Role Intake System: Turn a Job Description Into a Searchable Hiring Brief

Inputs

• Job description or hiring request
• Hiring-manager conversation
• Team/environment context
• Compensation and location constraints
• Known successful or rejected profile examples

1. Capture the job as written

Preserve the title, explicit must-haves, experience floor, location, clearance/license requirements, compensation constraints, and stated disqualifiers before interpreting or expanding anything.

2. Translate vague language into evidence

Ask what “senior,” “hands-on,” “strategic,” “strong communicator,” or “deep expertise” would look like in a candidate history, project, system, or outcome.

3. Separate strict, flexible, and discovery-only criteria

Mark true must-haves, preferences, acceptable substitutes, adjacent titles, synonyms, donor-company hypotheses, nearby geographies, and related technologies as distinct fields.

4. Define verification boundaries

Identify which claims can support discovery from public evidence and which require authoritative confirmation—such as active clearance, professional licensure, employment eligibility, or other sensitive status.

5. Agree on the first tradeoff and calibration plan

Before sourcing, ask what the team would loosen first if the market is too small and what evidence from the first slate should cause the search plan to change.

What to measure

• Percent of criteria classified strict/flexible/expansion
• Clarification questions resolved before launch
• Hidden-requirement discoveries after first slate
• Requirement changes by calibration round
• Time from intake to executable search plan

Failure modes to avoid

• Reading the JD back to the manager
• Treating every JD bullet as mandatory
• Using years of experience without defining relevant work
• Leaving geography vague
• Discovering hidden requirements only after dozens of rejections

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