Oh wow, this hits close to home! We've been dealing with something similar for a senior compliance role that's been open for almost 5 months now. What's been eye-opening for me is how much the "reset meeting" approach you mentioned has helped - we did one about 3 weeks ago and discovered that two of the "must-haves" were really just nice-to-haves that got inflated over time. The tricky part I'm still figuring out is timing that conversation right - too early and you look like you're giving up, too late and everyone's already frustrated. I've started tracking not just how many candidates we're seeing, but the quality of feedback loops with hiring managers. When those start getting repetitive ("good but not quite right" on repeat), that's become my signal to push for the reset conversation. Still learning when to trust my gut on this stuff though!
This hits close to home - I've found that around the 90-day mark is when I schedule what I call a "reality recalibration" with the hiring manager and key stakeholders. We literally go line by line through the requirements and separate the "must-haves" from the "nice-to-haves," because often what started as preferences have somehow become non-negotiables. The hardest part is getting leadership to admit that their perfect candidate might not exist in the current market, or if they do, they're probably not looking and definitely not at our budget. Sometimes the best outcome is pausing the req entirely and revisiting the role design rather than burning through more months of everyone's time.