What Makes a Great Executive Brief
The executive brief is the most important document in a search. Most are vague enough to be useless. The ones that produce great shortlists share specific characteristics that can be learned and applied.
Founder, Majhi Group & Majhi OS
The worst brief I ever worked from was four pages long, detailed, and completely wrong. It described the VP of Sales the CEO wished they needed rather than the one the business actually required. We spent eight weeks running a search against it before the CEO and I sat down and rewrote it from scratch. The next six weeks produced the hire. The brief determines everything.
The executive brief is the document that determines whether a search produces the right shortlist or a lot of activity with nothing to show for it. A great brief makes every subsequent step of the search faster, more accurate, and more likely to close on the right person. A vague brief produces a search that generates candidates without being able to evaluate them and an evaluation process that can't make decisions.
Most executive briefs are vague. They describe a list of desired qualities in the abstract, "strategic thinker," "strong communicator," "proven track record of building and scaling teams", without the specificity that would make these qualities useful as evaluation criteria. They describe the role without describing the context that defines what the role actually requires. They describe the company without describing the specific challenges that the incoming leader will face.
A great executive brief is different in every dimension. Here is what distinguishes it.
It describes the specific problem the hire needs to solve
Every executive hire exists to solve a specific problem. Sometimes the problem is a function that doesn't exist yet and needs to be built. Sometimes it is a function that exists but is underperforming. Sometimes it is a leadership gap that is creating downstream problems across the organisation. Sometimes it is a specific strategic initiative that requires executive leadership to drive.
The great brief names this problem precisely. Not "we need a VP of Sales to lead our commercial organisation", that is a job title, not a problem statement. "We have $8M ARR, strong product-market fit in mid-market SaaS, and a sales function that is founder-led and not replicable. We need a VP of Sales who has built an outbound enterprise motion before and can create the systems and team structure that make our revenue growth independent of founder involvement", that is a problem statement.
The problem statement defines the search. It tells the sourcing team which candidates have relevant experience. It tells the evaluation team what questions to ask. It tells the candidate why this role exists and what they would be walking into.
It describes what the incoming leader will inherit
A brief that describes the ideal candidate without describing what they are inheriting is a brief that will attract candidates who are wrong for the specific situation.
The great brief describes the current state of the function honestly: team size and composition, existing processes and whether they're working, technical infrastructure, key relationships the leader will inherit, and the specific problems that have developed in the absence of the right leadership. This description is not a sales document, it is the information a serious candidate needs to evaluate whether the role is right for them.
Briefs that omit or obscure the real state of what the incoming leader will inherit produce candidates who accept the role with incorrect expectations and leave within 12 months when the reality becomes clear.
It specifies criteria with the granularity needed to evaluate
Most briefs describe desired capabilities at the level of "strong leadership," "strategic thinking," or "excellent communication." These phrases describe almost every candidate the search will produce. They are not evaluation criteria, they are evaluation placeholders.
The great brief specifies criteria at the granularity that allows candidates to be compared against each other. Not "strong technical leadership", "has run an engineering organisation of 50+ people through a re-architecture of a multi-tenant SaaS product without shipping interruption." Not "track record of building high-performing teams", "has hired and developed at least three direct reports who have gone on to VP or C-suite roles at other companies."
This granularity requires work to produce. It requires the hiring manager to articulate what they actually mean when they say "strong technical leadership", to surface the specific evidence they would look for rather than leaving it as an abstract judgment call. That work is the brief conversation. Done well, it produces criteria that the evaluation team can apply consistently and that the shortlist can be compared against.
It is explicit about the decision-making environment
The incoming leader's effectiveness depends on the decision-making environment they're entering. A VP of Product who has authority over the product roadmap is doing a different job than a VP of Product who makes recommendations that are approved by the CEO. A CFO who owns the capital allocation decision is doing a different job than one who advises on it.
The great brief is explicit about what authority the incoming leader will have, what decisions require approval and from whom, and how the role relates to the CEO, the board, and the rest of the executive team. This is not just information, it is one of the most important pieces of evaluation data for senior candidates, who will be assessing whether the role has the scope to be worth taking.
It describes what success looks like at 6 and 18 months
Abstract success criteria, "will have made a significant impact on the organisation", are not useful for evaluation or for offer conversations. Specific success criteria, "at six months, will have hired the first two engineering managers and established a reliable sprint cadence; at 18 months, will have shipped the platform re-architecture and reduced deployment time from four hours to under 30 minutes", are both evaluation tools and a foundation for the offer conversation.
Candidates who see specific success criteria understand what they're committing to. They can assess whether those outcomes are achievable, whether they're the right person to achieve them, and whether the role is constructed in a way that gives them the authority and resources to succeed. A candidate who accepts a role with clear success criteria and exits without achieving them has a much cleaner accountability structure than one whose success criteria were never defined.
Majhi Group runs retained executive searches starting with a brief process designed to produce these characteristics. The brief conversation is where the search is won or lost.
The brief determines everything. The worst brief I ever worked from was four pages long, detailed, and completely wrong - it described the VP the CEO wished they needed rather than the one the business actually required.
If a current brief feels vague or is producing the wrong candidates, request an assessment.
See also: How Executive Search Actually Works, How to Evaluate Executive Candidates, What to Expect From an Executive Search Partner
Frequently Asked Questions
What should an executive search brief include?
A great executive brief includes six things most briefs omit or underspecify. First, business context, not the company overview, but the specific situation creating the need for this hire. Second, the mandate, the particular problem the incoming leader needs to solve in the first 12-18 months. Third, evaluation criteria, what specifically distinguishes a great candidate from an acceptable one, precise enough to drive a hiring decision. Fourth, compensation range, realistic, market-informed, approved to offer at the top for the right candidate. Fifth, process clarity, who is involved and what the authority structure is. Sixth, anti-criteria, what won't work, which is often more clarifying than what will.
What makes executive search briefs fail?
Most executive briefs fail for one of three reasons. First, aspirational criteria, the brief describes the candidate the company wishes it could afford rather than one it can realistically attract at its current stage and compensation level. Second, vague success criteria, descriptions like 'strategic thinker' and 'strong communicator' that cannot distinguish between candidates in practice. Third, and most damaging, intake drift, the brief is accurate when written but the hiring manager's actual requirements evolve during the search without the brief being updated. Candidates are then evaluated against invisible criteria, rejections accumulate without explanation, and the search stalls.
How specific should an executive brief be about compensation?
Specific enough to prevent a failed offer. The brief should include a realistic base salary range informed by current market data for the specific role, seniority, geography, and industry. It should include target total cash and, for equity-bearing roles, a description of the equity structure and its realistic value. The most common cause of late-stage search failure, an offer made and declined after a twelve-week process, is a compensation package the company believed was competitive and the candidate found below their actual expectation. This information should be established before the search begins, not negotiated at offer stage.
Majhi Group
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