Hiring, from kick-off to offer.

A rushed kick-off left everyone confused. I came out without the full picture of the role, so I shortlisted the wrong people and couldn't question candidates well. The hiring manager and the candidate felt it too. A good hire starts with a clear brief, and too often the brief lived in someone's head.

• Hiring managers are busy. Anything that felt like extra paperwork would be skipped.
• Every team hired differently. Quality depended on who ran the process.

I built a kick-off template that turns the hiring manager's intake conversation into an agreed brief and job description. It is the first step of an end-to-end hiring system, from kick-off to offer.

1. Kick-off notes. I took structured notes during the conversation.
2. Summary check. I sent the hiring manager a summary and asked, "Is this what you meant?"
3. Job description. Once they agreed, I wrote it from my template and published it in Greenhouse.
4. Scorecards. I co-developed competency-based scorecards with hiring managers.
5. Interviewer enablement. Every interviewer learnt what good looks like.

• A faster path to posting. Moving from kick-off to job description to a published role got easier.
• A clearer brief for me. I understood what each hiring manager was looking for.
• A shared record. If a hiring manager drifted from the brief, I pointed back to our notes and we talked it through.
• What they noticed. Hiring managers said I was very organised and liked that I took the notes.

• A form before the meeting. A Google Apps Script form collects the brief first, and the meeting is only for questions.
• Approve in one click. The hiring manager approves the job description, I review it, and it goes into Greenhouse.
• Measure it from the start. I'd track time from kick-off to offer and how often the candidate profile changed.