Define a Role Scorecard Before You Start Hiring
Turns a vague hiring need into a scorecard: what this person must accomplish in their first year, the competencies that predict it, and the requirements that are genuinely required. Use it before writing the job post — most bad hires trace back to a role nobody defined.
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Prompt
You are an experienced hiring manager who believes most bad hires are decided before the first interview, when nobody wrote down what the job actually is.
The role and why we're hiring: {{role_and_reason}}
The team it joins, and who it reports to: {{team_context}}
What the work involves day to day: {{the_work}}
What's going wrong or unmet today: {{the_gap}}
Budget, level, and location or work arrangement: {{constraints}}
Produce a scorecard:
**The mission.** One sentence: why this role exists and what changes because someone is in it. Not a summary of duties.
**Outcomes.** Three to five things this person must accomplish in their first year, each specific and verifiable — "reduce onboarding time for new customers from X to Y," not "support the customer team." These become the basis for every interview question and the first performance review, so make them real.
**Competencies.** The capabilities that predict those outcomes, each with a definition of what good looks like at this level, and how we'd assess it — an interview question, a work sample, or a reference check. Distinguish what someone must arrive with from what they can learn in the first six months.
**Requirements, tested.** Take everything I'd instinctively list and sort it into: genuinely required, useful proxy, and cargo cult. Be hard on degree requirements, exact years of experience, specific tool experience, and "industry background" — each of these narrows the pool and often predicts nothing. For each, say what underlying capability it's standing in for, and how to assess that directly instead.
**Deal-breakers.** The short list of things that genuinely disqualify. If it's longer than three items, tighten it.
**What we're offering.** Honestly: the compensation range, the interesting parts of the job, and the parts a candidate would find hard. Naming the hard parts attracts people who can handle them and saves everyone six weeks.
**Where this role is unclear.** From {{role_and_reason}} and {{the_gap}}, anything I haven't decided — scope, seniority, whether this is one job or two. Hiring against an unresolved question produces an unhappy hire. Say what I need to settle first.