The vacancy brief that avoids 3 months of poorly focused search

80% of the selection processes that take more than three months do not fail by lack of candidates. They fail because the company never made clear what profile it was looking for. And a badly done brief pollutes the whole process: wrong sourcing, blurry screening, interviews with changing criteria, offers rejected at the last moment.

In Findehr we start each process with a 60-minute brief session. The same 12 questions, in the same order, with whom you decide in the company. If you answer them well, we can close in 18-30 days. If not, any number of resumes is noise.

This is the brief as we use it internally. We publish it below to download in Markdown format, and I explain why of each question.

Before 12 questions: two rules

One. The brief is answered by the person who decides. Not the area manager who delegates to HR. No HR who improvises. The person who will sign the offer, the one who will live with the result, the one who pays the salary. If that person "does not have time" for an hour, the process has already started badly.

Two. If a question bothers you to answer it, that is the most important of all. It is almost always the salary or the real reason for the vacancy.

The 12 Questions

1. Why is this vacancy opened now?

Substitution, growth, dismissal, medical discharge, new business line — each source changes profile. A dismissal replacement usually needs someone differentA new post needs tolerance of ambiguity, the real motive, not the official one, is the one that matters.

2. What is the last similar position they covered and how did it go?

If it worked, what did that person do right the first 90 days. If it didn’t work, why. The company has muscle memory: if the last time he was hired wrong to a similar position, there is a pattern to avoid.

3. What three concrete results should the person deliver in the first 6 months?

Not tasks, results. Not "manage the team," but "reduce team rotation from 30% to 15%." Not "carry marketing," but "up MQL monthly from 80 to 200." If the company cannot articulate this, it is not yet ready to open the post.

4. Who is the "phantom candidate" — someone real who would make the offer today if you could clone it?

This unlocks more than any job description. If the answer is "X already working in the competition", you have a pay and cultural benchmark. If the answer is "no one can think of anyone", the position is poorly defined.

5. What is the maximum wage you would pay for the perfect person?

Not the official rank. The royal roof. What you would be willing to sign if the unicorn appeared. This figure defines the whole search: it determines who you compete with in the market, which seniority is realistic, and what to discard before you start.

If the real ceiling is €35,000 and the market position is paid €50,000, you don’t have a selection problem. You have a budget problem. Better to know on day 1 than day 90.

6. What three non-negotiable things does it have to have?

Languages, degree, location, previous experience, specific software. Maximum three. If you put five, none is really unnegotiable: you are saying "the perfect or nothing", which in practice means "nobody".

7. And three things that seem important but are not really important?

The most useful of all the brief. About university degree, years of exact experience, optional languages, knowledge of concrete tools. This question extends the pool of candidates by 30-50% without lowering the quality.

8. What is the team to which it is incorporated? Size, ages, dynamics.

The fit with the team predicts retention better than the fit with the position. A junior person in a senior team learns; in a homogeneously junior team is bored. A profile with high autonomy suffers with a manager hands-on. The more concrete, the better.

9. What is the worst part of the job?

Every vacancy has a worse part: the difficult customer, the legacy system to maintain, the office without natural light, rotation of shifts, the night kitchen. If the person finds out on the 30th day, he leaves on the 60th day. If he finds out in the interview, those who accept, accept with everything.

10. Who interviews, in what order, and who decides?

Three top interviews. More is mistreatment of the candidate and business sign that he does not dare to decide. Define who evaluates what (technical fit, cultural fit, final decision) before starting — do not improvise interviewer profiles when the candidate is already waiting.

11. What time does the search have, and what if it is not covered?

Realistic deadline (not "for yesterday", not "when it appears"). And plan B: will the tasks be shared in the team? will it be outsourced? will the project be postponed? Knowing the real opportunity cost adjusts the urgency and budget.

12. If this search is perfect, what happens next time we open a similar post?

Do we build an internal pipeline? Do we make continuous talent mapping? Well growing SMEs do not hire ad-hoc — build ability to hireThis question pushes you to think about the next vacancy while you close this one.

How to use the brief in practice

One session, 60 minutes, calendar locked. Not by email, not by WhatsApp, not by chunks. It’s a conversation. It’s someone who takes notes and returns the brief written in 24h for validation. If the responsible doesn’t validate it in a week, the process doesn’t start — urgency is symptom, it doesn’t cause.

Check at 4 weeks. If we've been in for a month and the finalists don't fit in, it's not a candidate problem, it's just that the brief needs a fit, better to recalibrate than to keep pushing profiles that won't fit.

File the brief when closing. It goes into internal memory. Next time a similar position is opened, you don't start from scratch. In 18 months, the briefs file is the most valuable asset in the area of operations of a SME — more useful than any ATS.

When the brief is not enough

There are three scenarios where even a well done brief does not save the process:

1. When the wage ceiling is 20%+ below the market. The brief only confirms that you are competing in another league. You have to climb the roof or redefine the profile downwards.
2. When there are two decision makers and they disagree without knowing it. If the CEO wants a strategic profile and the COO wants an executor, no candidate satisfies both. The brief discovers it and forces them to align before they begin.
3. When the job should actually be two. Sometimes the correct answer is "this job doesn't exist, let's split it up in commercial + operations, hire a good one in everything, get cheaper and last longer".

Downloadable template

The 12 questions in Markdown format for you to use directly in Notion, Google Docs, Coda or whatever your tool is. The structure is designed to print on an A4 sheet if you need it on paper.

If after doing the brief you realize that you prefer to delegate the whole process, you also tell us that. That’s what we do — complete processes with flat price, no salary fees, with dedicated equipment.