This article is part of a 6-piece TA Leadership Series: From Operational Recruiter to Strategic Talent Advisor. Link to the first article, the previous article, and next article.
Strategic development starts when people stop outsourcing their thinking upward
Every TA leader wants their team to escalate issues before they become serious problems. That is sensible. A culture in which people hide problems until they become unavoidable is dangerous, particularly when recruitment is connected to business-critical hiring timelines. The problem is not escalation itself, the problem starts when escalation becomes a transfer of ownership.
“The hiring manager is not responding. Can you speak to them?” “We do not have enough candidates.” “The agency is not delivering.” “The interview process is too slow.” These statements may all be accurate, but they are observations rather than recommendations. If the next step is always for the TA leader to investigate what is happening and decide what should be done, the team gradually learns that its responsibility ends when the problem has been identified. That is a deeply operational habit.
One of the leadership behaviours I use to counter it is simple: you can always come to me with a problem, but you cannot automatically outsource all of the thinking about that problem to me.
What have you already done?
When someone brings me an issue, the first thing I want to understand is what they already know. What have you done to try to resolve it? Where do you think the actual problem sits? What options do you see? What would you recommend? What specifically do you need from me?
I am not asking those questions because I expect the person to have a perfect answer. In many situations they will not. I am asking because the act of thinking through those questions changes the person’s relationship with the problem.
Take a recruiter who says, “The hiring manager has not provided feedback for five days. Can you call them?”
That escalation gives me very little information. I still need to work out whether the hiring manager is busy, whether the vacancy has changed priority, whether there is disagreement inside the hiring team, whether the process itself is badly designed or whether the recruiter simply has not followed up effectively.
Now compare it with this: “We have been waiting five days for feedback. I followed up twice and spoke with the hiring manager yesterday. From that conversation, I think the vacancy has dropped in priority because their team is focused on another project. My recommendation is that we either reconfirm the role as a current priority and agree a specific feedback rhythm, or move the planned start date so we stop working against a timeline the business no longer believes in. I can have that conversation, but if the priority has changed at divisional level I may need your support.”
The issue is exactly the same, but the second recruiter has already investigated, formed a hypothesis, considered options and identified where leadership involvement may add value. That is strategic development happening in ordinary work.
“We don’t have enough candidates” is not a diagnosis
Recruitment creates countless opportunities to practise this way of thinking because many problems initially appear as simple operational facts.
“We don’t have enough candidates” is a perfect example.
The next question should be why.
Is the talent genuinely scarce? Is the profile too narrow? Are we requiring experience that is not actually necessary for performance in the role? Is compensation below the relevant market? Is our sourcing strategy wrong? Are we using channels that historically do not produce hires? Are candidates entering the funnel but dropping out because the recruitment process is too slow? Is the role attractive enough? Is the location creating an unnecessary constraint? Has the business asked us to hire something that barely exists?
Those explanations require very different solutions.
If the problem is talent scarcity, more sourcing effort may be appropriate. If the profile is unnecessarily restrictive, increasing sourcing activity only creates more work against the wrong target. If compensation is significantly below the market, asking recruiters to send another hundred messages is unlikely to solve the underlying issue. A talent advisor needs to move beyond describing the symptom and start helping the business understand the cause.
This is particularly important because one of the central responsibilities of a mature recruiter is to challenge and refine role requirements rather than simply accept them. The Recruiting Excellence maturity framework explicitly moves from recruiters reactively receiving requirements toward recruiters acting as advisors who help define success drivers, capabilities and the right profile with hiring managers.
You do not need to know the answer
There is an important boundary here because “never bring only a problem” can be implemented badly. The goal is not to create a culture where people feel they are only allowed to ask for help after they have solved the problem themselves. That defeats the purpose of leadership and can cause people to delay escalation.
Sometimes someone has investigated the issue, considered the options and still does not know what to do. That is completely acceptable. A strong escalation can be: “I have looked into this from these three angles and I still cannot determine the right solution. I need your help deciding between these two options.” It can also be: “I understand the problem, but the decision sits outside my authority. This is the specific decision I need from you.” Or even: “I do not know how to solve this yet, but these are the things I have ruled out and this is where I am stuck.”
All three demonstrate ownership because the person has done the thinking they reasonably could before asking someone else to take over. Strategic behaviour does not mean knowing everything. It means remaining responsible for moving the issue toward an outcome.
Do not reward operational escalation
Leaders also need to look at their own behaviour in these situations. Solving problems quickly can be satisfying, particularly when you already know the answer. Someone explains what is wrong, you immediately tell them what to do and everyone moves on. It is efficient in the moment, but repeated often enough it trains the team to bring you problems rather than solve them.
The next time someone arrives with a problem, it is worth resisting the instinct to immediately provide the answer. Ask them where they think the issue lies. Ask what they have already tried. Ask what they would do if you were unavailable for the next three days.
You may discover they already know the answer but have become accustomed to asking for permission. In that case, the development opportunity is not problem solving at all; it is confidence and authority.
That links directly back to Article 2, Make Them Kings and Queens of Their Domain. There is little value in asking people to propose solutions if you never allow them to implement those solutions without approval. Problem-solving behaviour and decision-making authority need to develop together.
Change the language of your team
Over time, you can hear the transition from operational recruiter to talent advisor in the way people speak. The language moves from “This happened” toward “This is why I think it happened.” It moves from “What should I do?” toward “These are the options I see.” It moves from “Can you fix this?” toward “This is what I can handle and this is where I need you.”
That change is valuable because it creates a team that does not simply escalate information upward. It creates a team that processes information, forms a point of view and contributes to decisions.
This also changes what reaches the TA leader. Instead of becoming the central problem-solving desk for every issue in the function, the leader becomes involved primarily where their authority, broader context or experience is genuinely required.
The final article in this series takes the same principle and applies it to the work people produce. In Article 6, Would You Show This to the CEO Right Now? the question is no longer only whether someone has thought through a problem, but whether they have thought through the purpose and intended outcome of the work they are delivering. Both behaviours come from the same shift. Operational thinking asks whether the task has been completed. Strategic thinking asks whether we have produced the outcome that was actually needed.