Use when a new role opens or a req needs rescoping: agree a checkable role scorecard and hiring plan with the hiring manager before any posting or sourcing.
Instructions your experts follow when using this skill.
Every search starts here. The role scorecard you write is the bar that postings, sourcing, screening and interview kits all read.
The hiring manager's ask in any form (call notes, a rough req, an old posting) and the team context: who the hire reports to and what gap opened the role. Ask for anything missing one question at a time, and keep drafting.
In plain outcomes, write what the hire must own by the end of year one, their closest collaborators, and the two or three problems the company needs solved. Quote the hiring manager's sentence behind each point so misreadings surface now.
Must-haves: three to six, each confirmable from public work or a structured interview question, so two reviewers with the same evidence would agree. "Has run on-call for a service with paying customers" passes; "great ownership mentality" fails until you ask what ownership looks like in practice and write that. Swap years-of-experience floors and degree requirements for the outcome behind them unless the hiring manager can defend them.
Nice-to-haves: labelled separately; they break ties and never keep anyone out.
Disqualifiers: in the hiring manager's words, then through the fairness check. Three straight jobs under a year each is a note on the candidate card for the interviewer, never a disqualifier.
Every line must tie to the work. None may name or proxy for a protected characteristic such as age, race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, disability, pregnancy or family status. "Digital native", "native English speaker", "culture fit" and graduation-year cut-offs become the real skill underneath ("writes customer-facing docs in English") or get cut, and you say which.
Ask whether someone's work, inside the company or out, sets the bar. If it does, list four to six checkable things that make that person the benchmark: keep what transfers (owning a hard problem end to end), drop the incidental (school, employer brand, exact tools). Take one round of edits; sourcing's lookalike search runs from this list.
Order stages so deal-breakers are tested first: screen, knockout competency, deep-dive, hiring-manager close. Name the panel and each interviewer's competency, the target slate size, the fill date, and who sets compensation and how. Never propose a pay figure yourself.
You recommend; the hiring manager decides. Nothing reaches a posting, screen or sourcing run until they approve the scorecard, and later edits go back to them too.
The role scorecard in chat (must-haves, nice-to-haves, disqualifiers, benchmark traits, target companies and boundaries, title variants, evidence sources), then the hiring plan. After one round of edits, save both to the hiring folder.
No hiring manager to hand? Take the title and ask four questions: what the hire must deliver in year one, which two things rule a candidate out, whether anyone's work sets the bar, and when the seat must be filled. Label the result "draft pending calibration". Sourcing against it is allowed if every batch flags the bar as uncalibrated.
Phrases that help your experts find this skill.
When the user wants to create or update their product marketing context document. Also use when the user mentions 'product context,' 'marketing context,' 'set up context,' 'positioning,' 'who is my target audience,' 'describe my product,' 'ICP,' 'ideal customer profile,' or wants to avoid repeating foundational information across marketing tasks. Use this at the start of any new project before using other marketing skills — it creates `.agents/product-marketing.md` that all other skills reference for product, audience, and positioning context.
When the user wants to research, profile, or analyze competitors from their URLs. Also use when the user mentions 'competitor profile,' 'competitor research,' 'competitor analysis,' 'profile this competitor,' 'analyze competitor,' 'competitive intelligence,' 'competitor deep dive,' 'who are my competitors,' 'competitor landscape,' 'competitor dossier,' 'competitive audit,' or 'research these competitors.' Input is a list of competitor URLs. Output is structured competitor profile markdown files. For creating comparison/alternative pages from profiles, see competitors. For sales-specific battle cards, see sales-enablement.
When the user wants to conduct, analyze, or synthesize customer research. Use when the user mentions "customer research," "ICP research," "talk to customers," "analyze transcripts," "customer interviews," "survey analysis," "support ticket analysis," "voice of customer," "VOC," "build personas," "customer personas," "jobs to be done," "JTBD," "what do customers say," "what are customers struggling with," "Reddit mining," "G2 reviews," "review mining," "digital watering holes," "community research," "forum research," "competitor reviews," "customer sentiment," "PMF survey," "product/market fit survey," "customer interview questions," "interview outreach," "Sales Safari," or "find out why customers churn/convert/buy." Use for analyzing existing research assets, mining online sources, AND running primary research (interviews and surveys). For writing copy informed by research, see copywriting. For acting on research to improve pages, see cro.