Hiring for IT and specialised roles: writing the brief and assessing skills

Write the brief for a specialised role around the work, not the tools. Describe what the person will build, run or fix in the first six months, what already exists, and how independently they must work. Reduce that to a short list of must-have skills, and write beside each one how it will be assessed. Then assess with a short work sample close to the real job, scored against criteria the panel agreed before seeing any candidate.

This applies well beyond software. Data, engineering, design, laboratory, maintenance and other technical roles share the same problem: the hiring manager is often the only person who can judge the skill, and the rest of the hiring process has to be built around that fact.

• The tool list is copied from an old advertisement. It describes what the last person used, not what the next person needs to do.
• Every skill is marked essential. A brief with twelve must-haves describes nobody, and the recruiter has no way of knowing which three matter.
• Seniority is defined by years. Years in a role say little about whether someone has solved the kind of problem you have.
• The hiring manager is not in the briefing. HR writes the brief alone, and the specialist detail that would make screening possible never reaches the recruiter.
• The brief is written for applicants, not screeners. It sells the role but gives the person screening no way of telling a strong profile from a weak one.

Before naming a single tool, ask the hiring manager four questions. What will this person deliver in the first six months? What systems, equipment or code already exist that they must work with? Who will they work alongside, and who will review their work? How much will they do on their own, and how much with guidance?

Imagine, as an illustrative example, a business that asks for a data engineer with five named tools. In the briefing it emerges that the real job is to make a set of morning reports reliable, using data from systems the business already has. The must-haves turn out to be strong query skills and the habit of tracing a fault back to its source. Most of the named tools can be learnt in the first weeks. The brief shrinks from a wish list to a description a recruiter can search on.

Once the work is clear, list the skills it needs and sort each one into must-have or can-learn. Then add the column most briefs leave out: how the skill will be assessed and who will assess it.

Role / level   ______________________   Hiring manager ______________

Skill            Must-have /    Level needed    How assessed          Assessed by
                 can learn
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. __________    M / L          ___________     screen / sample /     __________
                                                interview / demo
2. __________    M / L          ___________     _________________     __________
3. __________    M / L          ___________     _________________     __________

Must-haves (keep to a few):  ____  ____  ____
Would make a poor fit:       ______________________________
Confirmed by hiring manager:  Y / N   Date ____/____

One rule keeps the matrix honest. If nobody can say how a skill will be assessed, it is not ready to be a must-have. Either agree a way of testing it or move it to the can-learn column.

A recruiter who is not a specialist can screen specialised roles well, but only with the right material from the hiring manager. A short call of twenty minutes or so usually covers it.

• Equivalent job titles the same work goes by in other organisations
• Adjacent skills and tools that transfer well, so good candidates are not screened out on vocabulary
• What the right level looks like on a CV, in terms of the problems someone has handled
• Three or four screening questions, each with a note on what a good answer contains
• The one or two things that would rule a candidate out

With that, the recruiter screens for fit and basic depth, and the technical panel spends its time on candidates who are worth a specialist's hour.

1. 1

   Screening conversation

   The recruiter asks the agreed questions and records the answers against the hiring manager's notes. This checks basic depth and interest, not mastery.

2. 2

   Work sample

   A short task close to the real job, the same for every candidate at the level, with a stated expected duration and scoring criteria agreed before any candidate sees it.

3. 3

   Technical discussion

   A conversation about the work sample: how the candidate approached it, what they would do differently and what trade-offs they made. This often tells you more than the sample itself.

4. 4

   Practical demonstration

   For roles that are not software, such as maintenance, laboratory or design work, a supervised demonstration or a review of past work can replace the written task.

5. 5

   Independent scoring

   Each assessor scores against the matrix before the panel discusses. Comparing afterwards stops the most senior voice setting everyone's view.

• Tell candidates the format of each stage in advance
• Keep take-home tasks short, and say how long they are expected to take
• Do not ask candidates for work you intend to use
• Use the same task and the same criteria for everyone at the same level
• Assess what is in the brief, not an interviewer's favourite topic
• Give brief feedback after a work sample where you can

Experienced specialists usually have choices, and they judge a business by the problem it offers, the people they would work with, the tools and the way technical decisions are made. A hiring manager who can explain the technical context honestly, including what is untidy, is more persuasive than a polished description. A process that takes weeks between stages loses them to businesses that decide faster. Training managers in interviewing skills helps here as much as anywhere.

The skills matrix does not stop being useful at the offer. The can-learn column is a ready-made list of what the new joiner needs to pick up in the first months, and the assessment notes show where the panel saw gaps. Hand both to the hiring manager as the starting point of the joining plan, and agree who will help with each item and by when.

Review the matrix once the person has settled in. If a must-have turned out not to matter, or a skill nobody listed turned out to be essential, update it before the next search for the same role. Over a few hires, the matrix becomes the most accurate description of the role the business has, and it feeds directly into how the role is written up in role design and job descriptions.

Where agreed, we can work with your hiring manager on the brief and the skills matrix, source and screen candidates against them, and coordinate the assessment stages as part of a talent acquisition engagement. The technical assessment criteria, the panel's judgement and the hiring decision remain with your business.