Your Job Brief Is Why You're Getting the Wrong Candidates

I read executive job briefs every week. And most of them are written for the wrong person.

Not for the candidate. For the internal stakeholder who needs to sign off. For the last brief someone kept on file. For the ambition signal the firm wants to send to market.

Why Most Executive Briefs Are Written for the Wrong Person

The result? Paragraphs full of words like innovative, transformational, and exceptional — language that has been so consistently overused by so many organisations that the best candidates have learned to read straight past it. It functions as noise. And the operators who are actually capable of delivering a 3x or 5x return are the most practiced at ignoring it, because they have the most options and the least patience for vague.

This matters more in PE than anywhere else. The talent pool capable of driving real returns in a constrained, high-pressure, sponsor-backed environment is not large. These are people who have operated under pressure, built things of durable value, and delivered in environments where there is nowhere to hide. They are not browsing job descriptions hoping to feel inspired. They are looking for a specific problem they are uniquely qualified to solve.

If your brief can't articulate what that problem is, they're gone before the second paragraph.

What the Brief Should Actually Contain

The fix isn't writing better adjectives. It's replacing adjectives with evidence. Be specific about the commercial context. The operational challenge. The decision-making authority the role actually carries.

"Effectively managing a complex workload" tells a senior operator nothing useful — and implies a lot of bureaucratic friction. Telling them they'll own a defined set of decisions, with genuine autonomy to determine what needs attention and when, signals something completely different. It signals trust. And for operators of this calibre, trust is more compelling than any superlative.

The Profile vs. the Job Description

The quality of your brief is the first signal a candidate gets about how you operate as a firm. In a competitive market for senior talent, that signal carries weight. Vague briefs produce vague shortlists. Vague shortlists produce cautious hires.

Write the brief for the person you actually want to attract.