AI Prompts for Role Intake and Success Profiles

Most bad hires and most stalled searches start at intake. The hiring manager describes a unicorn, the recruiter writes it down, and six weeks later nobody can say what the role actually has to achieve in its first year. A good intake replaces the wishlist with a success profile — outcomes, the capabilities that produce them, the evidence that would show a candidate has them — and separates what is genuinely required from what would be nice.

These prompts run the intake, build the requirements with evidence standards, and write the candidate profile for sourcing. The candidate persona work from the reconciliation lives here too: who the realistic candidate is, where they are, and what would move them.

Before you use these

Have these ready to replace the highlighted [variables]:

• The hiring manager's description of the role and why it is open
• What the last person in the role did well and badly, if applicable
• Team context: reporting line, peers, the first-year priorities
• Compensation range and the constraints that shape the search (location, level, budget)

The prompts

• 1. Run the hiring-manager intake
• 2. Define must-have vs nice-to-have with evidence standards
• 3. Write the candidate profile for sourcing

1. Run the hiring-manager intake

Act as a talent partner running a role intake for [role] reporting to [hiring manager, title] in [team / company].

What the manager has said: [paste description, wishlist, reasons the role is open]
Context: [team size and composition, first-year priorities, why the last person left or what they did well/badly, budget and level]

1. Intake questions (12–15) that get to outcomes rather than credentials: what must be true in 12 months, what the person will spend their first 90 days on, what failure would look like, who they must work with, what the manager will and will not delegate, what has changed since the last hire.
2. Draft success profile from the answers given: 4–6 first-year outcomes; the capabilities (skills, experience, behaviors) each outcome requires; the evidence a candidate would show for each capability.
3. Assumptions to challenge: requirements that do not trace to an outcome (years of experience, specific-company pedigree, degree), and the question to ask about each.
4. Trade-offs the manager must decide: level vs budget, depth vs breadth, availability vs ideal — with the consequence of each.
5. Realistic market read: which parts of the profile are scarce in combination, and what to relax if the search stalls.
6. One-page profile for sign-off.

Do not accept a requirement without an outcome behind it. If the profile describes two roles, say so.

2. Define must-have vs nice-to-have with evidence standards

You are converting a success profile into hiring requirements for [role].

Success profile: [outcomes, capabilities, evidence]
Constraints: [location, level, licensing or certification genuinely required, language]

1. Must-haves (no more than six): each with the outcome it serves, why it cannot be learned in the first months, and the evidence that would satisfy it (a demonstrated result, a work sample, a specific experience — not a credential proxy).
2. Nice-to-haves: raise interest, do not screen out; each with what it would add.
3. Removed: requirements that are proxies (years, named employers, degrees where not legally required), with the outcome-based replacement.
4. Equivalents: for each must-have, the alternative routes to the same capability (non-traditional backgrounds, adjacent roles).
5. Inclusive-language check on the requirement wording: remove terms that discourage qualified applicants without job-related reason.
6. The screening question that tests each must-have, phrased neutrally.

Requirements must be job-related and consistently applied. Do not include anything that correlates with a protected characteristic without a demonstrable job need.

3. Write the candidate profile for sourcing

Act as a sourcing lead writing the candidate profile for [role] at [company].

Requirements: [must-haves, nice-to-haves]
Role positioning: [scope, level, compensation range, growth, working model, what is distinctive]
Market: [where similar roles sit, competing employers, what we know from past searches]

1. Likely current situations: the roles and environments where people with these capabilities are now (titles vary — list several), including adjacent pools others overlook.
2. Motivators and objections: what would make someone in each situation move, and the reasons they would decline — drawn from the role's real positioning, not assumptions about people.
3. Search framing: capability-based search terms and boolean patterns; the terms to avoid because they narrow to pedigree.
4. Message hypotheses: for each pool, the one true thing about the role most likely to earn a reply, to be tested with the outreach page's prompts.
5. Realism check: the share of the market that plausibly fits all must-haves, and the must-have to revisit if the pool is too small.
6. What the profile deliberately does not include: personal characteristics, demographics, or 'culture fit' language.

Describe situations and capabilities, never people-types. The profile guides where to look, not whom to prefer.

Worked example

Related prompts

• Job Descriptions That Attract
• Candidate Sourcing Strategy
• Resume Screening Rubrics
• Structured Interview Design
• Competency Frameworks
• Workforce Planning

Logical next step

After this, most HR teams move on to Job Descriptions That Attract.

All Human Resources prompts · Search the full library