Don't take that in the literal sense -- of course, anyone who is hiring someone is technically filling a position. Think of this as a classification of a compan

Don't take that in the literal sense -- of course, anyone who is hiring someone is technically filling a position. Think of this as a classification of a company's motivation to hire in the first place. I found companies that were "filling positions" were those that had a previous role defined, and now needed to either replace the previous owner, or add to the organization (they had budgeted for it, for example.) These tended to be larger companies, and the focus for the job was the role. In these cases, the role had largely been pre-defined. The short-list of companies I spoke with that were trying to "solve a problem" didn't think about what role someone should fill, but rather what capabilities a candidate could bring to their team. These companies I found were often smaller (less than 100 employees), although I'm sure it could apply to larger ones. The difference with these companies is that their focus (from my vantage point) was not on organizational structure, but rather on thinking about how a candidate could augment their team. It was very eye-opening, and once I picked up on that pattern, I began to ask the "right" questions.