When a search stalls, the conversation usually turns to sourcing. The recruiter is not finding the right people; the market is tight; the salary is not competitive. Occasionally that is true. Far more often the problem is upstream: the brief describes a person who does not exist, or exists in numbers too small to hire at the offered package.
A brief is not a job description. A job description lists duties. A brief tells a recruiter what has to be true about a candidate for you to say yes, and, just as importantly, what you would trade away.
The four questions a fillable brief answers
1. What must this person achieve in the first twelve months?
Not responsibilities, outcomes. "Own the finance function" is a responsibility. "Close the annual audit without qualification, cut the monthly close from twenty days to eight, and build an FP&A capability that did not previously exist" is a set of outcomes. The second version tells a recruiter which candidates to look for, and gives you something to reference against later.
2. Which requirements are genuinely non-negotiable?
Most requirement lists contain three genuine constraints and eleven preferences presented as constraints. Separate them explicitly. If a chartered accountant qualification is mandatory, say so. If ten years of experience is really a proxy for judgement, say that instead, because plenty of eight-year candidates have it and plenty of fifteen-year candidates do not.
3. What is the real compensation range?
Ranges that exist to preserve negotiating room cost you candidates. If your ceiling is 45 lakh, a recruiter who believes it is 35 will screen out the people you would actually have hired. Give the true range and the flexibility around it, including variable pay and equity, and let the recruiter position it honestly.
4. What is the process, and who decides?
Number of stages, who is in each one, how quickly feedback comes back, and who signs off. Processes with unnamed final approvers are where good candidates go to be lost.
The trade-off conversation nobody has
Every hard role involves a trade-off across four axes: skills, experience level, compensation and location. You can usually fix three. Insisting on all four is how a search runs for five months.
The productive version of this conversation happens at kick-off, not week eight. It sounds like: if we cannot find someone with domain experience in this city at this budget, would we rather pay more, hire from an adjacent sector, accept hybrid working, or take someone more junior with a stronger trajectory? Answer that in advance and a stalled search becomes a decision rather than a crisis.
A brief that cannot be filled at the stated budget is not a recruitment problem. It is a planning problem that recruitment will be blamed for.
A five-minute test for any brief
- Could a recruiter name three companies where this person probably works today?
- Is there a specific outcome you would use to judge success at twelve months?
- Have you identified which requirement you would drop first under pressure?
- Does the compensation range reflect what you would actually pay?
- Is the interview process written down, with named decision-makers?
If the answer to any of those is no, fix it before the search starts. It costs an hour at kick-off and routinely saves a month in the middle.
