The quality of a shortlist depends on the quality of the brief. When a search goes badly, the cause is usually found on day one: the recruiter was given a job description, and a job description is not a brief.
A job description is not a brief
A job description is written to be posted. It lists responsibilities, qualifications and a paragraph about the company. Its job is to attract applications.
A brief is written for the person doing the search. Its job is to help them choose. It answers the questions a job description avoids: what matters most, what can be traded away, and what the last person got right or wrong.
You can write a good brief in thirty minutes if you answer five questions.
1. What will this person have done in their first 90 days?
Responsibilities describe a job forever. Outcomes describe success. “Manage the sales pipeline” could mean anything. “Has taken over the forty open deals from the founder and closed the first five” tells a recruiter what kind of person to look for: someone who has taken over an existing book before, not only built one from nothing.
Write three outcomes. If you cannot, the role is not yet clear enough to hire for.
2. Which five skills are essential?
If the list has fifteen, none of them is essential. A long list does not raise the bar. It hides it, because the recruiter has to guess which items you would give up.
Split the list in two. Must-haves: without these, do not send the profile. Keep it to five. Good to have: useful for choosing between two strong candidates.
A simple test for a must-have: would you reject an otherwise excellent person for lacking it? If not, move it down.
3. Who will they work with every day?
This is where fit is decided, and it is the part most briefs leave out. Tell the recruiter about the manager: how involved are they, how do they give feedback, what kind of person has done well under them before? Tell them about the team: its size, its pace, how decisions get made, whether people work from the office.
Be honest about the hard parts. “The team is new and processes are still forming” is useful. A candidate who needs structure should hear that before they resign from somewhere else.
4. What is the pay band and the latest start date?
Being exact here saves everyone weeks. “Market rate” and “as soon as possible” are not answers. Give the band you can pay, including any variable part, and the date by which the person must have joined.
In India, the start date decides who you can consider. If you need someone in six weeks, candidates on ninety days’ notice are out unless you can buy out the notice. Say so at the start.
5. Why did the last person in this role succeed or struggle?
The answer usually tells us more than the whole job description. “She was technically strong but did not push back on the client” tells the recruiter what to probe. “He was the best we ever had because he asked for help early” tells them what to look for.
If the role is new, answer a different question: who in the company today is closest to what you want, and why?
A short example
A weak brief: “Senior backend developer, 5 to 8 years, Java, microservices, cloud, good communication, immediate joiner preferred.”
A useful one: “Backend developer for a team of six. In 90 days they should own our billing service and have shipped the new invoicing feature. Must-haves: Java, has run a service in production, has been on call, writes tests without being asked, explains trade-offs clearly. The lead reviews everything closely in the first month and then steps back. Band and latest joining date attached. The last person struggled because he waited to be told what to do.”
The second takes five more minutes to write. It removes most of the wrong profiles before anyone’s time is spent on them.
Agree it before the search starts
With those five answers we write a one-page brief, send it back to the client and agree it before we approach a single candidate. Ten minutes of correction at this stage saves a week of wrong profiles later.
Whoever does your hiring, ask them to play the brief back to you in their own words. If what you hear is not what you meant, fix it now.
