A marketing job brief should describe what the hire will change in the business within twelve months, and everything else on the page should serve that. Most don't. They list tools, years of experience and a vague wish for someone "passionate", then the recruiter sends fifteen CVs and the hiring manager rejects twelve. The fault sits upstream of the shortlist, and it's fixable in an afternoon.
This guide is for hiring managers and in-house talent teams who are about to brief an agency, a headhunter or a job board for a marketing role. Follow the steps and you'll have a brief a recruiter can screen against, which is the only kind that produces a marketing shortlist in the UK worth reading on the first pass.
I came to this from the other side. Twelve years of consumer PR meant I wrote and received a lot of briefs, and the ones that went wrong all failed in the same place: nobody had decided what success looked like before the work started. Hiring is no different.
1. Write the outcome before the job title
Start with one sentence: "In twelve months, this person will have..." Finish it with something you could check. Cut paid acquisition cost for a particular product line. Take the email programme from monthly blasts to a segmented lifecycle. Land coverage in trade press for a launch you've already scheduled.
You'll be tempted to write three outcomes. Write one, maybe two. A brief with six priorities describes a department, not a hire.
How you'll know it's worked: a recruiter who has never met you can read the sentence and tell you what the first ninety days probably look like. If they can't, it's too soft.
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2. Separate must-haves from preferences, and be ruthless about it
Here's the objection I hear most, and it's fair: hiring managers say a long wish list widens the net, and good candidates will self-select. Sometimes that's true. In my experience, though, strong candidates read a long list and assume the role is a mess, while weaker ones apply to everything. The list narrows nothing.
So split it. Must-haves are the things where a gap means the person fails in the first quarter. Preferences are things you'd teach or can live without. Keep must-haves to a handful.
And name the evidence. "Strong analytical skills" is unscreenable. "Has built a reporting dashboard in GA4 or Looker Studio and presented it to a commercial director" is something a recruiter can ask about in a ten-minute call.
How you'll know it's worked: each must-have can be tested with one question. If it takes a paragraph to test, it's a preference.
3. Name the tools, and say how deep the experience needs to go
Marketing stacks are where briefs go quietly wrong. "Experience with HubSpot" covers someone who has sent a newsletter from it and someone who rebuilt the lead scoring model. Those are different hires on different salaries.
List the platforms you actually run, whether that's HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Klaviyo, Semrush, Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads or Canva, and mark each as "daily use", "needed within six months" or "nice to know". Then be honest about which ones can be learned on the job. Most can.
I'd go further. For a lot of mid-level roles, I'd rather see someone who's learned two platforms fast than someone who ticks all five and has never owned the results. Your brief should say which you want.
How you'll know it's worked: your recruiter stops asking "how much tool experience is enough?" in the first call.
4. Give the salary range and the working pattern up front
Don't hold the money back. A brief without a range wastes the first week, because the recruiter is sending people at the wrong level and finding out at offer. Say the band, say whether it's negotiable, and say what the hybrid expectation is. If it's three days in the office, write three days.
Pay in marketing varies sharply between agency and in-house, and between London and elsewhere, so a range that's realistic for one is nonsense for the other. Check it against the ONS earnings data and what comparable roles are advertising, then commit to a number.
How you'll know it's worked: candidates don't drop out at the offer stage over a salary conversation you could have had in week one.
5. Describe who the person will actually work with
Candidates and recruiters both need to know the shape of the team. Who does this person report to? Do they manage anyone? Who do they depend on in sales, product or finance to get their work done? A marketing manager who relies on a data team that doesn't exist is a different proposition from one who has it on tap.
If you're hiring because someone left, say so. If the role is new, say that too, because new roles carry a lack of precedent that suits some people and frightens others. Both are useful to know before the shortlist, not after.
How you'll know it's worked: early interviews focus on how the person would do the job, not on what the job even is.
6. Agree the screening questions and the feedback loop with the recruiter
A brief isn't finished when you send it. Sit down with the recruiter, ideally for twenty minutes, and agree three screening questions that map to your must-haves. Then agree a turnaround on CV feedback: two working days is realistic, a week isn't.
This is where video-first recruitment earns its keep for some teams, because a two-minute answer to a screening question tells you more than a CV summary. Whether you use that or phone screens, the point is the same.
Give reasons when you reject. "Not quite right" teaches the recruiter nothing. "Too agency-side for a role that needs in-house stakeholder management" teaches them everything.
How you'll know it's worked: the second batch of CVs is visibly sharper than the first.
When a step goes wrong
If the first shortlist is mostly misses, don't blame the recruiter yet. Reread your outcome sentence and your must-haves, and ask whether the rejected CVs actually fail them. Often they pass. The real filter was something you hadn't written down, such as a preference for candidates from a certain sector, and that goes into the brief now.
If candidates keep dropping out, check the salary band and the working pattern first. Those two account for most early withdrawals in my experience.
If you can't write the outcome sentence at all, stop. The role isn't ready to hire for. That isn't a failure, it's a cheap way to find out, and far cheaper than a six-month mis-hire. When you've got the sentence, brief again, and for a premium or senior search consider a dedicated headhunting route where the brief gets a proper conversation rather than a form.
For employer-side obligations on how you word the advert, the Equality Act 2010 guidance on gov.uk is the place to check before anything goes live.
