What do I do when a role has been open for 90 days?

Four causes explain most stalled requisitions, and your own data says which one you have. If few qualified people apply or reply, the problem sits at the top: pay band, level, location policy or title is out of step with the market. If people apply but fail early screens, the requirements are unrealistic or badly written. If candidates keep reaching the final round and getting rejected, the bar is undefined or moving. If finalists withdraw or decline offers, you are losing on speed, money or the story about the role. Guessing burns another month. Look at conversion between stages and let the numbers point before anyone argues from instinct. Write the conclusion down, because the next conversation with the hiring manager depends on naming one cause rather than four.

Book a proper reset meeting with the hiring manager and treat it as a fresh kickoff rather than a status update. Bring evidence: how many people you contacted, what response you got, which rejections carried which reason, and what comparable roles pay. Then force three explicit choices. Which single requirement drops or becomes optional. Whether the level or band changes. What the team will do differently inside the loop. Agree a review date before anyone leaves. Rewriting the job description usually falls out of that conversation, because most stalled roles carry a specification assembled from wishes rather than from the work the person will really do in their first year.

When the market has told you the same thing three times. A role that asks for a rare combination of skills, at a level below what that combination commands, in a location with few people who have it, is a design problem, and no amount of sourcing effort corrects it. Common resolutions include splitting the role in two, hiring one level down and investing in ramp, opening the location policy, or covering the work through contract cover while a permanent search continues. Take the option to the budget holder with the trade-off stated plainly: here is what the current shape costs in months of unfilled work, and here is what changes if we adjust it.

When the work has been absorbed elsewhere, the business case has moved, or the search has become a habit nobody owns. An open role that nobody has interviewed for in six weeks is not a search, it is an artefact, and it distorts every hiring number you report. Closing it honestly beats parking it. Tell the team, write down what you learned about the market, and keep the strongest people you met in a talent pool with a note on why the timing failed. When the role reopens, that pool is worth more than a fresh sourcing sprint. Ageing requisitions should surface automatically in your recruitment analytics long before they reach a year.