What a Proper Brief Looks Like

What A Proper Hiring Brief Actually Looks Like (And Why Most Are Broken)

The single biggest predictor of whether a senior search will succeed has nothing to do with the recruiter you pick. It has nothing to do with the salary you offer. It has nothing to do with the state of the candidate market.

It is the quality of the brief.

Get the brief right and good candidates appear. Get the brief wrong and you will spend three months interviewing the wrong people for a role you never properly defined.

I have seen hundreds of hiring briefs across UK construction and infrastructure over 22 years. The vast majority are broken. Not because the people writing them are bad at their jobs, but because they have never been taught what a good brief actually looks like. They copy the last one. They paste the job description into an email. They send it over and hope for the best.

Here is what a proper brief should contain, and how to tell whether yours is fit for purpose.

Start with outcomes, not responsibilities

Most briefs begin with a bullet list of responsibilities. Accountable for this. Responsible for that. Oversees the other.

This tells me nothing. Every Commercial Director in UK construction is accountable for commercial performance. Every Project Director oversees delivery. The responsibilities are not what distinguishes the role from every other version of it in the market. What distinguishes it is the specific set of outcomes you need this person to deliver, in this context, at this time.

A proper brief starts with the answer to one question. What does success look like 18 months from now?

Write that down. Be specific. "Stabilise the commercial team and improve margin protection on the existing portfolio" is a different role to "Build out a new commercial function capable of bidding for infrastructure work." Both are Commercial Director roles. The candidate profile for each is entirely different. If your brief does not make the distinction clear, no recruiter in the world can find you the right person.

Be honest about the context

The second thing a proper brief contains is the unvarnished truth about the situation the person is walking into.

If the programme is under pressure, say so. If there is a previous incumbent and the relationship did not end well, say so. If the client is difficult, say so. If the supply chain is fragile, say so. If there is a political dynamic between the operational leadership and the finance function, say so.

This is not about airing dirty laundry. It is about making sure the candidate who takes the role knows what they are walking into, and that the candidate who decides not to take it opts out before you have wasted three months of their time and yours.

The brief that pretends everything is fine attracts candidates who expect a clean environment. Six weeks into the role, they discover the real situation. Half of them leave within a year. The ones who stay are resentful because they feel they were mis-sold.

A good brief filters ruthlessly at the front end. It attracts candidates who actively want the challenge you are describing and repels the ones who do not.

Define the authority the role has

Here is a question that almost never gets asked during briefing, and it should. What decisions can this person make without checking with anyone else?

If the answer is "almost none", then you are not hiring a director. You are hiring a senior manager with a director title. And you will attract candidates at the wrong level, who will leave within a year because they feel micromanaged.

If the answer is "most things", then you need to make that clear up front. Because the candidates who thrive in genuinely empowered roles are different from the ones who thrive in heavily governed environments. Both exist. Neither is better. But they are not interchangeable.

The authority question cuts through a lot of vague briefing language. It forces the hiring team to think about how the role actually operates day to day, and it gives the recruiter something concrete to test candidates against.

Specify the non-negotiables and the flex

Every brief has things that cannot be compromised and things that can. Most briefs are written as if every criterion is a non-negotiable, which is why the candidate pool always looks thin.

A good brief separates them clearly. Must have direct experience of running a major hospital programme. Nice to have direct NHS client experience. Must be commercially qualified to RICS level or equivalent. Flexible on whether they come from a main contractor or consultancy background.

When you are specific about what is genuinely non-negotiable, the search gets sharper. When you are honest about what is flex, you open the door to candidates who would otherwise be filtered out. Some of the best senior hires I have placed in construction came from slightly sideways backgrounds that the original brief would have excluded.

Set the salary expectation properly

This is where a lot of briefs fall apart. The hiring team has a number in mind, usually based on what the previous incumbent was on. They set that as the range. They expect the market to respond.

The market does not care what the previous incumbent was on. The market cares what comparable roles at comparable organisations are currently paying.

A proper brief includes a real salary benchmark. Not what you want to pay. What the market actually pays for this level of role, at this level of responsibility, in this sector, right now. If your budget is below market, you need to know that before you start. Either you close the gap, or you accept that you will struggle to attract the top quartile of candidates and plan accordingly.

There is no shame in being below market. Plenty of roles are. But pretending you are not is how searches quietly fail.

Agree the process before you start

A briefing conversation should finish with clarity on how the process will run. How many interview stages. Who will be involved. What the rough timeline looks like. What the decision-making authority is and who holds it.

Search is a process with many stakeholders, and the moments where it breaks down are usually process moments rather than candidate moments. The offer that gets delayed for two weeks because a key decision-maker was on holiday. The second-round interview that gets rescheduled three times because diaries could not be aligned. The reference checks that drag because nobody agreed up front who would do them.

Every one of those delays costs you candidates. The best people in the market do not wait politely while your process stumbles. They take a cleaner offer somewhere else.

Agreeing the process at the briefing stage, with real commitment to the timelines, protects the search more than almost anything else.

What a broken brief looks like

Now let me describe the brief I see most often in UK construction, so you can check your own against it.

It is a job description pulled from the last search, with a few details changed. The responsibilities are generic. The essential criteria include every possible qualification and every possible experience. The salary range is "competitive". The context is "a great opportunity to join a growing business". The process is undefined.

This brief will not produce a good hire. It might produce a hire, because there is always someone available. But the probability that the hire is the right person is low. And the probability that you will be running another search in 18 to 24 months is high.

The test I use

Here is how I know a brief is properly ready. I should be able to explain the role to a candidate in one five-minute conversation, and that conversation should either generate genuine interest or genuine opt-out. Anything in between means the brief is too vague.

If every candidate I approach says "tell me more" without any emotional pull one way or the other, the brief is not sharp enough. It is not helping them decide. It is putting the entire filtering burden on later stages of the process, which is too late.

The best briefs I have worked to allow me to have honest, high-conviction conversations with candidates at the very first approach. They know what they are being offered. They know what is expected of them. They know what makes this role different from the other three opportunities on their desk. They can make a real decision.

That is what a good brief does. It enables real conversations.

The ten-question test

If you are about to start a senior search, run your brief through these ten questions before you sign it off.

What specific outcomes does this person need to deliver in the first 12 to 18 months, and how will you measure them?

What is the current situation they are walking into, honestly described?

What decisions can they make without asking permission?

Which three criteria are genuinely non-negotiable, and which are flex?

What does comparable market pay actually look like, and does your range match it?

Who are the three stakeholders this person absolutely has to build relationships with?

What is the one thing about this role that will either attract or repel candidates most strongly?

What are the process steps, timeline, and decision-makers?

What happened to the last person in this role (if applicable), and why?

If you could only hire one type of person, what would their dominant professional trait be?

If you cannot answer those ten questions clearly, you do not have a brief. You have a wish list. Do not start the search until you have done the work to turn the wish list into a brief.

The uncomfortable truth

Most hiring teams do not want to do this work. It is uncomfortable. It forces you to confront things about your organisation and your programme that you would rather gloss over. It requires honest conversations between the hiring manager, the operational team, and sometimes the board.

But it is the work that makes the difference. Every search I have seen succeed at senior level in construction started with a real brief. Every search I have seen fail started with a bad one.

The recruiter you choose matters. The candidate market matters. The process you run matters. But none of them matters as much as the clarity of the brief.

Get that right, and everything else tends to follow.

Get it wrong, and nothing else can save you.