Intake Meeting: Questions, Intake Form and Sample Criteria

An intake meeting is the conversation in which a recruiter and a hiring manager agree on what a role needs before the search starts. Cover 6 things: why the role is open, what the new hire must deliver, the criteria to screen against, the pay range, the interview process and the timeline. End with a written brief that the hiring manager confirms and a date to look at the first candidates together.

A hiring manager says "someone who has run a team", but a recruiter needs "has led 6 or more agents for at least 12 months", because only the second one can be checked on a CV or in an interview. The pay range has also become a required item: California, Washington, New York State, Colorado and Massachusetts require it in job postings (most of them above a set number of employees), and the EU pay transparency directive asks for it before the interview once each member state's law applies it (table below).

What is an intake meeting?

An intake meeting is a working session between the recruiter and the hiring manager that turns an open position into a search plan, before the job is posted or any candidate is contacted. The recruiter usually leads it. Agencies call the same conversation an intake call, and there the hiring manager is the client. Some teams say kickoff meeting or job intake. When the criteria are agreed up front, the recruiter sends fewer candidates that the hiring manager rejects for reasons nobody wrote down, so the search is shorter. Candidates also get a recruiter who can answer their questions about the role on the first call.

Of the 6 topics, 4 must end as written decisions: the criteria a candidate must meet, the pay range, the interview stages with an owner for each, and the timeline. Some decisions stay open. A hiring manager may not be able to choose between a strong team lead from another industry and an industry expert who has never led anyone until both are in front of them. Write such a choice down as an open point with a date to decide it.

How to run an intake meeting in 7 steps

An intake meeting goes fastest when the recruiter arrives with a draft brief and questions about the parts that are missing.

1. Send the job description and a draft form a day before. Mark the lines you will ask about, so the hiring manager comes with answers.
2. Bring market data. Check what similar roles pay in the area, how many people hold the role and how long your last search for it took. Data lets you push back on a requirement that would leave only a handful of possible candidates.
3. Start with why the role is open. A new role and a backfill need different questions. For a backfill, ask what the last person did well and what the next person must do differently.
4. Ask what the person must deliver. Ask what the new hire must have delivered after 90 days. A result such as "cut the ticket backlog to under 2 days" can become a criterion that an interview checks.
5. Turn every requirement into a criterion you can check. Agree on its type (dealbreaker, requirement or nice-to-have), its weight and the evidence that counts. The sample below shows this for 6 criteria.
6. Agree on the pay range, the process and the timeline. Confirm the range and who approves an offer above it, who runs each interview stage and how many days the hiring manager needs to give feedback. Set a target start date, and agree which clock you report: time to fill, counted from the day the job opens, or time to hire, counted from the day the chosen candidate enters the process. Write down the end point too (offer accepted or first day), because teams count it differently.
7. Book the first candidate review before the call ends. Pick the day you expect the first shortlist, about a week out, and use it to test the criteria against real profiles.

If you hold intake calls on Zoom, Google Meet or Teams, Firstview's Notetaker can join the call and write the notes into your own intake template, so you can follow the conversation while it writes the key points into your template.

A dealbreaker is a criterion that the role cannot work without, such as a shift or a licence. Keep dealbreakers few and give them no weight: a candidate meets them or does not. Requirements and nice-to-haves get a weight from 1 to 3. A requirement that the hiring manager cannot rank yet stays an open point, with no type and no weight, until the first candidate review decides it.

Recruiting intake form template

A recruiting intake form is the written record of the meeting, and the hiring manager can fill parts of it before the call. Copy this one into your notes tool or ATS:

ROLE INTAKE FORM

Role title:                    Hiring manager:
Recruiter:                     Intake date:
Open because:  [ ] new role  [ ] backfill  [ ] growth
If backfill, what must the next person do differently?

1. WHY THE ROLE IS OPEN
One sentence a candidate could read:

2. FIRST 90 DAYS
What this person must have delivered by day 90:
-
-

3. SCREENING CRITERIA
Criterion | Type (dealbreaker / requirement / nice-to-have) | Weight (1-3) | Evidence that counts | Checked at (application / CV / interview stage)
-
-

4. OPEN POINTS
What the hiring manager could not decide yet | Who decides | By when
-

5. PAY AND TERMS
Pay range (base):              Approved by:
Bonus or commission:           Work model and location:
Start date:                    Shifts or hours:

6. PROCESS
Stage | Owner | Format | Feedback within (days)
Screening |  |  |
First interview |  |  |
Final interview |  |  |

7. TIMELINE
Shortlist by:                  First candidate review:
Offer target:

8. AGENCIES ONLY
Fee and guarantee terms:       Exclusive: yes / no
Shortlist size and date:       Submission format:

Ask the hiring manager to confirm sections 3, 5 and 6 in writing after the meeting, since later disputes about a search tend to start there.

