Recruiting HR people is unlike recruiting anyone else, because the candidate knows the process better than most interview panels. A vague brief, a slow response or an unstructured interview does not just cost you a candidate. It tells them exactly what your business is like to work in, and they read it accurately.

What the job covers has also shifted faster than most position descriptions have. Employment law has moved quickly in recent years, and psychosocial safety obligations have brought workplace mental health squarely inside the HR remit.

Businesses that needed an HR administrator three years ago now need someone who can read a regulation and change how managers behave, which is a materially different person.

The first HR hire is its own trap. Most businesses make it somewhere between 40 and 80 staff, and usually just after an incident that made the gap obvious. That timing pushes them toward someone who can handle the immediate problem, when what the business actually needs is someone who can build the function so the next one does not happen.

And in small teams the HR person has nobody to ask. A sole practitioner carries employee relations, recruitment, payroll interface, safety and culture with no peer to test a judgement against, which is a common reason good people leave those roles.