The Intake Meeting: 15 Questions to Ask a Hiring Manager Before You Recruit

An intake meeting is a 30 to 45 minute conversation between the recruiter and the hiring manager before a search starts. Its purpose is to agree what the role needs, which requirements are fixed and which flexible, what the pay band is, who will interview and how fast decisions will be made. The output is a one-page summary with the scorecard criteria, knock-outs, interview plan and timeline, agreed in writing. Skipping it is a common cause of rework: candidates are screened against the wrong requirements, interviews drift and the hiring manager changes their mind after seeing the first shortlist. Fifteen well-chosen questions cover most of what you need.

The recruiter's job in the meeting is to challenge gently and write things down.

Before the meeting

• Read the existing job description and any similar past roles.
• Check market pay for the role and location.
• Review how the team has hired before: what worked, what did not.
• Send the hiring manager a short list of questions in advance.

The 15 questions

The role

1. Why is this role open, and what changed?
2. What will this person do in the first 30, 60 and 90 days?
3. What would make them a success in a year?
4. What are the main challenges of the role?

Requirements

1. Which three requirements are essential, and which are nice to have?
2. Which requirements could someone learn on the job?
3. Is there anything in the current description that you do not need? See job description writing.
4. What would make you reject a candidate straight away? These become knock-outs. See knockout questions.

The candidate

1. Describe a person who has done well in a similar role here. What did they have in common?
2. What backgrounds might also work, even if they look different on paper? See screening career changers.

The package and constraints

1. What is the salary band, and how flexible is it? What other terms can we offer?
2. Where and how will the person work: location, hybrid, hours?
3. When do you need someone to start?

The process

1. Who will interview, what will each person assess and how quickly can they respond? See interview scorecard template.
2. Who makes the final decision, and what would you need to see to decide?

Challenge, politely

Hiring managers often bring a description from the last search, or an ideal candidate who does not exist. Useful prompts:

• "If we found someone who met seven of the ten, would you see them?"
• "Which of these would you teach in the first month?"
• "Can we describe this requirement by what the person does rather than a number of years?"
• "What would we be willing to trade off?"

Share what you know of the market: how many candidates are likely to have all the requirements, and what the pay band attracts. This is the point to set honest expectations.

Agree on the process

Settle:

• The stages and who runs each.
• The time each person will commit.
• A target response time for feedback, such as 24 hours after an interview.
• The date for a first shortlist.
• Who is on the interview panel and what they cover.

Put the dates in calendars. Slow feedback from hiring managers is one of the biggest delays in hiring; see reduce time to hire.

Output: a one-page summary

Share it with the hiring manager and ask them to confirm. This is your reference when scope creep appears.

What goes wrong without it

• The first shortlist is rejected because the manager "knew it when they saw it".
• Interviewers ask unrelated questions and cannot compare candidates.
• The salary band does not match the market, and candidates drop out late.
• The role changes mid-search.
• No one is clear on who decides.

See hiring process steps for how the intake fits with the rest.

Running it with a small team

If you are the hiring manager and the recruiter, run through the questions yourself and write the answers. Ask a colleague to challenge you for ten minutes. This is the best use of an hour in a first search. See hiring your first employee.

Using the output

The scorecard drives resume screening, phone screens and interviews. See how to screen resumes and screening criteria scorecard. In Resume World you enter the criteria once and every application is scored against them, so the agreement from the intake meeting is applied consistently. See AI resume screening software.