, serves every control. Steps that only confirm what has already been confirmed become notifications, not approvals.

Does this sound familiar?

Tell us how many teams a role request passes through at your organisation and where it stalls most often. We will tell you where we would start.

The way we work on search mandates is described in Recruitment & Executive Search.

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