How to brief your headhunter so the search starts right

The first shortlist lands in your inbox, you open the profiles and none of them quite works. One comes from a sector that has nothing to do with yours, another expects a lot more than you can pay, and the third is fine but not what you had in mind. When we sit down with clients to work out what went wrong in cases like this, the problem nearly always started earlier. It started in the briefing.

That first meeting decides a large part of the search. If your headhunter leaves with a vague idea of the role, they have to fill the gaps with guesses, and every wrong guess becomes a candidate who does not fit and another week gone. If they leave with a clear picture, they can go straight to the right people and, something that is easy to forget, tell your story in a way that persuades someone who was not looking.

Who needs to be in the room

The hiring manager, the person the role will report to, has to be there. Nobody knows better what the job looks like day to day. It helps to have someone from People or HR as well, to cover terms, process and how the hire fits company policy. And if the hiring manager is not the one who makes the final call, whoever does should either attend or at least have given their view beforehand. For leadership roles that is often the CEO or a partner.

We have more than once run a thorough briefing with a single person, only to find out two weeks later that the CEO had a different profile in mind. Very little slows a search down as much as that.

Half an hour with your team first

You do not need a polished document. You just need the team to have talked through these questions and agreed on the answers:

• Why is the role open? Is it a replacement, a new position or part of a reorganisation?
• What should this person have achieved after six months, and after a year?
• Which three or four skills are genuinely non-negotiable?
• What kind of person would not work out here, even if they tick every box on paper?
• What salary range has been approved, and how much room is there?

The fourth question is the one people tend to skip, and it is the one that tells us the most.

What your headhunter needs to know

The company as it really is

Your headhunter will be describing your company to people who have never heard of it, or who only know part of the story. They need a good deal more than your website offers: your stage, your funding position, your medium-term plans and how the team the role sits in is organised. They also need the challenges you would not put in a public job ad, and what makes people stay or leave.

We know some of this is uncomfortable to share with an outsider. But a strong candidate will find out the reality during the interviews anyway, and it lands far better when it has been explained properly from the start than when it comes as a surprise in round three.

The role and the person

Beyond the job description, walk them through a normal week in the role and how the time is split. Who they will work with, which relationships are delicate, which decisions they can make on their own, and what they have to work with in terms of team, budget and tools.

When it comes to the profile, try to describe what the person needs to be able to do, not just where they have been. It helps a lot to know which companies or sectors a good fit might come from, and which ones probably would not work. If you know someone, inside or outside the business, who represents what you are after, explain what makes them interesting. And be clear about what is negotiable: languages, location, years of experience. Every bit of flexibility opens up the market considerably.

Money, timing and process

Salary range, bonus, equity, benefits and the working arrangement as it really is, not as it reads in the policy. Then there is a question worth answering honestly: why should someone who is happy where they are listen to you? If you struggle with it, work on that message before you go to market.

On process, your headhunter needs to know the interview stages, who is involved in each and what they are assessing, how those people’s diaries look over the coming weeks and how quickly you will give feedback. Add the target start date and any constraints around it.

Awkward questions are a good sign

A briefing should be a conversation. If your headhunter just takes notes and never asks you anything that makes you stop and think, be a little wary. Expect them to ask why the previous person did not work out, if there was one, or whether you have looked at internal candidates. Also what happens if someone excellent turns up outside the range, or which candidates you have already seen through other channels and why they did not move forward.

None of this comes from mistrust. It is simply how you spot the obstacles before you run into them.

Once the meeting is over

Ask your headhunter for a written summary of the profile and the search plan, and go through it with your team. That is the cheapest moment to fix a misunderstanding, while it is still a sentence in a document rather than a candidate in your calendar.

Agree, too, how often you will catch up and through which channel, what information you will get on each candidate put forward, and how the profile will be adjusted if the market shows that what you want does not exist on those terms. That last conversation is much easier to have before anyone is under pressure.

An hour that saves weeks

Some companies fit the briefing into twenty minutes between two other meetings and send the job description by email afterwards. What usually follows is a first shortlist nobody is sold on and a second meeting to do what could have been done at the start.

At Mimmic Talent we call it an active listening session, and it is the part of the process we spend the most time on with every client for exactly that reason. If you have a search about to start and would like to prepare it with us, get in touch.