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SKILL DETAIL
revops-hiring
mbfinotti/revops-skills/revops-hiring
Build the complete hiring packet for a RevOps or Sales Ops role - archetype and level decision, outcome scorecard, interview stage map with a competency question bank and anchored rating scales, a work-sample exercise with rubric and debrief, and a 30-60-90 ramp plan branched on seniority and archetype. For the hiring manager or founder recruiting the hire. Use whenever the user mentions hiring a RevOps manager, sales ops interview questions, a RevOps take-home exercise, a scorecard for a first ops hire, or a 30-60-90 for a new ops hire - even if they never say "hiring packet". Does not source candidates or post jobs. Do NOT use for a candidate's own interview prep - use mbfinotti/revops-skills@revops-career instead.
Installationen · 168Quelle ansehen
Installation
npx skills add https://github.com/mbfinotti/revops-skills --skill revops-hiring
Skill-Dateien
SKILL.md
Zuletzt synchronisiert · 15.09.2026
evals/evals.json›
{
"skill_name": "revops-hiring",
"evals": [
{
"id": 1,
"prompt": "I'm the VP Sales at Loamfield, a 22-person seed-stage B2B SaaS doing about $1.6M ARR with four AEs. Our CRM is a swamp, nobody can tell me what actually closed last month, and I lose a day a week rebuilding reports by hand. Finance froze all hiring except engineering through Q1. Write me a job description for a Revenue Operations Manager so I'm ready to post the second the freeze lifts.",
"expected_output": "A profile-choice analysis that deletes both in-house options (hiring freeze plus sub-$3M ARR), states the ordering of the remaining options out loud, and recommends a fractional operator or scoped agency project instead of the requested job description.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Runs the profile-choice test before producing any job description",
"States that both in-house options are deleted outright rather than ranked last, and names the hiring freeze as one reason",
"Names the roughly $3M ARR fractional floor as a second, independent reason the in-house options are deleted",
"States the ordering of the remaining options out loud rather than implying it by list order",
"Ranks the options by value returned per hour the hiring manager and panel spend",
"Recommends a fractional operator or a scoped agency project rather than a full-time requisition",
"Notes that four AEs sits below the roughly-five-rep threshold that precedes a first dedicated ops hire",
"Names at least one re-ranking against Loamfield's own specific context",
"States that the guidance below the ARR floor is to stay fractional, not to hire a junior instead",
"Does not recommend hiring a junior analyst as a cheaper substitute for the manager requisition",
"Does not deliver a finished job description as the primary deliverable"
]
},
{
"id": 2,
"prompt": "Bramwell Tools, Series B, 140 people, 18 AEs, 6 marketers, 5 CS. Our board deck and the marketing dashboard have never once agreed on how many opportunities we sourced, and leads sit for days between marketing calling them qualified and sales actually working them. The CEO sponsors this and it reports to the CRO, headcount is approved, funded at manager level, we want a lasting capability, and there's no hard deadline. I want to hire a Salesforce administrator. Draft the scorecard.",
"expected_output": "A challenge to the systems-administrator framing, an archetype diagnosis routing reporting-trust pain to the analyst and cross-boundary handoff pain to the strategist, archetype and level named in writing, then a mission plus ranked dated outcomes and 4-6 competencies written around problems rather than tools.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Challenges the systems-administrator framing and diagnoses the archetype from the described pain rather than from the requested title",
"Routes reporting-trust pain to the analyst archetype and cross-boundary handoff pain to the strategist, naming the routing rule",
"Names the archetype and the level in writing before drafting the scorecard",
"States the profile-choice ordering out loud and names which options were deleted, or states that none were",
"Warns that most failed RevOps hires are an archetype mismatch rather than a competence failure",
"Writes the role definition around problems and outcomes rather than around named tools",
"Produces a one-line mission plus between three and eight ranked outcomes, each carrying a date",
"Makes each outcome objective and observable rather than an activity description",
"Defines between four and six competencies",
"Confirms the reporting line and executive sponsor are locked before the role definition is drafted",
"Does not set a vendor administrator certification as a must-have for this requisition"
]
},
{
"id": 3,
"prompt": "Halverstad Media, 90 people. The problem sits entirely inside marketing: our marketing automation platform's routing rules were built by a contractor who left, form fills drop into the wrong nurture track, and the field mapping between the automation platform and the CRM drifts every few weeks. Sales says their pipeline is fine and they have no complaints. Our VP Marketing wants to hire a RevOps Manager to clean this up. Give me the interview loop.",
"expected_output": "A scope check identifying the pain as confined to one function, a statement that this is Marketing Ops rather than RevOps, a redirect of the requisition, and profile-choice options for the correctly scoped role - not a RevOps interview loop.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Applies the scope check before any ranking and identifies the pain as confined inside a single function",
"States that pain confined inside one function belongs to Marketing Ops rather than RevOps",
"Cites the rule that RevOps is hired when revenue problems cross team boundaries",
"Recommends re-scoping the requisition to a marketing operations role rather than building a RevOps loop",
"Names the marketing-ops-to-RevOps handoff as living in the field mapping and the data sync between the two systems",
