Define Ready Before You Hire

Most hiring plans are detailed about the number of people and vague about what those people need to be able to do.

We spend weeks on the job description and the interview loop. Then the new hire starts, and the definition of success becomes “ramped in about three months.”

If you can’t say what ready looks like, you can’t tell whether someone is getting there.

The question to answer before the offer goes out

“What will this person be able to do, on their own, by day 30, 60 and 90?”

Not what they will have attended or read. What they will be able to do. For a seller, that might be:

• Day 30: deliver the core pitch and qualify an inbound lead.
• Day 60: run a discovery call independently and build a mutual plan.
• Day 90: manage a full cycle with their manager reviewing, not leading.

The exact milestones will vary by role and company. The discipline of writing them down does not.

Why this matters to the forecast

When readiness is defined, the revenue plan stops depending on a single ramp assumption. You can see how many people have reached each checkpoint, and which ones are slipping, weeks before it shows up in pipeline.

That turns a conversation with finance from “we expect them to ramp” into “here is where the cohort stands, and here is what we’re doing about the two people behind.”

Three rules we’ve learned

1. Make it observable

“Understands the customer” is not a milestone. “Can explain our top three use cases to a prospect” is.

2. Make it the manager’s call

The person best placed to confirm readiness is the manager who has seen the work. Give them a standard to judge against and a simple way to record it.

3. Revisit it

Your definition of ready should change when your product, market or motion does. If it hasn’t changed in a year, it’s probably out of date.