Intake meeting questions to ask the hiring manager

The intake meeting questions below are grouped by the part of the form they fill. Skip any question that the job description already answers.

Why the role is open

• Is this a new role or a backfill? If it is a backfill, why did the last person leave?
• What happens to the team if the role stays open for 2 more months?

Results

• What should this person have delivered after 90 days?
• What are the main duties, and which of them take most of the week?
• What would tell you after 6 months that this hire was a mistake?

Criteria

• Which requirements would you keep even if it meant a smaller pool? Which would you give up for strength somewhere else?
• Is the degree or the number of years in the job post a real requirement, or does it stand for a skill? Which skill?
• Can a new hire learn this in the first 4 weeks? If yes, it is not a dealbreaker.
• How will each interviewer check this criterion?

Pay and terms

• What is the approved range, and who can approve an offer above it?
• Can the person work remotely, and from which states or countries?

Process

• Who interviews, and what does each person check?
• Where did past hires for this role come from: referrals, job boards, agencies or internal moves?
• How many working days will you need to give feedback after each interview?

For more questions on the interview stages, see the structured interview guide.

Sample: from intake notes to screening criteria

The sample below shows how 6 things a hiring manager said in an intake meeting become criteria that an application, a CV or an interview can confirm. Sample: the role, the words and the weights are fictional. The role is a night-shift customer support team lead at an online retailer, with 2 hires.

What the hiring manager said	Criterion	Type	Weight	Evidence that counts	Checked at
"They have to cover nights, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m."	Can work the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift at least 4 nights a week	Dealbreaker	none	The answer to an application question	Application
"They need to have run a team before."	Has led 6 or more support agents for at least 12 months	Requirement	3	A CV line with the team size and dates	CV
"Our satisfaction scores fell. I need a coach, not a scheduler."	Has raised an agent's quality or satisfaction score by coaching	Requirement	3	One example with the score before and after	First interview
"Someone who is a great communicator."	Writes a clear shift handover: open issues, owner and next step for each	Requirement	2	A 10-minute written handover task	Final interview
"They must know Zendesk."	Has worked in a ticketing tool, such as Zendesk	Nice-to-have	1	A CV line that names a ticketing tool	CV
"Spanish would be a big plus."	Can handle a support conversation in Spanish	Open point (no type yet)	none	A short part of the interview held in Spanish	First interview

What changed in the meeting, and why:

• "Must know Zendesk" became a nice-to-have. The recruiter asked how long the tool takes to learn. The hiring manager said about 2 weeks, so it failed the 4-week test for a dealbreaker.
• "Great communicator" became a task. A word without a test lets each interviewer judge it differently. The handover task asks every finalist for the same thing.
• Spanish stayed an open point. The hiring manager could not say whether Spanish matters more than team lead experience. The first candidate review decides it, with real profiles on the table.
• One request was taken out. The hiring manager also asked for "someone young and energetic for nights". The recruiter removed it: US law makes it illegal to discriminate against an applicant because of age (40 or older) (EEOC). The real need, stamina for night shifts, is already covered by the shift criterion and the 90-day results.

The shortlist rule agreed in the same meeting: after the first interview, which the recruiter runs, a candidate goes to the hiring manager when they meet the dealbreaker and either meet both weight-3 requirements or meet one and partly meet the other. Partly meet means that the evidence shows part of the criterion, for example a team of 4 agents instead of 6. The weight-1 criterion sets the order within the shortlist. The handover task (weight 2) is scored at the final interview, and the Spanish question waits for the first candidate review. The resume screening guide shows how to score CVs against criteria like these, and the interview scorecard template carries the same criteria into the interviews.

Which laws make the pay range an intake question?

The pay range is a required intake question wherever the law puts it in the job posting or in front of the applicant. The table lists 5 US states and the EU directive. Use it as a starting point, and check the law where the role and the applicants are, because other states and some cities have their own rules. The table is not legal advice.

