The brief nobody writes: interviewing the hiring manager

The most useful document in a senior search is the one almost nobody writes: a description of the person the hire will report to.

Every search begins with a job brief. Scope, team, targets, reporting line, the experience required. It is a careful document and it is usually accurate. It is also only half the picture. The other half is the leader, and the leader is rarely described at all.

At The Corelation, an executive search firm in India, we start every search with what we call the leader brief: a structured conversation with the hiring manager, about the hiring manager, before any sourcing begins. This piece is about what that conversation asks, why managers tend to enjoy it, and what it turns up.

What is a leader brief?

A leader brief is a structured conversation with the person a hire will report to, conducted before sourcing begins, to understand how that person works. It is not a conversation with HR about the role, and it is not a conversation with the founder about the company, although both of those happen too. It is with the specific individual the new hire will sit under, and the subject is them.

The output is a short written read: how this leader decides, what they delegate and what they hold close, how they like to be challenged, what the last person in the seat found difficult, where they would welcome being complemented, and what a strong first ninety days looks like in their head. We use it to screen candidates, and later we use it to brief them.

What does the leader brief ask?

The questions are plain, and the answers are rarely in the job description. We ask, roughly in this order.

How do you make decisions? Quickly, on instinct, then adjust? Or slowly, with data, and then rarely revisit? Do you decide alone or in the room?

What do you delegate, and what do you keep? Every leader holds something close. Some hold the numbers, some hold key relationships, some hold the story the company tells about itself. A hire who reaches for the thing the leader holds close will collide with them, usually without knowing why.

How do you like to be challenged? In the meeting or afterwards? With a written note or a conversation? Some leaders say they want to be pushed and mean it. Some say it and mean “agree with me, but politely”. Both are workable. The hire needs to know which.

What did the last person in this seat find difficult about working with you? This is the question that changes the tone of the conversation. Most managers pause. Then most of them answer honestly, because the answer is usually something they already know.

Where would you welcome being complemented? Which of your own gaps do you want this person to cover? A leader who is strong on direction and weak on follow-through needs a different hire from one who is the reverse, even for the same role.

What does a strong first ninety days look like? Not the targets in the brief, but what the leader would see and feel that would tell them this was the right call.

Do you want a builder or a finisher? Someone to create what does not yet exist, or someone to run and improve what does? The answer tells us a great deal about the stage the company is at and the temperament the role needs, which is a separate screen in its own right.

Why do hiring managers enjoy being asked?

Hiring managers enjoy the leader brief because almost nobody has ever asked them these questions. Senior people are asked constantly about their business, their targets and their team. They are rarely asked, with any care, how they themselves work. The conversation is often the first time they have put it into words.

It also treats them as a serious part of the problem to be solved, which they are. A hiring manager knows, usually from experience, that the hires that failed under them did not fail on ability. Being asked about their own working style is a recognition that the search is about a relationship and not only a role.

And it is useful to them directly. Leaders have told us the brief was the clearest description of their own management style they had heard, and that they intended to share it with the team they already had.

What does the leader brief turn up?

The leader brief turns up the thing that would otherwise have surfaced in month four. We have written separately about why good hires fail around month four and why it gets called culture. The leader brief is the answer to that problem, gathered in advance.

Some of what it finds is simple. A leader who wants a weekly written update will struggle with a hire who prefers to talk. A leader who decides in the room will frustrate a hire who needs a night to think. These are not flaws on either side. They are mismatches, and they are visible in advance if someone looks.

Some of it is subtler. The brief often reveals a gap between the role as written and the role as the leader actually imagines it. The job description says “build the function”. The leader, asked what a good first ninety days looks like, describes someone who steadies what exists and does not change much. Those are two different hires. Finding that out before the search saves everyone a great deal.

And some of it is about the leader themselves. Occasionally the brief surfaces something the leader has not quite admitted: that the last two people in the seat left for the same reason, or that the role is being hired to cover a weakness they would rather not name. We do not pass judgement on this. We do write it down, because it is the single most useful thing we will know about the search.

How does the leader brief change the search?

Once the leader is described, the search changes shape. The capability screen stays, but it becomes the entry ticket rather than the whole test. Candidates are read against the leader brief and the stage brief, not only the job description. Sometimes that means setting aside an impressive candidate who would not do their best work under this particular person. We say so, and we say why.

Candidates also hear the real version of the role: how the leader works, what the previous person found hard, what is still being built. It costs us a few candidates who would rather not know. It saves most of the placements that would otherwise fail. The full sequence, from leader brief to the check-in at the three-month mark, is set out on how we work.

If you are hiring, what should you write down?

If you are running the search yourself, write a page about how you work before you write a page about the role. Use the questions above. Be as honest about what the last person found hard as you would want a candidate to be about their own gaps. Then give the page to whoever is sourcing and ask them to use it.

If you do not want to write it, ask someone to interview you. The questions are not difficult. Having someone else ask them is what makes them answerable.