"Does not produce a full RevOps interview loop as if the requisition were correctly scoped",
"Distinguishes this from BizOps, described as board decks, market sizing and diligence work rather than CRM ownership",
"Offers the profile-choice options for the correctly scoped role rather than assuming a requisition",
"States the ordering of those options out loud",
"Notes that a scoped agency project fits a single bounded fix such as rebuilding routing rules",
"Flags the missing executive sponsor and reporting line before any requisition proceeds"
]
},
{
"id": 4,
"prompt": "Quennel Systems, 34 people, just signed a Series A term sheet. Our CRM is barely configured, half the fields are blank and reps still quote from spreadsheets. I'm the founder and I want to hire a Head of Revenue Operations at director level, because I want someone strategic who can own the whole revenue engine. They'd report jointly to me and my two co-founders. Write the role definition and the interview loop.",
"expected_output": "A refusal to draft the packet until one VP-or-C-level sponsor is committed in writing, a diagnosis of the request as an aspirational wrong-altitude hire, the real pain named as capacity plus systems, the cost of the mistake quantified with time-to-fill and ramp figures, and a ranked profile-choice recommendation instead.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Refuses to proceed to the role definition until a single VP-or-C-level executive sponsor is committed in writing",
"Flags the joint reporting line to three founders as an unclear-mandate failure and requires one named owner",
"Names executive sponsorship as the single biggest predictor of first-hire success",
"Identifies the requested director-level strategist as an aspirational hire mismatched to a barely configured CRM",
"Diagnoses the actual pain as capacity plus systems and points at a hands-on generalist or fractional help rather than a Head-of title",
"Describes the wrong-altitude failure as too senior to do the work and too junior to own the strategy",
"Names the roughly $3M ARR fractional floor or the equivalent company-size guidance as a reason to question the full-time director requisition",
"Quantifies the cost of this mistake using time-to-fill and ramp figures rather than asserting it generically",
"States that an aspirational hire is a risk to the hiring manager on multiple levels",
"States the profile-choice ordering out loud and names any options deleted by the answers given",
"Does not deliver a finished director-level role definition and interview loop as requested"
]
},
{
"id": 5,
"prompt": "Here is the must-have list my CEO wrote for our RevOps Manager req at Pellworth Data - 110 people, Series B, analyst-leaning role at manager level: CRM administrator certification, marketing automation certification, 7+ years in RevOps, SQL, Python, Tableau, Looker, sales engagement tooling, conversation intelligence, CPQ, territory design, comp plan design, MBA preferred, startup experience, enterprise experience. Turn this into our requirements matrix and scoring sheet.",
"expected_output": "A requirements matrix capping must-haves at 5-7 weighted to 100%, the rest moved to additive nice-to-haves, disqualifiers held on a separate checklist, both certifications demoted because the archetype is analyst rather than systems, and experience scored level-relative.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Caps must-haves at between five and seven",
"Weights the must-haves so they sum to 100%",
"Moves the remaining requirements to nice-to-haves as additive bonus points outside the 100%",
"Holds disqualifiers on a separate checklist rather than as negative points inside the score",
"Flags that listing fifteen-plus requirements signals unrealistic expectations or a lack of role clarity",
"Rewrites the must-haves around problems rather than around named tools",
"Demotes both vendor certifications out of the must-haves because the archetype is analyst rather than systems",
"States that certifications are table stakes rather than predictors of performance",
"Scores the years-of-experience requirement level-relative and states that overqualified and underqualified both score low",
"Names SQL as the highest-leverage transferable technical skill because it survives a stack migration",
"Challenges the 7+ years requirement against a manager-level target rather than carrying it through unchanged",
"Produces a weighted table rather than an unordered list of requirements"
]
},
{
"id": 6,
"prompt": "We're funding a Revenue Operations Manager req at Tindermoor, Series B, 160 people, based in Manchester with the option of remote anywhere in Europe. Finance approved GBP 62,000 base. Tell me whether that's right and give me the band I should be posting.",
"expected_output": "A statement that the quotable published bands are US-only and a refusal to invent a UK or European band, every figure carried with source and date, disagreeing sources shown rather than averaged, variable-pay structure and fully-loaded multiplier supplied, and the output labelled scoping input needing HR/legal review.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"States that the published bands it can quote cover the US and declines to invent a UK or European band",
"Quotes every compensation figure with its source and its date",
"Presents at least two sources that disagree and shows the conflict rather than averaging them into a single number",
"Ranks source trust with survey-backed data above recruiter placement data above job-scrape or algorithmic estimates",
"Labels the compensation output as scoping input only and flags that offer terms need HR or legal review",
"States that RevOps variable pay is a target bonus tied to company performance rather than commission",
"Gives the variable share as roughly 5-10% of total for individual contributors and 15-25% at manager level and above",
"Applies a fully-loaded cost rule of thumb of base multiplied by roughly 1.30 to 1.40 plus equity",
"Labels the SF/NY/Boston premium and the narrowed remote discount as US figures rather than applying them to Manchester",
