Role mandate
Tell the candidate what changes in the business in 12 months if they do this job well, in terms they can picture on day 400.
First Round Review's VP Eng framework starts with the 12-month mandate, not the job description.
- One sentence: the state of the business today versus the state in 12 months
- The specific system or team that does not exist yet and they will build
- The metric that moves because of their work, with a number
- Generic language like 'build a world-class team'
- A full org chart, that comes later in scope
- Founder cannot name a single metric that changes
- Mandate reads identical to the last three roles they hired for
- Confusing a mandate with a task list: 'hire 5 engineers' is a task, 'ship payroll in 20 new countries without an outage' is a mandate
- · Could you say this mandate out loud without checking notes?
- · Would a VP Eng candidate be excited by this or bored by it?
In 12 months, [company] goes from [state today] to [state after]. The person in this seat owns [system], and [metric] moves from [X] to [Y] because of it.
"// lint-content-allow We need someone to unlock our engineering org and help us scale to the next level."
"Nimbus Payroll goes from 12 people shipping payroll in 96 countries by hand-checked spreadsheets, to a team of 22 with automated compliance checks in every country. The VP Eng owns that build. Support tickets tied to payroll errors drop from 40 a month to under 5."
Nimbus example: names the current state (12 people, 96 countries, manual checks), the future state (22 people, automated), and a concrete metric (40 to 5 tickets).
Quick quiz
1. What distinguishes a role mandate from a job description?
- ○ A mandate lists required years of experience
- ✓ A mandate states the 12-month business outcome, a job description lists tasks
- ○ A mandate is longer
- ○ There is no meaningful difference
First Round Review's VP Eng piece stresses outcome over task list when framing a role to senior candidates.
2. Which of these belongs on the mandate slide?
- ○ Full org chart with reporting lines
- ✓ A metric that moves from X to Y because of this hire
- ○ List of all current open reqs
- ○ Company mission statement
Concrete metrics make the mandate falsifiable and credible, per Lenny's recruiting framework.