The Hiring Brief
What the brief is
The hiring brief is Jill's understanding of what you're looking for. It's the document she uses to evaluate every candidate — a structured breakdown of the role, the skills that matter, and the signals that distinguish a strong hire from a weak one.
The brief is visible only to you and Jill. Candidates cannot see the Brief: they see the Pitch only. For more on what candidates see, check out Introductions.
How Jill builds it
When you create a role, Jill builds the initial brief from three sources:
- Your description: Whatever you tell Jill when you create the role. Pasting in a job description works well; so does a few sentences describing what you need. Jill extracts what she needs either way.
- Company research: Jill researches your company, team, and hiring context. She looks at what you're building, your stage, your tech stack, and the kind of people who tend to succeed in your environment.
- Calibration: Jill asks follow-up questions to nail down specifics: seniority level, must-haves vs nice-to-haves, reference profiles, and where the role's priorities sit.
The brief isn't static: it evolves as you give feedback and Jill learns what you're actually looking for.
What's in a brief
A typical brief covers:
- Role summary: What the person will do, where they sit in the org, why the role exists
- Evaluation criteria: The specific attributes Jill scores candidates against (e.g. "has scaled a B2B sales team," "strong distributed systems experience"). You and Jill define these together during setup, and every candidate gets a score on each one.
- Signals and anti-signals: Patterns Jill looks for or avoids. For example: "has built a team from scratch" (signal) or "only enterprise experience when we need startup pace" (anti-signal)
- Compensation range: Salary and equity expectations
- Logistics: Location, remote/hybrid/onsite, visa sponsorship, start date
Editing the brief
You can update the brief at any time by chatting with Jill. For example:
- "We've decided this should be more senior. Target Staff level and above."
- "React experience isn't a must-have anymore. We care more about strong systems thinking."
For more on how to communicate changes to Jill, see Working with Jill.
Brief history
Jill keeps a version history of your brief. If a change doesn't work out, you can review previous versions and restore one in the Brief Tab.