Five CPG Hiring Mistakes That Are Costing You More Than You Think.

There’s a particular kind of hiring failure that plagues CPG commercial teams. It’s not the candidate who interviews badly and gets rejected because, well, sh*t happens. Nope, it’s the candidate who interviews well, starts strong and twelve months later has made zero structural impact on the business. The role gets quietly redefined. The person then moves on. The problem? Still there.

At POET, we see the wreckage of these hires regularly. Not because the candidates were poor - usually they were perfectly competent - but because the hiring process was set up to find the wrong person for the actual challenge.

Here are the five mistakes we see most often. If even one of them sounds familiar, it’s worth reading on.

1. Writing Job Specs That Describe Tasks, Not Problems

Most CPG job descriptions are lists of activities. “Manage trade spend.” “Develop pricing strategy.” “Support the commercial team.” They tell you what someone will do. They don’t tell you what problem the business actually needs solved.

This matters because the best candidates - the ones who move the needle - are attracted to problems, not lists.

When a job spec reads like a process document, it attracts process people. When it reads like a commercial challenge? It attracts commercially-minded operators who want to make an impact.

Before writing your next brief, answer one question: what specific business outcome does this hire need to deliver in their first twelve months? If you can’t articulate that clearly, you’re not ready to hire.

Also... ask yourself, would I apply for this role or is what I'm writing dry and stale?

2. Interviewing for Technical Skill and Ignoring Commercial Influence

In commercial functions - RGM, Commercial Finance, Sales Ops, Commercial Excellence - technical ability is table stakes. The real differentiator is whether someone can influence decisions across functions.

We regularly see businesses hire brilliant analysts who can build the most sophisticated pricing models in the industry but can’t get a Sales Director to change their behaviour.

The fix is straightforward: interview for influence, not just intellect. Ask candidates to walk you through a time they changed someone’s mind on a commercial decision. Ask how they handled pushback. If they can’t give you concrete examples, they’re probably not the right fit for a role that requires cross-functional impact - regardless of how good their Excel skills are.

3. Defaulting to “Big CPG” Experience as a Proxy for Quality

There’s a persistent assumption in CPG hiring that someone who’s worked at Unilever, P&G or PepsiCo will automatically be the strongest candidate. It’s understandable - these businesses have world-class commercial training programmes.

But it’s also a trap. Large CPG businesses are highly structured and people within them often operate in narrow lanes with significant support infrastructure. Drop them into a PE-backed scale-up or a founder-led business where they need to build from scratch and some thrive while others struggle badly.

The question isn’t “where have they worked?” It’s “what have they built, fixed or changed - and in what kind of environment?” A candidate who’s built an RGM function from nothing in a £50M business may be far more valuable to you than someone who’s optimised one corner of an existing function at a £5B one.

4. Moving Too Slowly and Losing the Best People

The CPG talent market for commercial roles is tighter than most hiring managers realise, particularly in RGM, Commercial Strategy and Commercial Excellence. The best candidates are typically passive - not actively looking - and when they do engage with an opportunity, they’re fielding multiple conversations simultaneously.

We’ve watched businesses lose exceptional candidates because an internal approval process added three weeks, or because feedback after a first interview took ten days. In that time, the candidate accepted elsewhere.

Speed doesn’t mean being reckless. It means having a clear decision-making framework before you start the search, aligning stakeholders on the brief upfront and committing to a timeline you can actually deliver.

5. Treating Recruitment as Transactional Instead of Strategic

The biggest mistake of all: treating the hire as a box to tick rather than a strategic investment in capability. This usually manifests as choosing the cheapest recruiter, giving them a generic brief and expecting magic.

Commercial hires at inflection points - when you’re under margin pressure, changing operating models, scaling quickly or investing in new capabilities for example - are not transactional.

They require a recruiter who understands the commercial landscape, can assess candidates against real business challenges (not just CV fit) and has genuine reach into passive networks.

That’s what POET was built for. Not volume hiring. Targeted recruitment for businesses at an inflection point, where the right hire changes outcomes.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

A failed commercial hire at mid-to-senior level doesn’t just cost you a recruitment fee. It costs you twelve months of stalled progress, the opportunity cost of the decisions that didn’t get made, the cultural impact on the team and the cost of starting again.

Getting it right first time isn’t about luck. It’s about clarity on the problem you’re solving, rigour in how you assess and a recruitment partner who understands your world well enough to challenge your thinking when it needs challenging.

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POET is a specialist CPG recruitment partner focused on commercial growth and transformation roles. We help consumer goods businesses hire exceptional talent across Revenue Growth Management, Commercial Strategy, Sales Operations, Commercial Finance, MS&P and Commercial Excellence.