"Warns that underfunding the requisition produces either a struggling junior or a title the company cannot support",
"Recommends fighting for more money to hire an experienced professional rather than working with the money available and failing the new hire",
"Does not state a specific UK salary band as though it were sourced"
]
},
{
"id": 7,
"prompt": "For our RevOps Analyst req at Corveth Labs we've built a take-home: we hand candidates our real anonymized pipeline export, ask for a full pipeline health analysis, a rebuilt stage model and a slide deck. We estimate eight hours. Unpaid. We're down to three finalists. Score it out of 100 and tell me how to grade it.",
"expected_output": "The eight-hour unpaid exercise deleted outright rather than shortened, the format ordering stated out loud, a two-hour cap with a three-hour unpaid ceiling, the paid format promoted because the finalist pool is three or fewer, a synthetic artifact substituted for the real export, and the summed score out of 100 replaced by a required-dimensions-at-bar rubric written before the first submission.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Deletes the eight-hour unpaid exercise outright rather than shortening or demoting it",
"States that a long unpaid exercise selects for uncommitted hours and that no rubric recovers the candidates it filtered out before submission",
"States the format ordering out loud: live mock above paid take-home above unpaid take-home on signal per hour spent",
"Names three hours as the ceiling for an unpaid exercise and roughly two hours as the working target",
"Flags the compliance cost of an unpaid exercise producing output the company could actually use",
"Notes that a take-home creates a candidate file the company must store, retain and be able to delete on request",
"Promotes the paid take-home because the finalist pool is three or fewer and the spend is therefore bounded",
"Replaces the real pipeline export with a small synthetic artifact",
"Requires the rubric to be written before the first submission arrives",
"Rejects a summed score out of 100 and instead requires every required dimension at the meets-bar anchor",
"Grades against the same anchored competency scale used in the interviews rather than a separate ad-hoc impression",
"Plans a structured debrief and states that the debrief carries more signal than the artifact",
"Recommends timing the exercise on the internal team first, noting candidates take roughly twice as long as the author"
]
},
{
"id": 8,
"prompt": "Our RevOps Manager loop at Dunhollow runs six rounds: recruiter screen, hiring manager, CRO, VP Marketing, two AEs together, and a final with the CEO. After each round everyone drops a 1-5 rating on overall fit into a Slack channel and we talk it through in a group debrief. Both of our last two hires were whoever the CRO liked. Fix the loop.",
"expected_output": "A three-round loop plus one roughly two-hour take-home, a stage table with each competency owned by exactly one stage and each panelist in a lane, per-competency anchored scales with behavioral descriptions at every point, evidence-cited independent pre-scores, disqualifiers recorded separately, and confidence-weighted recommendations.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Cuts the loop to at most three rounds plus one take-home of about two hours",
"Produces a stage table mapping stage to interviewer to competencies assessed",
"Assigns each competency to exactly one stage",
"Assigns each panelist a lane rather than letting everyone probe everything",
"Replaces the single overall-fit rating with per-competency scoring",
"Writes a behavioral description of what each anchor point looks like for this specific role, not only the endpoints",
"States that a bare number or a generic label such as \"Strong\" fails the scoring standard",
"Requires every submitted score to cite a quote or a concrete example as evidence",
"Requires interviewers to submit scores independently before any discussion",
"Identifies scores shared before being written as the cause of converging on the first confident voice",
"Records disqualifying signals separately from the score",
"Weights the recommendation by fit and confidence together, and treats \"insufficient data\" as a valid output",
"Directs debrief time to where the scores diverged",
"States that no single score overrides the loop"
]
},
{
"id": 9,
"prompt": "I'm building the interview questions for a Revenue Operations Manager at Wrenfold. It's a systems-heavy req - we're consolidating three CRMs into one and this hire owns that migration end to end. The panel is me (VP Sales), our head of marketing, and a senior AE. Give me the question set.",
"expected_output": "A question set with the discriminating-question ordering stated out loud, CRM data modelling promoted to first for a systems archetype but flagged because nobody on the named panel can grade it, the tool-first versus process-first filter named as highest yield, behavioral plus situational questions with probes per competency, domain probes ranked by rehearsability, and red/green anchors that differ in method.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"States the discriminating-question ordering out loud rather than presenting a flat list",
"Promotes the CRM data-modelling question to first because the archetype is systems",
"Flags that nobody on the named panel is qualified to grade a data-model answer and requires adding a qualified grader or dropping the question",
"Names the tool-first versus process-first filter as the highest-yield signal and notes it consumes no dedicated interview minutes",
"Identifies a candidate whose first question about any problem is which tool to use as a red flag",
"Supplies two to three behavioral and one to two situational questions per competency",
"Attaches follow-up probes to the questions",
"Rejects leading questions and questions that bundle two questions into one",
"Builds at least one probe from a documented RevOps failure mode rather than from a generic behavioral bank",
