Recruit Intake Meeting

---
name: recruit-intake-meeting
description: Plans and records the intake meeting with the hiring manager, producing a question plan, a calibration on 3 to 5 anonymised sample profiles, a must-have versus trainable list and a one-page intake summary to sign off. Use for "run recruit-intake-meeting", "intake meeting with the hiring manager", "intake questions", "the manager can't describe the job", "my search keeps drifting", "calibrate the brief", "kickoff call for a new role", "intake form", part of the AI for Recruiting Pack by Polar Bear.
---

# Intake Meeting

## When To Use
A new role has opened, the manager "can't describe the job", and three days later your search has drifted from what they said. Use it before the intake call, and again to write it up afterwards. It answers: what exactly are we looking for, what can the person learn once here, and what has the manager committed to on process and feedback?

## When Not To Use
If the brief is already agreed and you need criteria you can assess, go straight to Job Scorecard. If the search is live and the shortlist keeps missing, rerun this meeting with the evidence from Client Search Update (agency) or your pipeline notes, rather than sourcing harder.

## Inputs
- Your notes on the role: title, team, why it is open, what happened with the last person in the seat
- Market evidence you hold: pay data, where people with this profile sit, competing employers
- 3 to 5 sample profiles the manager has reacted to, anonymised by you (no names, photos, ages or dates of birth)
If you have none of this, I start from the role title and the manager's name and mark the output as a first draft.

## Approach
This follows SHRM's advice on recruiter and hiring manager communication (come with market evidence, keep must-haves to the few that truly matter) and OPM job analysis (tasks first, then the competencies each task needs). Profile calibration is a practitioner method: the manager reacts to real profiles, and you write down which features drew a yes or a no. The judgment is to ask about the work before the wish list. The failure it prevents: a twelve-bullet "requirements" list, a shortlist that matches every bullet, and a manager who says "not quite what I had in mind".

## Workflow
1. Ask at most three questions: why the role is open now, who else sits in the decision, and which market evidence you already hold.
2. Prep the market slide: the evidence you supplied on pay, pool and competitors, with gaps left as [placeholders]. Nothing from me fills them.
3. Work first: the main tasks, what done well looks like after twelve months, and what went wrong last time. Push for verbs and results, not traits.
4. Must-have versus trainable: every requirement goes into one column. Keep must-haves at entry to three or four; anything the person can learn in the first months moves to trainable.
5. Calibration: for each sample profile, record the features the manager said yes or no to (a type of project, a scope, a tool) and turn each into a criterion. The profiles calibrate the brief; the people in them are never rated or compared.
6. Process: stages, who interviews, CV review turnaround and feedback times as [placeholders] the manager commits to, plus the decision date.
7. Close with the one-page summary for the manager to sign off. Any later change to the brief comes back through this page, with a date.

## Output Format
```markdown
# Intake Summary: [Role title]
## The Work
| Task | Done well after 12 months looks like |
|---|---|
| [task] | [observable result] |
## Must-Have at Entry Versus Trainable
| Must-have at entry (3 to 4) | Trainable in the first months |
|---|---|
| [requirement tied to a task] | [requirement] |
## Calibration Notes
| Sample profile | Features that drew a yes | Features that drew a no | Criterion it became |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Profile A, anonymised] | [feature of experience] | [feature of experience] | [criterion] |
## Market Evidence
[Evidence you supplied on pay, pool and competitors, or [gap]]
## Agreed Process
| Stage | Who | Turnaround the manager commits to |
|---|---|---|
| CV review | [name] | [days] |
## Decision
[Hiring manager] signs off this summary by [date]; changes after that come back to [recruiter] in writing.
```

## Done When
- Every must-have links to a task, and there are no more than four
- Each calibration note records features of experience, never personal characteristics
- Every turnaround and date is either agreed or left as a [placeholder]
- The summary fits on one page and names who signs off and by when

## Quality Bar
- Traits like "hungry", "rockstar" or "culture fit" are rewritten as the behaviour the manager means.
- No figure appears that you did not supply.
- Sample profiles arrive anonymised; anything personal in them is removed before calibration.
- Sample profiles calibrate the brief; Claude never rates the people in them.

## Next
Run recruit-job-scorecard (Job Scorecard) to turn the agreed brief into criteria you can assess.

## About the makers

This pack is made by Polar Bear, a consultancy built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. If your team has outgrown the self-serve version, message Pauline (linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry).