Candidate brief template: make every requirement name a task

A useful candidate brief template ties every requirement to a task the person will actually do. An item on the hiring manager's wish list with no task behind it does not belong in the brief yet. Done right, the brief helps candidates judge the fit and tells the hiring team what evidence to gather.

Ask the manager to defend each requirement with a task. "Commercial", "technical" and "entrepreneurial" may matter, but only once they become observable work. (Ask three interviewers what "entrepreneurial" means and you will get three different jobs.)

1. Sort the wish list into four groups

Label every item as required at entry, learnable with stated support, preference or unresolved. The unresolved group stops a disagreement from quietly becoming a mandatory filter.

OPM's job-analysis guidance ties competencies to job tasks, and its structured-interview guide separates what a person needs on entering the job. Use that to challenge items in your first screen.

A learnable skill needs a learning arrangement. If the manager can't name the documentation, training or person who will help, "they can learn it" is an unfunded assumption.

2. Rewrite each requirement as work

Here is a made-up brief for a first customer implementation hire, showing the editing process rather than universal requirements.

Original request	Job-related rewrite	Evidence to seek
A great communicator	Makes an incomplete customer handoff understandable to the next owner	A specific example or short handoff exercise
Has worked at a famous company	Has handled implementations with comparable complexity and limited support	Their own responsibilities and available resources
Knows our exact tracking tool	Can maintain a clear project record; our tool can be learned with onboarding	An example of organizing changing project information
Strategic and hands-on	Can choose a next step and perform the agreed implementation tasks	Example of a tradeoff and the work they personally did
Five years in the industry	Unresolved: identify what indispensable experience the year count represents	Relevant scope and examples; retain any genuinely required qualification separately

Keep a qualification the work or an applicable rule actually requires. Drop a proxy that survives only because it is easy to search for.

3. Fit the brief on one page

Replace the example content with your team's decisions.

Purpose of the role: Own the coordination of customer implementations so that responsibilities, readiness and unresolved risks are visible.

Work in scope: Clarify the commercial handoff, maintain the implementation plan, document customer constraints and coordinate the readiness review.

Work outside scope: Approving contract exceptions, promising new product delivery, and managing a department that does not yet exist.

Required at entry: Evidence of making an unclear operational handoff actionable and of raising a risk before it becomes a surprise.

Learnable with support: Our product terminology and project tracking tool. The manager owns the training plan and scheduled review time.

Context: Small team, changing process, direct customer communication and a named product escalation partner.

Assessment evidence: One structured conversation about relevant past work plus a bounded fictional handoff exercise. No request for a previous employer's confidential materials.

Practical terms: Actual location or working arrangement, expected schedule, compensation information where appropriate or required, and the known selection steps.

Open decision: Whether the forecast workload supports the proposed employment arrangement. Settle this before asking candidates to invest in later stages.

4. Write it for candidates too

Tell candidates what the process involves and how to ask for adjustments. CIPD's selection guidance emphasizes advance information about the assessment and a chance for the candidate to evaluate the role.

A realistic brief lets a candidate raise a real concern: "I can own the implementation plan, but who decides when product work takes priority?" That is useful evidence about your setup. Don't hold it against them.

Don't present uncertainty as excitement. If the reporting line or scope is unsettled, say what is known, who will decide the rest and when.

5. Get everyone screening against the same job

Before sourcing, have the manager, recruiter and interviewers each mark, separately, what would exclude a candidate. If the recruiter treats the exact tool as mandatory and the manager calls it learnable, candidates are being screened for two different jobs.

Version the brief when a real requirement changes, and check whether people already assessed need a fair chance at the revised criterion. Never move the standard to fit a favorite.

If you still can't name the task behind a requirement, go back to role research. One focused conversation with someone who has done comparable work can be more useful than another adjective.