"Ranks the domain probes by how hard they are to rehearse and places define-before-automate at the top",
"Asks the candidate what they would refuse to automate on day one",
"Supplies red/green answer pairs as scoring anchors where the weak and strong answers differ in method rather than in confidence",
"Treats commonly cited numbers such as pipeline coverage as prompts and scores whether the candidate questions their provenance"
]
},
{
"id": 10,
"prompt": "Our new Director of Revenue Operations starts in 17 days at Astrelle Group. She's joining an existing four-person ops team and her mandate is cross-team process design plus owning the quarterly planning cadence. Write the 30-60-90. Our CEO wants forecast accuracy up 15 points by day 30.",
"expected_output": "A ramp plan branched on both seniority and archetype, the day-30 forecast target rejected against honest 60-90 day / 6-month / 12-month milestones, the strategist first deliverable and watch area, a light Day 1 with substantive ownership from Week 2, a non-manager buddy, a week-one access list, agreed ticket-queue protection, existing-team rather than greenfield sequencing, and a closing watch-areas section.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Rejects the day-30 forecast-accuracy target as an unrealistic milestone",
"Sets honest milestones: early wins at 60-90 days, structural improvements around six months, revenue-level outcomes at 12+ months",
"States that anyone promising revenue impact in 30 days is selling you something",
"Branches the plan on seniority and on archetype rather than on only one of them",
"Uses the strategist first deliverable: a stakeholder-interview synthesis and a process map of one revenue motion with a proposed operating cadence",
"Names the strategist watch area of strategy documents with no shipped change by day 60",
"Ends the plan with a watch-areas section distinct from the goals",
"Keeps Day 1 light and starts substantive ownership in Week 2",
"Assigns a buddy who is not the hiring manager",
"Includes a week-one access list covering CRM admin permissions, a CRM sandbox, data warehouse and BI access, the marketing automation platform, and seats in the pipeline and forecast meetings",
"Grants that access in week one rather than on request",
"Agrees with the sponsor before day one what share of time goes to the ticket queue and who absorbs the rest",
"Treats this as an existing-team ramp absorbing documented processes and standards rather than a greenfield diagnostic ramp",
"Writes the 30, 60 and 90 day goals from the role's ranked outcomes rather than generically"
]
},
{
"id": 11,
"prompt": "Vessarine is a consumer subscription app - 2.1M free users, no sales team at all, just growth, product and support. We're hiring our first Revenue Operations Manager. I pulled a RevOps job description off a template site and it lists pipeline coverage, territory design, quota planning, CPQ and deal desk experience. Adapt it for us and build the competency set.",
"expected_output": "A packet stating the process is identical across segments while the weighting, metrics, stack and probes change; sales-led B2B requirements removed; PLG and consumer metrics substituted with any benchmark labelled directional; analytics-engineering skills weighted up; product-signal probes replacing territory design; and the B2B-marketing-specific domain probe deleted.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"States that the hiring process itself - scorecard, loop, work sample, ramp - is identical across segments and that what changes is weighting, metrics, stack and probes",
"Removes territory design, quota planning and pipeline coverage as sales-led B2B concerns",
"Removes deal desk and CPQ, noting deal desk is close to a B2B-only archetype rarely present in consumer subscription",
"Names the metrics this role owns: activation, product-qualified leads, free-to-paid conversion and expansion signals",
"Includes consumer metrics such as CAC, conversion rate, average order value, purchase frequency, churn and cohort-modeled LTV",
"Labels any benchmark figures it cites as directional vendor-report numbers rather than authoritative",
"Gives activation as roughly 25-40% of signups within 7-14 days",
"Gives free-to-paid conversion as roughly 2-5% for freemium and 15-25% for free trial",
"Notes that PQL users convert around three times higher and that only about a quarter of PLG companies actually use PQLs",
"Weights analytics-engineering-adjacent skills: strong SQL, hands-on data-warehouse work and a transformation layer",
"Probes product-signal fluency instead of territory design in the interview",
"Deletes the revenue-team-alignment domain probe as B2B-marketing-specific rather than asking it thin",
"Notes that using funnel stages as a proxy for a team's effectiveness becomes nonsensical in PLG",
"Warns that pure B2C subscription usually lacks the expansion pathway that pushes B2B net retention above 100%"
]
},
{
"id": 12,
"prompt": "Our board meets in 11 weeks and our forecast has been wrong three quarters running. Ferncastle, Series C, 240 people. I want to open a senior RevOps req this week and have that person present a fixed forecast process at the board meeting. Headcount is approved and our CFO will sponsor it. What level should I hire and how fast can we move?",
"expected_output": "A statement that a hard date inside a quarter deletes the senior in-house options, senior time-to-fill and time-to-productivity quoted, total calendar to first useful output used instead of time-to-fill alone, the junior-is-faster assumption rejected, a fractional or agency recommendation for the board date, and the one-off versus compounding question separated.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"States that a hard date inside a quarter deletes the senior in-house options because the search alone outlasts the deadline",
"Quotes time to fill for a senior hire as roughly 12-16 weeks",
"Quotes time to productivity for a senior hire as roughly 1-3 months",
"Budgets against total calendar to first useful output rather than against time to fill alone",
