persona-research

name	persona-research
description	This skill should be used when the user asks to "build a candidate persona", "create an ideal candidate profile", "define who we're looking for", "candidate motivations", "career patterns", "where do candidates hang out", "candidate persona", "ideal profile", or needs to develop a detailed picture of the target candidate beyond just skills and experience requirements.

Persona Research for Recruiting Sourcing

Purpose

Build detailed candidate personas that go beyond job descriptions. A persona captures not just skills and experience, but motivations, career patterns, online presence, community involvement, and decision-making factors. Personas guide sourcers on where to find candidates, how to engage them, and what resonates with them.

Persona vs. Job Description

A job description defines what the company needs. A persona defines who the person is.

Job Description	Candidate Persona
5+ years Python experience	Has been building data pipelines since 2019, progressed from analyst to engineer
Experience with distributed systems	Excited about scale problems, follows Kafka/Flink communities
Strong communication skills	Active on tech Twitter, writes blog posts, speaks at local meetups
Team player	Values collaborative culture, dislikes siloed organizations

Persona Components

1. Professional Profile

• Current role & title - What they're likely called today
• Career trajectory - Typical path that leads to this role
• Years of experience - Range, not a hard number
• Education patterns - CS degree? Bootcamp? Self-taught? PhD?
• Industry background - Which sectors have they worked in?
• Company type history - Startups? Enterprise? FAANG? Consulting?

2. Technical Identity

• Core skills - What they consider their primary expertise
• Adjacent skills - What they also know but may not lead with
• Tools & technologies - Specific tools in their daily workflow
• Learning trajectory - What they're currently learning or interested in
• Technical opinions - Strong preferences (e.g., "prefers Rust over C++")

3. Motivational Drivers

Understanding what makes candidates move is critical for sourcing strategy:

Career motivations (what attracts them):

• Technical challenge and complexity
• Impact and mission alignment
• Career advancement opportunity
• Compensation improvement
• Team and leadership quality
• Work-life balance and flexibility
• Learning and growth
• Autonomy and ownership

Push factors (what makes them leave):

• Limited growth or promotion ceiling
• Poor management or leadership
• Lack of technical challenge
• Below-market compensation
• Cultural issues or values misalignment
• Burnout or unsustainable pace
• Company instability (layoffs, pivots)
• Remote/return-to-office mandates

4. Online Presence & Community

Map where the target persona is active:

Professional platforms:

• LinkedIn profile style (detailed vs. minimal)
• GitHub activity (open source contributor? personal projects?)
• Portfolio or personal website
• Technical blog or Medium/Substack

Community involvement:

• Conferences attended or spoken at
• Meetup participation
• Open source project contributions
• Online forums (Stack Overflow, Reddit, HackerNews)
• Slack/Discord communities
• Twitter/X tech community

Content consumption:

• Podcasts they listen to
• Newsletters they subscribe to
• YouTube channels or courses they follow
• Books or thought leaders they reference

5. Decision-Making Profile

How this persona evaluates opportunities:

• Research process - Do they actively job search or wait to be approached?
• Decision timeline - How long from first contact to accepted offer?
• Key decision factors - Top 3 things that determine a yes/no
• Red flags - What immediately turns them off?
• Influencers - Who do they consult? (Partner, mentors, peers, online communities)
• Counter-offer vulnerability - How likely is their current employer to counter?

6. Transition Readiness

Assess how likely the persona is to successfully transition based on their current company context. This is especially important when the hiring company differs significantly in size or stage from typical source companies.

Transition friction levels:

• Startup to startup (low friction): Candidate already understands ambiguity, lean resources, wearing multiple hats. Focus screening on role fit, not environment fit.
• Scaleup to startup (low-medium friction): Candidate has seen growth but may expect more structure. Screen for tolerance of early-stage chaos.
• Enterprise to startup (high friction): Large culture gap, comp gap, and risk tolerance gap. Only viable when strong push factors exist (layoffs, blocked promotion, title upgrade) or the candidate has prior startup experience.

Signals of transition readiness:

• Has worked at a sub-100 person company before (strongest signal)
• Has changed jobs 2+ times in 5 years (comfortable with change)
• Relocated internationally for work (high risk tolerance)
• Left a bigger company for a smaller one previously (pattern, not accident)

Red flags for startup transitions:

• Entire career at 1,000+ employee companies with no exception
• 5+ years at one company (values stability above growth)
• Risk-averse language in screening: "guaranteed base," "established brand," "proven playbook"

Include transition readiness assessment in the persona when the hiring company is significantly smaller or earlier-stage than the typical source companies.

Persona Building Process

Step 1: Analyze the Job Description

Extract the core requirements and translate into candidate attributes:

• Hard skills → Technical identity
• Soft skills → Behavioral patterns
• Experience requirements → Career trajectory
• Team context → Cultural fit indicators
• Identify the underlying problems this person solves
• Understand team context and dynamics
• Map seniority expectations to market reality

Step 2: Interview the Hiring Manager

Key questions to ask (or infer from context):

• "Describe the best person you've worked with in this role"
• "What would make someone fail in this role?"
• "Where did your last successful hire come from?"
• "What's the team culture like?"
• "What career growth does this role offer?"

Step 3: Research the Market

• Review LinkedIn profiles of people currently in similar roles
• Read job postings from competitors for the same profile
• Browse relevant communities to understand the persona's world
• Check conference speaker lists and blog authors in the domain

Step 4: Identify the Channels

• Where does this persona spend time online?
• What communities are they part of?
• What events do they attend?
• What content do they consume?

Step 5: Build the Persona

Combine all inputs into a narrative persona document:

• Give the persona a name (e.g., "Senior SRE Sara") for team reference
• Write in present tense, describing a specific person
• Professional profile (career path, education patterns, company types)
• Technical identity (core and adjacent skills, tools, learning interests)
• Motivational drivers (what attracts, what repels, decision factors)
• Online presence (where they're active, how they present)
• Decision-making profile (how they evaluate opportunities)

Step 6: Validate with Stakeholders

Share the persona with the hiring manager and team:

• Does this person sound like who they want to hire?
• Are the motivational drivers accurate?
• Are there community/channel insights they can add?
• Iterate based on feedback

Output Format

Persona Document Template

# Candidate Persona: [Persona Name]
**Role:** [Target Role Title]
**Created:** [Date]

## Who They Are
[2-3 paragraph narrative description painting a vivid picture of this person.
Write as if describing a real individual. Include their typical day, what
they care about, and what their career looks like.]

## Professional Profile
- **Current title:** [Typical titles they hold now]
- **Experience:** [X-Y years total, Z+ years in core domain]
- **Career path:** [How they got here - typical trajectory]
- **Education:** [Common patterns - CS degree, bootcamp, self-taught, etc.]
- **Company background:** [Types of companies they've worked at]
- **Industry:** [Sectors they've been in]

## Technical Identity
- Core skills: [list]
- Tools: [list]
- Currently learning: [interests]

***Adjacent Skills (Frequently Co-occurring)***
[Skills they likely also have based on the core skill set]

## What Motivates Them

***Top Attractions (Why They'd Join)***
  1. [Most compelling factor]
  2. [Second factor]
  3. [Third factor]

***Push Factors (Why They'd Leave Current Role)***
  1. [Most common departure trigger]
  2. [Second trigger]
  3. [Third trigger]

***Decision Factors (How They Evaluate Offers)***
  1. [Primary decision criterion]
  2. [Secondary criterion]
  3. [Tertiary criterion]

***Red Flags (Immediate Turn-offs)***
  - [What makes them decline or disengage]

## Where to Find Them

***Online Platforms (By Presence Likelihood)***
1. [Platform + what their presence looks like there]
2. [Platform + typical activity]
3. [Platform + presence type]

***Communities***
- [Specific Slack/Discord communities]
- [Reddit communities]
- [Professional associations]

***Events***
- [Conferences they attend]
- [Meetups they might join]
- [Workshops/courses]

***Content They Consume***
- [Newsletters]
- [Podcasts]
- [Blogs/publications]
- [Thought leaders they follow]

## How to Engage

- **Best first-touch channel:** [Recommendation + list]
- **Messaging themes that resonate:** [What to emphasize]
- **What to avoid:** [Common mistakes in outreach to this persona]
- **Ideal timing:** [When they're most receptive]

## Counter-Offer Risk
[Assessment of how likely their current employer is to counter, and how
to mitigate]

## Alternative Personas
[If the pool is diverse, note 1-2 variant personas that could also
fill this role from a different background]

Additional Resources

Reference Files

You are stongly encouraged to read the reference files

• references/persona-templates.md - Complete persona templates for different role types (engineering, data/ML, product, design, GTM: sales/AE, SDR/BDR, product marketing, growth/demand gen, customer success, RevOps, partnerships/BD, executive)
• references/motivation-frameworks.md - Detailed frameworks for understanding candidate motivations and decision-making