Define Success Before You Hire

By Don Georgevich

Phase One of the Scientific Hiring Method: The Blueprint

Before you decide who to hire, decide what the person must accomplish and what evidence will prove they can do it.

Most hiring mistakes begin before the first résumé arrives. The role is discussed in broad terms, the job description grows into a list of duties, and each interviewer quietly forms a different picture of the person the company needs.

That creates a moving target. A candidate with impressive experience can pull the standard in one direction. A likable candidate can pull it in another. By the time the team compares notes, people are debating candidates without ever agreeing on the job.

Why hiring starts before the job description

A job description is not the first step. The first step is understanding the work. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management describes job analysis as the foundation for assessment and selection decisions because it connects the tasks performed in a job with the competencies required to perform them.

That principle is useful for any growing business. You cannot evaluate candidates consistently until you know what the role is supposed to change, improve, protect, build, or deliver.

The standard-before-candidates rule: Write the hiring standard while the role is still the center of attention. Once candidates enter the process, it becomes much easier to rewrite the standard around the person you like.

When the standard is vague, interviewers fill the gap with personal judgment. One person values years of experience. Another values energy. Someone else looks for culture fit. None of those ideas is automatically wrong, but they are not a shared hiring standard.

The four parts of a role success profile

The Scientific Hiring role success profile is a short working document that answers four questions. It is not meant to replace every job document your company uses. Its purpose is to give everyone involved in the hire one fixed definition of success.

1. Why the role exists: Name the business problem, opportunity, or responsibility that makes the role necessary.

2. What the person must deliver: Write the few outcomes that would make the owner or manager say the hire is working.

3. What evidence will show progress: Identify milestones, work products, operating changes, or measures that can be reviewed.

4. What the person must bring: Separate capabilities needed on day one from skills the company can reasonably teach.

OPM defines competencies as measurable patterns of knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and other characteristics needed to perform work successfully. It also notes that competencies are used in both candidate selection and employee performance management. That connection is important: the qualities used to select the person should help explain how the person will succeed after being hired. See the official OPM competency guidance.

The O*NET Content Model can also help when a company needs a starting point for tasks, skills, abilities, work activities, and work context. Use it as reference material, not as a substitute for understanding how the role works inside your own business.

Duties describe activity. Outcomes describe success.

Most job descriptions are built from duties because duties are easy to list. The problem is that a person can perform an activity without producing the result the business needs.

The outcome does not have to be a financial number. It can be a working system, a decision, a completed project, a reliable forecast, a stronger process, or a clear reduction in a known problem. What matters is that two reasonable people can look at the evidence and reach a similar conclusion.

How to define success before you hire

1. Start with the business reason for the role

Ask what will remain broken, delayed, exposed, or impossible if the role stays empty. This keeps the discussion tied to the business instead of drifting into a wish list for the perfect candidate.

2. Write three to five outcomes

Three to five outcomes are usually enough to define the center of the role without turning the document into another duty list. Each outcome should complete this sentence:

Outcome prompt: “We will know this person is succeeding when…”

Write the result in plain language. Avoid internal terms that would confuse a strong candidate from outside the company.

3. Add evidence and timing

For each outcome, name what you expect to see and when it should reasonably appear. Early evidence may be a diagnosis, plan, work product, or operating change. Later evidence may show improvement in performance, quality, speed, reliability, or customer response.

4. Identify the capabilities that drive the outcomes

Do not begin with a generic list of positive traits. Work backward from the outcomes. Ask what knowledge, skill, judgment, behavior, and experience the person must use to produce them.

Also separate what must exist at entry from what can be learned after hire. OPM’s job-analysis guidance makes the same distinction when determining which competencies are appropriate for selection: some capabilities must be present when the person enters, while others may be developed on the job.

5. Decide what is required and what is preferred

Required criteria should be few and defensible. Preferred criteria may improve the candidate’s chances of succeeding, but they should not quietly become automatic rejection rules unless they truly matter to the work.

Illustrative role success profile

How the fixed standard controls the rest of hiring

A good role definition should not sit in a folder after the job description is written. It should control what evidence the company gathers from beginning to end.

The same role standard should guide résumé screening, phone interviews, structured interviews, work samples, references, and the final decision.

After the hire, return to the original outcomes during the 30- and 90-day reviews. That is how the company learns whether the evidence gathered during hiring predicted performance.

Common mistakes when defining a role

• Writing the person instead of the work. “Ten years of experience” describes a background. It does not explain what the person must accomplish.
• Including everything. When every duty and trait is important, nothing helps the team make a hard decision.
• Using words nobody can score. Terms such as dynamic, strategic, polished, and culture fit need observable meaning.
• Confusing credentials with capability. A degree, title, or industry label may be useful, but it should not stand in for evidence of performance.
• Changing the criteria after interviews begin. New information may improve the role definition, but changes should be explicit and applied fairly to every candidate still under consideration.

A practical warning: The more urgently you need the hire, the more tempting it becomes to lower or change the standard. That is exactly when a fixed definition of success is most valuable.

A five-question role-definition audit

• Can everyone involved in the hire name the same three to five outcomes?
• Can each outcome be supported by evidence two people could review?
• Are required capabilities connected directly to the work?
• Have you separated day-one requirements from skills the company can teach?
• Will the same standard appear in screening, interviews, the final decision, and the 90-day review?

Fairness and consistency: The EEOC advises small businesses to screen applications consistently and apply the same standards to everyone applying for the same position. Selection tools should be job-related and appropriate for the employer’s purpose. See the EEOC’s small-business hiring guidance and its guidance on employment tests and selection procedures. This page is educational and is not legal advice.