Most hiring briefs are written backwards. They start with what the last person in the role did, add a few requirements that sound impressive in a job ad, and call it a specification. The result is a document that's good at attracting people who are good at getting hired — and mediocre at identifying people who will actually do the job well.
This was always a problem. In the AI era, it's become a critical one.
The reason is simple: the nature of what makes someone effective in most roles has changed significantly in the last two years, and most hiring briefs haven't caught up. Companies are screening for the skills that made someone excellent in 2022, then wondering why the people they hire feel underprepared for work in 2026.
What Goes Wrong in Most Hiring Briefs
When we audit a hiring brief at the start of a talent engagement, we're typically looking for four failure modes. Most briefs have at least two.
Execution skills listed as requirements
Things like "strong Excel skills", "ability to produce detailed reports", "experience managing email campaigns". These are execution tasks — and increasingly, they're tasks that AI tools handle significantly faster than any human. Listing them as primary requirements signals to strong candidates that the role is administrative in nature, and filters out exactly the people who could transform the function.
Years of experience as a proxy for judgment
"5+ years of experience in X" is meant to signal that you want someone with tested judgment. But years of experience is an increasingly weak signal when the nature of work in a field has changed dramatically. Someone with 2 years of AI-augmented experience in marketing may have shipped more campaigns and learned more than someone with 6 years of pre-AI experience. The brief should ask for evidence of judgment, not just tenure.
No mention of AI fluency
If your hiring brief doesn't say anything about how the successful candidate will use AI tools in their role, you are either (a) not expecting them to, which puts you at a competitive disadvantage, or (b) assuming it goes without saying, which means your candidates don't know what level of AI fluency you're looking for. Either way, you'll get a worse result than if you'd been explicit.
The role is described as it existed, not as it needs to exist
Many hiring briefs are essentially job descriptions of a past role — either the person who left, or what the hiring manager imagined the role would be when it was first created. The best candidates are evaluating whether the role will develop them. If the brief reads like it's stuck in the past, the people who have options will choose the role that reads like a future.
What to Write Instead
A brief that works in the current market is built around three things: the problem the role exists to solve, the evidence of effectiveness you're looking for, and a clear picture of what success looks like in 30, 90, and 180 days.
Start with the problem, not the person
Instead of opening with "We are looking for a Senior Marketing Manager", start with "Our pipeline is growing faster than our content function can support, and we need someone who can build a scalable content engine that operates with a small human team augmented by AI tools."
This does two things. It tells strong candidates what they'll actually be solving — which is what they're evaluating. And it removes the assumption that the role is a continuation of what it was before, which opens the door to candidates who might approach it differently.
Describe the output, not the activity
Replace "Responsible for managing social media channels" with "Owns the social presence and is accountable for growing it as a meaningful lead source — with the expectation that you'll use AI tools to produce more, better content than a traditional team of three."
Output-oriented language does several things at once: it tells the candidate what they'll be judged on, it signals that you're results-focused rather than activity-focused, and it implicitly invites people who think creatively about how to get results.
Be specific about AI fluency expectations
This doesn't mean listing specific tools (those change too fast). It means being explicit about the expectation. Some options:
- "You'll be expected to use AI tools as a primary part of your workflow — not as an experiment, but as a default."
- "We expect this role to operate at the capacity of a team of two through intelligent use of AI tools."
- "Experience using AI for [relevant task] is required. We're not looking for someone who's curious about AI — we're looking for someone already using it."
The best candidates in any market are evaluating your brief as much as you're evaluating them. If the brief reads like a bureaucratic checkbox exercise, the people with options will choose a different checkbox.
Define Success Before You Interview Anyone
Before the brief goes out, answer this question internally: what would this person have to achieve in their first 90 days for you to consider the hire successful?
Write it down. Be specific. "Settled in and learning the ropes" is not a success criterion — it's an absence of accountability. Something like "Has audited our content pipeline, identified our three biggest bottlenecks, and shipped the first AI-augmented content workflow" is a success criterion.
Once you have this, include a version of it in the brief. Candidates who are genuinely capable will be energised by it. Candidates who are looking for a comfortable coast will self-select out. This filtering effect is worth more than any screening question.
A Quick AI-Era Audit of Your Existing Brief
If you have a brief in hand, run it through these five questions before it goes live:
- Is the primary value of this role execution or judgment? If it's execution, rewrite to clarify that AI handles the execution and the human provides the direction.
- Does the brief mention how the person will use AI? If not, add it explicitly.
- Are the requirements filtering for experience with past tools or evidence of learning agility? Prefer the latter.
- Does a strong candidate reading this know what they'll actually be solving? If the "responsibilities" section is a list of activities, rewrite it as a set of outcomes.
- Is the success criteria explicit and measurable? If you couldn't evaluate it objectively, it's not a criterion — it's a hope.
The Signal You're Sending
Every hiring brief is a communication. It tells candidates what you value, how you think about work, and what kind of organisation you are. In a competitive talent market — and the market for AI-fluent professionals is extremely competitive right now — the signal your brief sends is often the difference between attracting A-players and settling for who's available.
A brief that's honest about the problem, clear about what success looks like, and explicit about the AI-era context of the role signals that you're an organisation that's thinking clearly about the future. That's attractive to exactly the people you want to hire.
A brief that reads like it was copied from a 2019 job description signals something else entirely.