Calibrate before you search: what we agree with founders on day one

Most senior searches that drag on do not fail at the shortlist. They fail on day one, when nobody agreed what good looks like. Four weeks later the founder and the hiring manager are rejecting candidates for opposite reasons, and the search starts again.

Calibration is the step that stops this. It is a single working session before any outreach goes out, and it is the reason most of our searches close in around 30 days. Here is how to calibrate a senior hire, whether you work with us or run the search yourself.

Why searches stall

The usual starting point is a job description copied from another company and lightly edited. It lists ten requirements, weighs them all equally, and says nothing about what the person will actually spend their first six months doing.

The second problem is that two people involved in the hire often want different candidates without realising it. The founder wants someone who has built a team from scratch. The hiring manager wants someone who can ship next quarter. Both are reasonable. They just describe different people, and nobody finds out until the interviews start.

The five things we agree in calibration

First, sample profiles. Before writing anything down, we bring five to ten real profiles of people who could plausibly do the job, and we react to them together. "Not this one, too corporate." "More like her, but with payments experience." Reacting to real people is much faster than debating a written brief, and it surfaces preferences nobody would have thought to write down.

Second, the ideal candidate profile. From those reactions we write a short profile: the must-haves, the nice-to-haves, and the deal-breakers. The deal-breakers matter most. They are usually the things that killed a previous hire, and they are rarely in the job description.

Third, the questions talent will ask. Strong senior candidates are not desperate, so they ask hard questions early. What is the runway? Who does this role report to? Is it remote, hybrid or in the office? What is the pay range, and in which currency? We agree honest answers before outreach starts, so the first call is a real conversation and not a stall. If pay is a sticking point, our pieces on Nigeria tech salary data and executive pay cover how we set ranges.

Fourth, your hiring process. Who interviews, in what order, how long each step takes, and how quickly feedback comes back. A senior candidate with two other offers will not wait ten days for a second round. Google's guide to structured interviewing is a good reference if you want to make interviews more consistent at the same time.

Fifth, your pitch. Why would a strong person leave a good job for this one? We write the honest version: the problem they will own, what is already working, what is broken, and what they will be able to say they built in two years. A good pitch is specific. "Fast-growing fintech" is not a pitch.

What changes after calibration

Outreach goes to fewer, better people. Instead of a hundred generic messages, we contact a few dozen people who match the profile, with a message that explains why this role makes sense for them in particular.

Candidates arrive informed. They already know the range, the reporting line and the shape of the process, so the first conversation is about fit rather than logistics.

And feedback loops are short. Because everyone agreed what good looks like, a rejection comes with a reason that maps back to the profile. If the market tells us the profile is wrong, we change it in days, not weeks.

Try it before your next hire

You can run a lighter version yourself. Pull up five LinkedIn profiles of people you would hire tomorrow and five you would not, and write down why for each. Agree the deal-breakers with everyone who will interview. Write down the salary range and the currency before you talk to anyone. Then book the interview slots before the first candidate is in the pipeline.

Our Market Maps are a useful place to find sample profiles if you are hiring in Nigerian fintech, since they show who leads each team at the largest companies.

If you would rather we ran the calibration with you, this is how we work.