Companies Invest Millions in Resilience… But Leave Critical Roles Open for Months

Organizations continue to invest millions of dollars into strengthening resilience capabilities. Cybersecurity platforms, operational resilience initiatives, crisis management technology, emergency notification systems, recovery environments, governance frameworks, third-party risk programs, and consulting assessments have all become critical investments as organizations attempt to navigate an increasingly complex operational landscape.

Yet despite these investments, many organizations still underestimate one of the most overlooked operational risks of all: leaving critical resilience positions unfilled for extended periods of time.

This is not intended to criticize internal Human Resources or Procurement teams. Most HR and Procurement professionals are balancing enormous workloads, competing priorities, compliance requirements, budget scrutiny, and pressure to move quickly while controlling costs. They play a critical role within every organization. In many cases, they also may not even realize that highly specialized resilience recruiting firms exist, firms that have spent decades building trusted, relationship-driven global networks specifically within the resilience profession. My own experience in this space dates back to the Y2K era, supporting resilience hiring initiatives across six continents and developing long-standing relationships throughout the business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis management, cyber resilience, operational resilience, and third-party risk community.

But resilience hiring is fundamentally different from most other hiring initiatives.

For anyone in the C-Suite, resilience is no longer a siloed function sitting quietly in the background. It has become deeply interconnected with operational stability, cyber readiness, regulatory compliance, customer trust, supply chain continuity, technology recovery, brand protection, and executive governance. A disruption today rarely impacts only one department. It impacts operations, revenue, customers, reputation, regulatory exposure, and leadership credibility simultaneously.

That is precisely why resilience roles require a different level of attention.

Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Crisis Management, Operational Resilience, Cyber Resilience, Enterprise Risk, Third-Party Risk, Emergency Management, and Security roles are highly nuanced disciplines. Even within the profession itself, terminology varies significantly between organizations. One company’s “Operational Resilience” role may be heavily technology-focused, while another organization may align the same title more closely with crisis management, governance, or enterprise risk. Some roles require deep technical recovery expertise. Others require executive facilitation skills during high-pressure events. Many require both.

The nuance matters far more than many organizations realize.

When highly specialized resilience positions are treated like generalized hiring exercises, several unintended risks can emerge. Exceptional candidates are often overlooked simply because their resumes do not perfectly mirror the language within a job description or applicant tracking system. Some of the strongest resilience professionals built their careers long before terms like “operational resilience” became mainstream terminology. Their backgrounds may span crisis management, IT recovery, cyber governance, emergency management, vendor resilience, and enterprise risk, but not necessarily under today’s exact labels.

At the same time, organizations and internal recruiters are increasingly inundated with resumes that look remarkably similar. Many are polished, keyword-optimized, and carefully tailored to specific job descriptions, making it increasingly difficult to determine who truly possesses the depth of experience being presented on paper. In some cases, resumes lack meaningful metrics, measurable accomplishments, or real examples of how an individual successfully managed disruptions, influenced executive decisions, strengthened governance, or improved recovery capabilities.

AI-assisted resume development has certainly helped candidates improve presentation and formatting, but it has also contributed to a growing trust challenge within the hiring process. Hiring managers are spending more time trying to determine which candidates genuinely possess the practical experience, leadership maturity, and judgment required to lead through real-world disruption versus those who simply understand how to optimize a resume for a specific opening.

The strongest professionals in this field bring something much harder to evaluate: the ability to make decisions under pressure, communicate effectively during uncertainty, understand operational dependencies, navigate regulatory expectations, align cross-functional stakeholders, and help organizations stabilize during moments that directly impact business operations and executive visibility.

Those qualities are difficult to assess without deep immersion in the resilience profession itself.

Another issue organizations may be underestimating is the amount of time these searches consume when roles are not properly positioned from the beginning. I continue to watch critical resilience positions remain open for months while organizations cycle through reposts, sourcing rounds, interview resets, compensation debates, approval delays, and changing expectations around scope or reporting structure. Sometimes the position quietly loses momentum internally because it has remained open too long. In other cases, leaders are forced to continually rejustify the importance of the role itself.

Meanwhile, the organization continues operating without the very professionals responsible for helping prepare for disruptions, coordinate recovery, strengthen governance, manage incidents, support regulatory readiness, and maintain operational continuity. Yet those same organizations would rarely tolerate leaving other critical operational control functions unsupported for extended periods of time.

At some point, organizations need to ask themselves an uncomfortable but important question:

At what point does leaving a critical resilience role unfilled become an operational risk in itself?

After more than 25 years of collecting and analyzing resilience program benchmarking and compensation data, I have also seen organizations unintentionally create hiring challenges before the role is ever posted publicly. Compensation bands are often misaligned with the level of expertise, leadership maturity, regulatory exposure, or technical depth the organization is actually seeking. The result is frequently prolonged recruitment cycles, candidate drop-off, interview fatigue, or offers being declined late in the process.

I also regularly see resilience roles positioned too broadly, too narrowly, or written in ways that unintentionally send mixed messages to the market. Some organizations combine multiple highly specialized disciplines into one position while expecting deep expertise across all areas without clearly defining priorities, reporting structure, executive visibility, or strategic objectives. In a profession as nuanced as resilience, wording matters. A poorly positioned role may unintentionally attract the wrong candidates while discouraging highly qualified professionals from engaging altogether.

This is where specialized resilience expertise can add value long before resumes are ever submitted. The value is not simply “finding candidates.” It is understanding the nuances between disciplines, recognizing transferable experience, aligning compensation expectations to market realities, identifying leadership maturity, and leveraging long-standing relationships within the resilience ecosystem that traditional sourcing methods often cannot access.

In many cases, the strongest resilience professionals are identified through years of relationship-building within the profession itself, not simply through job postings or keyword searches.

Because the reality is that many of the strongest resilience professionals are not actively applying to jobs every day. They are already employed. They are participating in industry councils, speaking at conferences, contributing to benchmarking initiatives, networking within trusted professional communities, and responding selectively to people and firms they trust to understand the profession.

Relationships still matter in resilience hiring, perhaps now more than ever.

To be clear, this is not an argument that internal HR teams cannot successfully fill resilience roles. Many absolutely do. In fact, the strongest hiring outcomes often come from collaboration between internal recruiting teams and specialized external partners who bring deep domain expertise, market intelligence, and established industry relationships.

But organizations should ask themselves an honest question:

If resilience truly matters to the business, why are resilience hiring decisions sometimes treated like commodity hiring exercises?

Operational disruptions continue to grow more complex. Cyber events, third-party failures, geopolitical instability, severe weather, technology dependencies, and evolving regulatory expectations continue to elevate organizational risk exposure. Organizations are investing heavily in resilience programs, governance frameworks, technology platforms, and recovery capabilities because leadership teams understand the consequences of being unprepared.

But resilience is not built through technology alone. It is built through people.

And perhaps the greatest hidden risk inside some resilience programs today is not a missing platform, framework, or technology investment, but how long organizations are willing to operate without the people responsible for holding those programs together.

After more than 25 years immersed in the resilience profession, I continue to believe the strongest resilience programs are built through a combination of trusted relationships, experienced leadership, actionable benchmarking data, and organizations willing to think strategically about both operational risk and talent.

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