Jurisdiction	Who the rule covers	What the rule requires	Source
California	Pay scale: employers with 15 or more employees. Salary history: all employers	The pay scale in any job posting. No employer may ask an applicant for their salary history	Labor Code 432.3
Washington	Employers with 15 or more employees	The wage scale or salary range (or the fixed wage) in each posting, plus a general description of benefits and other pay	RCW 49.58.110
New York State	Businesses with 4 or more employees	A job description and the pay range for designated jobs, promotions and transfers	NYS Department of Labor
Colorado	Employers	Pay in all job postings and notices, internal and public	Colorado Department of Labor
Massachusetts	Employers with 25 or more employees in the state	The pay range in the job posting, from October 29, 2025	Mass.gov
European Union	Employers, once their country has written Directive 2023/970 into national law	Pay information for applicants before employment (in the vacancy notice or before the interview), and no questions about salary history	Council of the EU, European Commission

EU member states had to write Directive 2023/970 into national law by 7 June 2026. The European Commission says it will give particular attention to whether each national law meets the directive. For a role in an EU country, read that country's law for the exact duties.

Two rules in the table matter for the intake meeting itself. First, California law bans questions about salary history, and so does the EU directive once national law applies it, so the range has to come from the hiring manager and your market data. Second, a range that the hiring manager will not commit to in the meeting cannot go into the posting. Mark it as an open point with an owner and a date.

How an agency intake call is different

An agency intake call covers the same role questions as an in-house intake meeting, plus the terms under which the agency works the search. Add these to the call:

• Fee and guarantee. The fee, when it is due and what happens if the hire leaves early.
• Exclusivity. Whether the search is exclusive, and how many other agencies work the role.
• Shortlist size and format. How many candidates by which date, and what each submission holds: a CV only, or a summary with the evidence for each criterion.
• Feedback time. How many days the client takes to answer a submission, and what happens to a candidate the client already knows.
• The client's own words. Write the criteria in the words the client used. A consultant who joins the search later can then check each candidate against those words.

At small agencies, the brief often lives in one consultant's notes, which is one of the problems covered in the guide to recruitment software for small agencies. In Firstview for recruitment agencies, each client has its own workspace. The Notetaker joins the intake call and fills the Client Call Summary template, and criteria taken from the client's words are used to evaluate every CV and run through the AI interview. A person still moves each candidate to the next stage.

Intake questions for high-volume roles

A high-volume intake, for many hires into the same role, needs numbers that an intake for one hire can skip:

• Hires and start dates. How many hires per week or month, and whether they start in groups or one by one.
• Shifts, locations and languages. List each one, and mark which are dealbreakers.
• Dealbreakers an application question can check. A work permit, a shift or a licence can be asked on the application form, so no recruiter time goes to applicants who cannot take the job.
• Applicants needed per hire. Use the ratio from your last campaign for the same role, or the hiring funnel benchmarks when you have none.
• Response time. How fast an applicant must hear back before they take another offer.
• What reaches the hiring manager. A store or shift manager cannot review hundreds of profiles. Agree that they see only the shortlist, with the evidence for each criterion.

The high-volume hiring guide covers the rest of the process, from sourcing to the first day.

What to do after the intake meeting

After the intake meeting, send the brief the same day and ask the hiring manager to confirm it in writing. Then:

1. Write the job post from the brief and pick the sourcing channels. Use the 90-day results and the criteria, add the pay range where the law requires it, and start with the channels that produced past hires for the role.
2. Set up screening from the criteria. Use the same criteria, types and weights for CVs and interviews, so every stage checks the same things.
3. Hold the first candidate review. Show the first screened profiles with the evidence for each criterion. When the hiring manager rejects a candidate who meets every criterion, ask what is missing, add it as a criterion and screen the pool again.
4. Close the open points. Each open point has an owner and a date. Update the brief when one is decided.

Keep the confirmed brief with the role, next to the notes of the interviews that follow, so a new interviewer or consultant can read what was agreed.

How we made this guide

We read the pay posting rules at their official sources (California Labor Code section 432.3, Washington RCW 49.58.110, the New York State Department of Labor, the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, Mass.gov, the Council of the EU and the European Commission) and the EEOC page on prohibited practices, and compared the steps with 5 of the top US search results for "intake meeting". The sample is fictional: Firstview wrote the role, the hiring manager's words and the weights for this guide, and they come from no real customer or meeting. No named person has reviewed this guide yet.