Last updated: July 2026
The brief is where most searches are won or lost. Twenty minutes of proper conversation at the start saves weeks of interviewing the wrong people at the end. I have taken briefs that took half a day of chasing to complete and briefs that were done in one call, and the quality of the shortlist tracks the quality of the brief almost every time.
This post is the client-side view: what a recruiter like me actually needs from you, what a good recruiter should be asking, and what to have ready before the call.
What does a recruiter actually need from a job brief?
A picture of the actual week, in the actual territory, with the actual accounts. The job title and the position description are a starting point, and in this industry they are unreliable. I have written before about how most role briefs wear the wrong title. A "Spec Manager" brief that includes two overnight trips a week and a new business target is describing a BDM. A "State Sales Manager" brief where the person carries their own bag and has no direct reports is describing a senior BDM. When I audited this against my own intake calls, the pattern held for the clear majority of leadership briefs I take.
The details that change who I search for:
The split between new business and account management. A 70/30 hunter role and a 50/50 relationship role are filled by different people, and both exist under the same title.
The route to market. Architects, builders, contractors, merchants, electrical wholesalers. A rep who owns Tier 1 contractor relationships in civil is a different animal from one who presents to A&D practices, even if both sell "construction products".
The sales cycle. Project-based specification work with an 18-month cycle needs patience and pipeline discipline. Transactional repeat business needs call rate and coverage. Reps rarely convert well between the two.
The reporting line and the team around the role. Who does this person answer to, who supports them technically, and what happened to the last person in the chair.
What questions should a good recruiter ask you?
Expect questions in five areas. If your recruiter finishes the brief without covering these, that tells you something about the search you are about to get.
The business context. Why does the role exist now? Replacement, new headcount, or restructure? What is not getting done while the role sits empty? If it is a replacement, what would you want done differently this time?
The working week. The split, the territory, the accounts, the travel, the CRM expectations. The version that does not appear in the position description.
The market. Which competitors would you poach from if you could? Which products has your ideal candidate sold, and to whom? In building products the answer is usually a shortlist of 10 to 15 companies, and a specialist recruiter should be able to name most of them back to you.
The person. The best rep you have ever had on this team, and what made them good. The thing that would make you say no in the first five minutes. Whether you need someone who hits the ground running or someone with the right raw ingredients and a 12-month runway.
The commercial detail. Base, super, car or allowance, commission structure, realistic first-year earnings, interview stages, who signs off, and timeline. Vague answers here cost everyone later.
What should you have ready before the briefing call?
Five things. The trigger for the hire, the salary range, the interview process, the decision-maker, and the start-date target.
The salary range matters more than most hiring managers expect. "We will figure it out for the right person" slows every search it touches. Without a range, a recruiter either guesses (and shows you people you cannot afford) or anchors low (and misses the people you want). A range, even a wide one, keeps the search honest. I have covered where packages are landing in the 2025 salary guide, and the pattern I see repeatedly is that a base pitched 15 per cent under market extends a search by 8 to 12 weeks before the brief gets corrected anyway.
The decision-maker question is the quiet one. If the person briefing me cannot make the final call, I want to know who can, and ideally hear the brief from them too, even for ten minutes. Second-hand briefs drift. By the time a shortlist lands, the real decision-maker often wanted something slightly different, and the search restarts at week six.
Why do vague briefs produce bad shortlists?
Because a search can only be as precise as its inputs. A vague brief forces the recruiter to search on the title, and titles in this industry are noise. I mapped eleven common titles to four actual jobs in the technical sales role taxonomy, and the overlap between what companies call a role and what the role does is loose at best.
The expensive version of this failure is a mis-scoped hire who interviews well against the wrong brief. A bad sales hire on a $120,000 to $140,000 base typically costs $150,000 to $300,000 once you count salary through the underperforming months, lost specifications, and rehiring. I have broken the maths down in The True Cost of a Bad Sales Hire, and you can run your own numbers through the Cost of a Bad Hire Calculator. The brief is the cheapest point in the entire process to prevent that outcome.
How long should a recruiter briefing call take?
Twenty minutes to half an hour, done live, on a call or in person. Long enough to cover the five areas above. Short enough that there is no excuse to skip it.
A job description emailed across with "let me know if you have questions" skips the part that matters. A brief is a conversation because the useful information lives in the follow-up questions. When a client tells me the role is 70/30 new business, my next question is where the 30 comes from and how protected it is. The answer regularly changes who I call first.
One more thing worth doing in that call: ask the recruiter what they heard. A two-minute playback at the end catches misunderstandings while they are free to fix. If the playback comes back as your job ad read back to you, you have briefed an order-taker.
What does a good brief get you in return?
Commitments, with dates. After a proper brief you should hear a clear next step: how many candidates, by when, and what evidence of the search you will see alongside them.
My own standard is a short shortlist over a pile of CVs, 2 to 3 strong candidates with a written reason each for why they fit the brief you actually gave, and honest feedback from the market if the brief itself is the obstacle. If three strong candidates decline because the base is under market or because the territory has churned through two reps in 18 months, that intelligence is worth as much as the shortlist. You can only get it from a search that started with a real brief.
If you are weighing up who to brief in the first place, I have written a straight comparison of specialist versus generalist recruiters for this market.