内容概览
A hiring brief is the written agreement between a hiring manager and whoever is running the search about what is being hired, why, and what would make a candidate a yes. It is not a job advertisement and not a job description: a job description describes the work, while a brief describes the decision. Most searches that stall were not badly sourced — they were badly briefed, and nobody found out until the third rejected shortlist.
What is a hiring brief, and how is it different from a job description?
A job description defines the role for the person who will do it; a hiring brief defines the search for the people who will fill it. The description is a permanent document owned by HR. The brief is written for one vacancy, at one moment, and it carries the things a description never says out loud: why the role is open, who the person will replace or sit beside, what the manager will compromise on, and what they will not.
If the only document a consultant receives is a job description, the first shortlist is a guess dressed up as a search.
Why do most briefs fail?
Three failures account for most of it, and all three are visible before the search begins.
- **Requirements that are a wish list rather than a threshold.** Twelve "essential" criteria is not a specification, it is an unranked list. If every line is essential, the manager has not decided, and the consultant will decide for them.
- **A hidden decision-maker.** The person who signs off is not in the room at briefing, meets the candidate at stage three, and applies criteria nobody else was working to.
- **No agreed benchmark.** Nobody has established what this role pays in this city, so the first offer is the first time anyone tests it — at the point where being wrong costs the candidate.
What does a complete brief contain?
A complete brief answers seven questions in writing, and the fourth and fifth are the ones usually missing.
- Why is this role open now — growth, replacement, or a gap someone has been covering?
- What will this person own in their first six months, stated as outcomes rather than duties?
- Which requirements are thresholds, and which are preferences? Rank them.
- What is the band, and who has approved it?
- Who interviews, in what order, and who makes the final decision?
- What does the team look like — who does this person report to, and who reports to them?
- What would make an otherwise strong candidate a no?
The last question is the one worth insisting on. A manager who can describe a near-miss has a real specification. A manager who cannot usually recognises what they want only when they see it, which is a search that runs long.
How specific should the requirements be?
Specific about outcomes, loose about the path to them. "Has closed enterprise deals in a regulated industry" is a threshold you can assess. "Eight to ten years of experience" is a proxy for that threshold that excludes the person who did it in six and includes the person who has repeated year one eight times.
Years-of-experience bands are worth treating with suspicion for a second reason: in several Asia-Pacific markets they correlate closely enough with age to invite a discrimination question about the advertisement, not just about the decision.
When should a brief be revised?
After the first shortlist, always — and this is a scheduled conversation, not an escalation. The first three or four candidates are the market's answer to the brief as written. If the manager rejects all of them for a reason that was not in the brief, the brief was incomplete, and rewriting it after four rejections is faster than sourcing against it for another month.
A search that has seen eight candidates without a second interview is not short of candidates. It is short of agreement.
What should happen before the brief goes out?
Two checks, both cheap. Read the brief back to the hiring manager as a set of trade-offs — "you would take the candidate without the industry background if they had the team lead experience, correct?" — and get the band confirmed by whoever controls it, in writing, before the first conversation with a candidate.
If you want a second opinion on a brief before it goes to market, send it to us. A consultant who covers that desk will tell you where it will stall, and whether the band matches what that role is actually paying in that city.