"Rejects the assumption that a junior requisition is faster, noting junior time to productivity runs 4-6 months",
"Notes that mid and senior tie on total calendar because senior's extra search time buys back ramp time",
"Recommends a fractional operator or a scoped agency project to hit the eleven-week board date",
"Names the deleted options explicitly rather than ranking them last",
"Separates the one-off board-date fix from the compounding-capability question and routes each differently",
"States the ordering of the remaining options out loud",
"Confirms the executive sponsor and reporting line are locked in writing before the requisition opens",
"Does not promise that a senior in-house hire can present a fixed forecast process at the board in eleven weeks"
]
}
],
"trigger_queries": [
{ "query": "We're hiring our first RevOps person - help me scope the role", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Build me an interview loop for a Revenue Operations Manager", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What should I put on the scorecard for a sales ops hire?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Design a take-home exercise for a RevOps analyst candidate", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Write a 30-60-90 for our incoming Director of Revenue Operations", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "I need interview questions for a sales ops manager role", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Should we hire a RevOps manager or a RevOps analyst?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our CRM is a mess and nobody trusts the forecast - who do we hire?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Help me decide between a fractional ops person and a full-time hire", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What level should I open this revenue operations req at?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How many rounds should our ops interview loop have?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Build a rating scale for scoring RevOps candidates", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "My panel all ask the same questions in every ops interview - how do I split them up?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What's a fair band for a Revenue Operations Manager in the US?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Draft the must-have versus nice-to-have split for our ops req", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "We want someone to own quote-to-cash - what does that req look like?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our last two ops hires didn't work out. What are we getting wrong when we hire?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do I test whether an ops candidate can actually do the job instead of just talking about it?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "First 90 days plan for a new revenue operations manager", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What red flags should I watch for on a RevOps resume I'm screening?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Is a CRM admin certification a must-have for this ops role?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "We're a PLG company hiring our first ops person - what changes about the req?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Give me a work sample and a rubric for a sales operations candidate", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Who should sit on the panel for our RevOps director search?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our ops interview debrief always converges on whatever the CRO says first - fix it", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Write the job requirements for a revenue operations analyst", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our new ops hire starts Monday - what should week one look like?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How long should the take-home be and should we be paying candidates for it?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What outcomes should I put in the role definition for this ops hire?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "We need someone to fix our reporting - what kind of ops profile is that?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Do I need an executive sponsor before I open this req?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Headcount for our ops role just got approved - where do I start?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Compare hiring in-house versus retaining an agency for our GTM ops problems", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Help me build the hiring packet for our second ops hire", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What's the difference between an analyst hire and a systems admin hire, and which do I need?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "The founder wants a Head of RevOps at 30 people. Talk me into it or out of it", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Set milestones for our new ops hire's first six months", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What should the debrief process look like after our ops interviews?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our candidate exercise is eight hours long - is that fine?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do I grade a candidate's pipeline analysis submission?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Build a competency model for hiring in revenue operations", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our last ops hire got buried in tickets in month one. How do I stop that happening again?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Should this ops role report to the CRO or the CEO?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "When is a company actually ready for a dedicated ops hire?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "We're at $4M ARR with six reps - time to hire ops?