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HMAND

Tools — for hiring teams

Is this brief ready to search on?

Fill in what you know about the role. You get a plain assessment of the brief, the reasons behind every point, the questions still to settle, and a structured brief built from your own words. It all stays in this browser — nothing is sent to us and there is no form in the way.

The role

What you would put on an advert.

The business outcome — what is different in six months because this person joined.

Skills

Non-negotiables only. Counted: 0.

Helpful, but not a reason to reject. Counted: 0.

Shape of the role

Permanent or contract

Seniority

Management responsibility

Domain or sector knowledge

Urgency

Where the work happens

Working pattern

Between 0 and 7.

The base, or the region a remote hire has to sit in.

Pay

How pay is handled

Optional, and only held in this browser. Leave it blank if you would rather not type it.

Interview process

Everything a candidate has to attend, up to 12.

Assessment

Needs decisions

This is workable, but there are decisions in it that are currently being left to whoever writes the advert. Making them now saves a round of rework later.

3 to fix · 0 narrowing the pool · 2 to decide. This is a set of stated rules applied to your answers, not a market benchmark or a prediction.

What the review found

  • Fix before searching

    The business outcome is not stated yet

    A list of skills describes a kind of person; it does not describe the job. Without the outcome, everyone involved — you, your interviewers and any candidate — is guessing at what success looks like, and shortlists get argued about on taste rather than fit.

    Ask yourself: If this hire goes well, what is measurably different in six months that would not have happened otherwise?

  • Fix before searching

    The role has no title

    The title is how the role is found and how candidates decide whether it is for them. It is also the first place a seniority mismatch shows up.

    Ask yourself: What would you call this role on an advert, in language used outside your company?

  • Fix before searching

    Nothing is marked as essential

    If nothing is essential, every CV is arguable and the sift happens by instinct. A small number of genuine non-negotiables is what makes a shortlist defensible.

    Ask yourself: Which three or four things must be true on day one, whatever else is missing?

  • Worth deciding

    No location given

    Anything that requires attendance needs a place attached to it, otherwise candidates cannot work out whether the commute is possible before they apply.

    Ask yourself: Where is the base, and how far is a reasonable commute from it?

  • Worth deciding

    Pay is marked as disclosed but not entered

    The brief says the figure will be shared, so it needs to exist before the role goes out. Deciding it under offer pressure rarely goes well.

    Ask yourself: What is the approved range, and who signs off on the top of it?

Questions to resolve first

  1. If this hire goes well, what is measurably different in six months that would not have happened otherwise?
  2. What would you call this role on an advert, in language used outside your company?
  3. Which three or four things must be true on day one, whatever else is missing?
  4. Where is the base, and how far is a reasonable commute from it?
  5. What is the approved range, and who signs off on the top of it?

Your structured brief

Built from what you entered, with nothing added. Gaps are shown as gaps rather than filled in with something plausible.

# Untitled role

## What this hire is for
To be confirmed

## Essential
- To be confirmed

## Desirable
- None recorded

## Scope
- Level: Not specified
- People: Not specified
- Domain knowledge: Not specified
- Timing: Not specified

## Where and how
- Pattern: Not specified
- Location: To be confirmed

## Pay
- Approach: Not specified
- Detail: To be confirmed

## Process
- Stages: Not specified
- Exercise in the candidate's own time: Not specified

## Decisions still open
- If this hire goes well, what is measurably different in six months that would not have happened otherwise?
- What would you call this role on an advert, in language used outside your company?
- Which three or four things must be true on day one, whatever else is missing?
- Where is the base, and how far is a reasonable commute from it?
- What is the approved range, and who signs off on the top of it?

---
Reviewed with the Humand hiring brief tool. Assessment: Needs decisions. The review is a set of stated rules applied to the answers above, not a market benchmark.

The file is created in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

Where to go next

Pay is one of the open questions in this brief. We do not publish a benchmark figure here, because a number without the evidence behind it is worse than no number — a proper market check is a short piece of work with sources attached.

Salary benchmarkingWhich hiring route fits?Cost of the vacancyStart a written brief

Our employer guides cover the brief in more depth for these roles:

Following a link takes nothing from this page with it. If you want us to see the brief, download it and send it to us yourself.

A reusable hiring brief template

The same structure the builder above produces, with what belongs in each section. Use it for any technology role, from a first developer hire to a head of engineering, and as the starting point for the job specification or advert once the decisions are made.

  1. What this hire is for

    The business outcome, in a sentence or two: what is measurably different in six months because this person joined.

  2. Essential

    Only what you would reject a candidate on, and that must be true on day one. Three to five is usually enough; the review above flags more than eight. If it could be learned in the first quarter, it belongs under desirable.

  3. Desirable

    What would make someone a stronger hire without being a condition of hiring them. This is how you choose between two people who both clear the bar.

  4. Scope

    Seniority, people responsibility (none, mentoring, direct reports or managers), whether domain or sector knowledge is essential, and when the person is needed.

  5. Where and how

    Working pattern, the days on site and what they are for, and the location of the base or the region a remote hire has to be in.

  6. Pay or rate

    The salary range, or day rate for a contract, that you would actually approve, who signs off the top of it, and whether it will be published.

  7. Process

    Each interview stage, what it assesses that the one before did not, who is involved, and any exercise done in the candidate's own time.

  8. Decisions still open

    Anything not yet agreed by the people signing off the hire. Settle these before the search starts, not at offer stage.

A Markdown file created in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

What makes a technology brief workable

The review above applies these ideas mechanically. They are written out here so you can disagree with them — a brief tool that will not show its reasoning is just an opinion with a progress bar.

Start from the outcome, not the skill list

A skill list describes the kind of person you imagine. The outcome describes the job. When the outcome is written down, arguments about a shortlist become answerable: either someone can plausibly deliver it or they cannot.

Essential means you would reject on it

Requirements multiply. Eight must-haves are eight conditions someone has to satisfy at the same time, and long lists usually get quietly ignored during the sift — which means the real bar is whatever the person reading CVs decided that morning.

Seniority and scope have to agree

A title that undersells the responsibility puts the role in front of people who are not ready for it, and hides it from people who are. Staff and principal roles without reports are entirely normal, but say so, because candidates assume otherwise.

Location is a requirement like any other

Days on site remove people who match everything else, so it is worth knowing what the days are actually for. Hybrid advertised at four or five days reads as on site, and candidates notice at the point where losing them costs the most.

Every interview stage has a price

Stages add calendar time, and calendar time is where competing offers land. A stage worth keeping is one that has changed a decision. Unpaid exercises in someone’s own evening filter on who has spare evenings as much as on ability.

Publishing pay is a decision, not an admission

Holding the range back does not protect it; it moves the mismatch to the end of the process. A single figure reads as a ceiling. If you are unsure where the number should sit, that is a benchmarking question, and it deserves evidence rather than a guess.

Salary benchmarking is where we do that properly, with the sources attached.

What this tool does not do

It does not tell you what the role should pay, how scarce the skill set is, or how long a hire will take. We would need evidence to say any of that, and quoting a number without it would be worse than useless to you. It also holds nothing back about our own work: there is no sourcing advice, target-company list or candidate intelligence here, and none of what you type is visible to us.

If you want a view on the market for this role, or on which way of working suits it, the hiring route tool and a conversation are both a better answer than a generated number.