Why PCF Hires Run Late, and Why It Matters More Than Ever
Updated: Sep 30
We've written before about how long a PCF hire takes in Ireland: around three months from engaging a search to contracts signed and notice handed in, then around three months' notice. Six months, if it goes well.
This piece is about the "if it goes well" part. Because often it doesn't, and under the Central Bank's rules for temporary cover, there's very little room for a hire that runs late.
It's rarely the search
Finding the right profiles is rarely what slows a PCF hire down. Most serious interest arrives in the first couple of weeks. The time goes elsewhere.
Diaries
Everyone involved in a senior hire is busy. Both sides can make the process a genuine priority and still lose a week to a regulatory deadline, a board pack or a client issue that can't wait. Finding a slot that suits three or four senior people, more than once, takes longer than anyone plans for.
Life
Hiring is done by people, and people have lives. A sick child. An unexpected meeting. A family matter that comes first, as it should. In close to two decades of doing this, no amount of preparation on either side has made a process immune to it. Something always moves, and when one thing moves, everything behind it waits.
Changed minds
A professional reconsiders. A firm rethinks the shape of the role. Neither is unusual, and either can send a process back several steps.
Decisions
This is the big one, and it usually sits with the hiring firm. Wanting to see more people when the right person is already in front of you. Waiting for one more stakeholder to weigh in. Or plain indecision. It's the most common reason a good process stalls, and the one most within a firm's control.
Why this matters now
Six months is roughly the whole window the Central Bank allows for temporary cover. A Temporary Officer can hold a vacant PCF role for no more than six months, and where the role is permanently vacated, the permanent PCF application must be submitted within three months of their appointment (Guidance on the Standards of Fitness and Probity, November 2025, paras 2.36 and 2.37).
A well-run process fills almost the entire window. One that runs late doesn't fit.
What firms can control
You can't stop life getting in the way. You can stop your own process adding to it.
Start the permanent search the week the resignation lands.
Agree interview dates for every stage at the start, not one stage at a time.
Agree who makes the final decision, and by when, before the first interview.
Decide in advance what "good enough to hire" looks like, so a strong person isn't parked while you look for a perfect one.
Line up temporary cover in parallel, so the pressure of an empty seat doesn't drive a rushed decision either.
Talk to Nexus Search about a PCF search at paul@nexussearch.io
Where does your firm stand?
Take the free PCF Hiring Readiness Check: 16 questions on bench strength, succession, D&I, appointment process and INEDs, with an instant score.
Related guides: The hardest PCF roles to fill and PCF succession planning.
Prefer to talk it through? Email Paul Smyth.
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