Steal My Prompt Vol. 46: The Hiring Manager's Interview

The interviews are on your calendar and the job description is posted, so the hard thinking must already be done. It is an easy assumption to carry into a loop. Then a candidate's answer reveals you never decided whether you need a builder or an operator, and now you are defining the role mid-interview.

Halfway through a backfill hire for my own team, I caught this pattern in myself. The hire is made, and the loop went fine. But the thing I was missing was not better questions. It was a clear picture of what I was hiring for, settled before the first conversation instead of assembled during it. I built this prompt because I want that system in place before my next position opens.

The Hiring Manager's Interview flips the direction of the first interview in your search. Before you interview anyone, the prompt interviews you. One question at a time, it pulls the role out of your head, then hands back a role scorecard and a question set built to test the criteria you just committed to. This is Part 1 of a two-part hiring series. Next Tuesday, Part 2 takes what this prompt produces and runs your debrief with it.

What You Can Use This For

• A backfill req where the old job description no longer matches what the role has become
• The first hire for a role that has never existed on your team
• Aligning an interview panel on criteria before the loop starts, so five interviewers stop running five different interviews
• An internal promotion decision where you owe the candidate criteria instead of impressions
• Rewriting a stale job description, since the scorecard this produces is the outline

How to Use It

1. Open Claude. The prompt also works in ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Gemini on free tiers.
2. For a senior or high-stakes role, turn on the reasoning option. "Extended thinking" in Claude, the reasoning model in ChatGPT, "Think Deeper" in Copilot, or "Deep Think" in Gemini. It produces sharper follow-up questions on the first pass.
3. Copy the prompt and fill in the two bracketed fields.
4. Answer the questions one at a time, and answer honestly. Short answers are fine. If a question stops you cold, that pause is the finding. The role is less defined than the posted req suggests.
5. Save the scorecard and share it with your interview panel before the first screen.

Pro tip –> Paste the job description even if it is stale. The gap between what the description says and what your answers reveal is the most valuable output this prompt produces.

The Prompt

You are an experienced talent partner who has supported hundreds of searches and watched strong candidates get hired into poorly defined roles. Your rule is that a hiring manager who cannot describe success in a role should not be interviewing for it yet. Today you are interviewing me, the hiring manager, before I interview anyone.

My open role: [ROLE TITLE AND LEVEL]The job description, if one exists: [PASTE IT HERE, OR WRITE "NONE"]

Interview me one question at a time. Ask a single question, wait for my answer, and let each answer shape your next question. Cover the ground you judge most important, including why this role exists now, what the person must deliver in the first 90 days and the first year, which skills are must-haves versus trainable, what gap on the team this hire closes, and the failure mode I am most worried about. Ask no more than seven questions, and stop as soon as you have what you need. If I type "skip," stop asking and proceed using clearly labeled assumptions.

When the interview is complete, produce three things.

1. A role scorecard as a table with four columns: CRITERION | MUST-HAVE OR NICE-TO-HAVE | WHY IT MATTERS FOR THIS ROLE | HOW AN INTERVIEW CAN TEST IT. Rank must-haves at the top in priority order.

2. An interview question set. For each must-have criterion, write one behavioral question, one line describing what a strong answer sounds like, and one line describing what a weak answer sounds like.

3. A gap report. In two or three sentences, name anything I emphasized that the job description does not mention, and anything the description emphasizes that I never brought up. If I provided no description, name the one criterion I seemed least certain about.

Transparency and Notes

• Built in Claude for this volume. It requires no paid features and runs in ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini free tiers.
• Part 1 of a two-part hiring series. Next Tuesday, Part 2 takes the scorecard this prompt produces and compiles your post-interview debrief against it.
• Keep candidate names, compensation details, and anything confidential out of the intake. The prompt only needs the role.
• The output is a thinking aid for interview preparation, not HR or legal guidance. Run your final criteria past your recruiting partner.