sheer tools
Your first hire

Lesson 3 of 8 · 7 min

Write the role around outcomes

"I need help" is not a role. It produces a hire who waits to be told what to do, which is more work than doing it yourself. A role is a set of outcomes someone owns.

Write it as outcomes

Instead of listing tasks and tools, write three to five statements of what will be true if this person is doing the job well. "All client sites are updated and monitored, and I never hear about it" is a role. "WordPress maintenance" is a job title.

Tasks vs outcomes

Tasks:    Answer emails, schedule posts, update the CRM

Outcomes: No client waits more than 4 hours for a first reply
          Content ships on schedule without me chasing it
          The CRM is accurate enough to forecast from on Mondays

Start narrower than feels sensible

A tightly defined first role succeeds far more often than a broad one, because it can be trained, measured, and expanded. You can always widen the scope in three months; recovering from a role nobody could have succeeded in is much harder.

Try it

Write your role as five outcome statements, each one something you could honestly grade at the end of a quarter. If you cannot grade it, rewrite it until you can.