Free hiring tool
Turn a hiring idea into a brief people can act on
Most early stage hires stall because the requirement was never written down properly. Answer as much as you can in a few minutes and you will have a clear technical brief — for your team, for candidates, and for us.
Sharper than a job advert
It asks what the person must deliver, not just what technologies they should have used.
Built for early stage teams
You do not need a signed-off spec, a finished salary band or an agreed start date.
Yours to keep
Print it, save it as a PDF, or share a link with a co-founder. Nothing is sent until you decide.
A head start with us
Send it over and we can skip the basics and talk about the actual search.
We have carried the salary you were modelling on the rate calculator into the practical details step. Change it if the real range is different.
Step 1 of 7 — The role
13% complete
A guide, not a target. Every question is optional except the role title — a partial brief is still far more useful than none, and 100% is not expected at this stage.
Step 1 of 7: The role
What you are hiring, and how many.
However you refer to it internally is fine. We can help you name it properly later.
Nothing is sent until you choose to
Your answers stay in your browser while you work. You can print the brief, share a link with your team, or send it to Startup Staffing — all from the review step. There is no account and no obligation.
Worth adding
- A rough seniority level helps us pitch the search correctly.
- Two or three genuine must-haves make the shortlist far more accurate.
- What the person delivers in their first six months is the strongest selling point you have.
- Where the role sits (or that it is remote) shapes the candidate pool.
- Naming your top priorities tells us where to flex when the perfect profile does not exist.
None of these are compulsory. A partial brief is still a useful starting point.
Related reading
Guides from the resource hub that cover the thinking behind this page. Each one is written by us and reviewed before publication.
- Technical & deep-tech hiring
Writing a technical hiring brief that gets results
What a recruiter actually needs to run a technical search: the problem, the stack, the bar, the constraints and the trade-offs you are willing to make.7 min read · Reviewed 15 August 2026 - Technical & deep-tech hiring
Must-have versus learnable skills in early-stage technical hiring
How to split a requirements list into what must be true on day one and what can be learned after joining — and why that decision sets the size of your pool.7 min read · Reviewed 15 August 2026 - Technical & deep-tech hiring
Writing a hiring brief for a complex software or deep-tech role
How to brief a genuinely hard technical role: the system context, real must-haves, evidence of capability, and the trade-offs you are willing to make.8 min read · Reviewed 15 August 2026
Once your brief is written
- Arrange a conversationSend the brief over and talk through the search with the team.
- Model the cost of the hirePut the salary into the calculator and see the monthly cost over time.
- Hiring readiness checkCheck the groundwork — pay sign-off, alignment, interviews — before you go to market.
- Which approach fits?Not sure what to do next? Five questions and a reasoned suggestion.
- How SUS worksThe five steps from brief to a hire billed month by month.