Define success before criteria

In my post "Having versus doing", I wrote about how the criteria you use to define a role shape every decision that follows throughout the recruiting process.

If those criteria are built around having (credentials, titles, years of experience), the process selects for the appearance of competence. If they're built around doing  (what a person has actually accomplished, and whether they genuinely want to accomplish what this role demands next), the process selects for something much closer to the truth.

Based on the positive response to that post, I wanted to expand on the importance of focusing time and energy, as recruiters and hiring managers, on defining success rather than skills early in the hiring process.

This is a hot topic in recruiting because;

Most hiring managers know what kind of person they want, but very few take the time to define what that person actually needs to accomplish.

That distinction is at the core of most preventable hiring mistakes, and it is entirely fixable before the search begins.

In my opinion, these mistakes originate in the traditional job description. For anyone trying to improve their hiring process, my top recommendation is simple: at the very first stage of any search, transform your job description into a performance profile.

A performance profile is a structured definition of what success looks like in a role, built around outcomes rather than requirements.

It is the document you should be working from before you write a job ad, brief a recruiter, or speak to a single candidate.

Why this matters before you start

A job description built around requirements is a bet on the wrong thing. It assumes that if a candidate has enough experience, education, and skills, performance will follow. In practice, that assumption fails regularly. Credentials do not execute. Motivation does. And a requirements list tells you nothing about whether a candidate genuinely wants to do this work, in this context, at this point in their career.

A performance profile flips the logic. Instead of describing the ideal candidate, it describes the ideal outcome. That shift changes everything downstream: who applies, how you assess them, how aligned your hiring team is, and how successfully the person transitions into the role once hired.

In hospitality, where replacing a single manager-level hire can cost anywhere from half to 2x of their annual salary, getting this right from the start is not only a hiring process improvement decision but also a financial one.

A note on short-term convenience versus long-term results

If building a full performance profile feels like a significant investment of time before a search, that is because it is. It typically takes one to two focused hours with the hiring manager to do it properly.

That investment will feel large until you compare it to the cost of hiring the wrong person. In hospitality, that cost is not theoretical. It shows up in turnover rates, in service inconsistency, in team morale, and in the time you spend repeating the same search six months later.

Define the job before you look for the person. The rest of the process gets considerably easier from there.

You will also reap the benefits of a well-built performance profile far beyond the hire itself. It helps you write a better job ad, source more precisely, engage and recruit extraordinary talent who are attracted by the clarity of what the role actually entails, structure your interviews, anchor candidate evaluation, and even onboard your new hire more effectively.

If you are convinced, here are the steps I follow when I want to build one;

Step 1: Define the major objectives

Start by identifying the six to eight most important things the person in this role needs to accomplish over the next six to twelve months to be considered successful. Not tasks, not responsibilities. Accomplishments.

Most roles, when you strip away the noise, have two or three things that truly matter above everything else. A useful way to find them: ask yourself what would make you say, without hesitation, twelve months from now, that this was the right hire. What will have changed because of how well this person did their job?

Frame the answers as concrete outcomes. Not "manage the food and beverage operation" but "stabilize F&B labor cost at or below 32% within six months." Not "lead the front office team" but "reduce guest complaint scores by 20% and bring pre-arrival communication to a consistent standard." The more specific the objective, the more useful it becomes both as a sourcing filter and as an interview framework.

Step 2: Develop subobjectives for each

For every major objective, identify two or three things that would need to happen for it to be achieved. This is the execution layer.

It forces you to think not just about what needs to get done, but what getting it done actually involves in practice.

This step also surfaces assumptions that are easy to leave unspoken. Hiring managers often carry an implicit picture of how a role should be executed that is never shared with the recruiter or the candidate. Making subobjectives explicit brings those assumptions into the open, where they can be examined and aligned before the search begins. A lot of mid-search misalignment and a lot of early attrition after a hire trace back to assumptions that were never made explicit at this stage.

Step 3: Ask the questions that surface what you are missing

Once the objectives are drafted, pressure-test them with a simple set of questions. What problems exist in this role right now that need to be addressed immediately? What is broken, underperforming, or unresolved? What are the biggest challenges the person stepping into this role will face in their first 90 days?

Hiring managers tend to articulate the objectives they are most comfortable with first, not necessarily the most critical ones. The uncomfortable objectives, the ones tied to inherited problems or unresolved failures, are often the most important to name. A performance profile that ignores them sets the new hire up to be blindsided, and sets the hiring manager up to repeat the same problem with a different person.

Step 4: Convert having to doing

This is the most important step, and the one that requires the most discipline. Take every requirement on the existing job description and ask: how will this skill or experience actually be used in this role to deliver results? Then rewrite it as a performance objective.

"Ten years of hotel operations experience" becomes "Lead the operational restructuring of two underperforming departments within the first year." "Strong financial acumen" becomes "Own the monthly P&L review and deliver variance analysis to ownership within five business days of period close." "Proven leadership skills" becomes "Build a stable team of fifteen and reduce voluntary turnover from its current rate within six months."

This conversion does two things;

It moves you from subjective to objective criteria, which makes assessment considerably more accurate. And it prevents you from filtering out candidates who could deliver the required results through a less conventional path.

The best performers can often achieve the same outcomes with less standard experience. A requirements list will exclude them. A performance profile will find them.

Step 5: Convert technical skills into results

Technical requirements deserve exactly the same treatment. Rather than listing a required level of technical competency, define the most significant technical challenges in the role and describe what resolving them looks like in practice.

This matters because technical skills are easy to overvalue in the abstract. What counts is not whether a candidate has a skill, but how they will apply it in this specific operational context to produce a specific outcome. Assessing technical ability tied to real deliverables gives a far more accurate picture than a checklist of tools and systems ever will.

Step 6: Define the team and organizational context

A performance profile is incomplete without a clear picture of the environment the person is stepping into. Who will they work with? What does the team look like today, and what does it need? What is the structure around this role, and what does that mean for how they will need to operate day to day?

For leadership roles, this step is especially important. A director joining a team that needs to be rebuilt has a fundamentally different job than one joining a stable, high-performing team. The profile should name that difference explicitly. It changes who you are looking for, how you evaluate them, and how you set them up once they arrive.

Step 7: Think forward

The final layer of the performance profile is strategic. What are the longer-term requirements of this role, beyond the first year? A commercial roadmap, a technology implementation, a significant organizational change the person will need to help design or lead.

Including this does two things.

It ensures you are hiring for where the business is going, not just where it stands today. And it gives the candidates you most want to attract a clear and compelling reason to be interested.

Top performers are not looking for a job description. They are looking for a worthwhile next step. The performance profile, written well, tells them exactly what that step looks like.

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