The hiring process is too important to design on the fly. Successful hires start with a better process.
Before the search begins, we run a 2-week sprint to scope the role, align the team, and architect the interview and decision-making process from end to end.
Most hiring processes fail before they even start.
A mis-scoped role, a misaligned team, and a generic hiring process can add weeks to a search, force a restart, consume hours of internal team time, and increase the chance of a failed hire.
For a $250,000 role, that can mean tens of thousands of dollars if caught early and six figures if the wrong person is hired.
A two-week investment that prevents months of rework and tens of thousands of dollars
Topographic turns an unclear or underdeveloped hiring need into a precise role definition, compelling job description, and practical hiring toolkit.
The Topographic Hiring Design Sprint is a focused two-week investment that gets you internally aligned and ready to hire. You'll know exactly who you're targeting, how success is defined for that role, and how to evaluate candidates throughout the hiring process.
I've been there
I'm Banks. Three-time founder and CEO. I've led 50+ hiring processes, led a startup accelerator where I worked with hundreds of startups to think through hiring strategy and role scoping, and I've been a consultant connecting business strategy to hiring strategy for teams of all sizes — and watched how often a great search is sunk by rushing through the foundational work. I built Topographic to fix the foundational steps I've paid the price of skipping myself.
I've found that teams rushing to hire tend to face two problems:
- They're in a rush to publish the job description and make the hire, so they skip over the scoping and alignment work that shapes everything downstream.
- They are sometimes too close to their organizations (curse of knowledge) to see exactly how a role needs to be scoped, or the key metrics and outcomes a new hire should be responsible for.
Signs you are a good fit
- You're realizing a need to hire but want help thinking through how the role is positioned in the company.
- You're creating a role that's never existed before.
- The role is strategic, senior, cross-functional, or hard to define.
- You and the other decision-makers aren't fully aligned on the scope of the role.
- A previous search stalled or failed, or the last person in this role didn't work out.
- Your team is about to engage a recruiter and you want to get aligned on exactly what you need before you engage them.
- Your team felt aligned at the beginning of a search only to realize later, during the hiring process, that the role needed to be scoped differently or there was unspoken misalignment within the team.
If two or more of these land, a hiring design sprint is worth the investment and will pay dividends downstream.
How the two-week sprint works
Intake and diagnosis
Your team completes an intake form about the company, the business context, the role, and the hiring objective. Topographic reviews the materials and identifies areas where the role needs more clarity, sharper positioning, or better alignment.
360 interviews
Topographic conducts up to four interviews with relevant team members to understand organizational priorities, hiring needs, and anticipated challenges.
Role scoping workshop
We lead a 60-minute workshop with the key hiring decision-makers. Together, we clarify the purpose of the role, define success, identify essential requirements, pressure-test assumptions, and align on the candidate profile.
Job description development
Topographic drafts a clear, compelling, publish-ready job description built around the agreed role scope. Your team reviews the draft and provides feedback.
Hiring toolkit
Once the job description is approved, Topographic creates the internal hiring tools: the scorecard, interview scripts, and deliberation framework your team can use throughout the search.
Pricing
| Target cash compensation | Fee |
|---|---|
| Under $200k | $4,000 |
| $200k – $350k | $8,000 |
| $350k+ | $10,000 |
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of our team's time does this take?
6–8 hours of your team's time over the 2-week sprint.
Do we need to have a job description before starting?
No. You can come with a rough draft, an outdated job description, or simply the idea for a role. We will help turn the hiring need into a clear role definition and job description.
Who should participate in the workshop?
The workshop should include the people responsible for defining and evaluating the role. This usually includes the hiring manager, the department or function leader, and any executive or founder who will be involved in the final decision.
Do you guarantee we'll make a hire?
We can't guarantee that you'll make a successful hire, but we can increase the likelihood that you will.
Can you scope more than one role at once?
Yes. Reach out and we'll put together a multi-role engagement scoped to what you need.
Do you do recruiting?
No. Topographic is not a recruiting firm. We do not source candidates or manage the search. We help your team define the role and create the materials that make recruiting more effective. If you need a recruiter, we can introduce you to partners we trust.
Do you provide salary benchmarking?
Yes. We can provide compensation guidance and salary benchmarking as part of the sprint, especially when compensation is central to positioning the role effectively.
Can we use this with our existing recruiter?
Yes. In many cases, the sprint makes the recruiter more effective by giving them a clearer target, sharper positioning, and better evaluation criteria before they begin outreach.
What if the role's compensation isn't finalized yet?
That's normal. We will finalize the target cash compensation together by the end of the sprint, and your fee is locked at that number when the role is ready to post. If a candidate later negotiates a different figure, your fee doesn't change.
Tell us about the role
Share a few details about the role and where things stand, and we'll follow up to schedule your intake call.
Book a call