Practical thinking on hiring and being hired.

A hiring brief is the single document that quietly determines the quality of a hire. When it is vague, every later stage inherits the guesswork: the advert drifts, the shortlist wanders, and interviews become a hunt for a feeling rather than a test of fit. When it is sharp, the process gets faster and fairer for everyone.

The most useful change is to start with the outcome rather than the person. What needs to be true in six or twelve months? Which of the listed skills are genuinely essential, and which are simply nice to have? Write down the scope, the reporting line, the location and working pattern, the salary band, and how each requirement will be assessed. Anything you cannot assess is a preference, not a requirement.

Treat the brief as a living document. If the market keeps returning people who are strong in ways you did not anticipate, that is information — revisit the brief rather than forcing the market to match it. A recruiter should be able to explain the role in two sentences from the brief alone. If they cannot, it is not finished.

Workforce planning is often reduced to a headcount budget: how many people, in which teams, by which quarter. That is part of it, but the harder and more valuable question is about capability — what work will the organisation need to do, and what does that require people to be good at?

In practice it means looking at the demand for work over a defined period, mapping the skills that demand implies, and taking an honest view of where those skills already sit. The answer is rarely “hire everyone”. It might be a mix of hiring, developing the people you have, bringing in contractors for a peak, or changing how the work is organised.

The discipline is in the cadence. A plan written once a year and never revisited is a wish, not a plan. A short, rolling review — quarterly is often enough — keeps it grounded, and makes hiring a deliberate response to the business rather than a scramble when someone leaves.

Salary discussions stall when neither side wants to name a number first. The employer waits to see what the candidate expects; the candidate waits to see what the employer is offering. Left to run, that standoff wastes interviews and erodes trust on both sides.

The groundwork is unglamorous but effective: knowing your own range, understanding how the role compares to others like it, and being clear about the total package — base, bonus, benefits and flexibility. Decide in advance the point below which you would not proceed, so the decision is made calmly rather than in the moment.

Where you can, be willing to put a number on the table and explain how you reached it. A figure with a reason attached is far easier to discuss than a figure offered as a test. Transparency does not guarantee agreement, but it removes the guessing that turns a negotiation into a standoff.