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Write the mission statement for our sales ops role definition", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What questions separate a genuinely good ops candidate from a polished one?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do I structure a hiring loop that actually tests forecasting judgment?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Give me anchored behaviors for a 1 to 5 scale on cross-functional leadership", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Design the onboarding plan for a new sales operations manager", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our board wants forecast accuracy fixed - do I hire for it or buy it?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "I keep getting candidates who are great in the CRM and useless at process. Fix my loop", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What should I pay a RevOps director, and where does that number come from?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Plan the first 30 days for someone joining our four-person ops team", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our ops job description has 16 requirements on it. Trim it", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Build interview probes around data quality and single source of truth", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do I know if I'm hiring at the wrong level for this ops role?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "We're consolidating three CRMs and need someone to own it - write the req", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Is a two-hour case study enough signal for a manager-level ops candidate?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Set up a structured hiring process for our revenue operations team", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What should a strategist ops profile deliver first once they join?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Marketing and sales fight over lead handoffs. Do I hire someone to own that, and what do I look for?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do I avoid another archetype mismatch on this ops hire?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Give me a stage map for our operations manager interviews", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "I need to sketch what good looks like for this ops role before I post it", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Draft the disqualifier checklist for our ops candidate screen", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do I prep for my RevOps manager interview next week?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Review my resume for a revenue operations analyst role", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Am I ready to go for a RevOps manager title?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Which RevOps certifications are worth getting for my own career?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How do I break into RevOps from a sales role?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "What salary should I ask for in my RevOps offer negotiation?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How do I prove my impact as an ops person when nobody notices the work?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Should I take the IC track or the management track in revenue operations?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Let me practice the exercises RevOps interview loops run - I'm the candidate", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Design our sales-to-CS handoff after closed-won", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Our CSMs start from zero after a deal closes. Fix the handoff", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Write the onboarding plan for a new enterprise customer", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Build our lead scoring model", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Sales keeps rejecting our MQLs - fix the scoring", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Design the lead routing waterfall for inbound", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Our round robin is lopsided - rebalance it", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Why did we miss the number last quarter?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Our commit is never right. Diagnose the forecast", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Audit our pipeline stage exit criteria", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Our stages are all named after rep activity. Rewrite them", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Clean up the stale deals before the QBR", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Who owns each CRM field and which system wins on conflict?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Finance and sales report different ARR numbers. Sort out the governance", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Design our customer health score bands and weights", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Which signals actually predict churn for our accounts?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Build the discount approval matrix for non-standard deals", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Where are we leaking revenue in the self-serve funnel?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Design our funnel stage set and the conversion assumptions behind the plan", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Build the KPI tree from board level down to IC", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Structure the monthly revenue report for the board", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "We have too many GTM tools - what do we cut?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Which RevOps newsletters and podcasts should I subscribe to?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Starting a new RevOps project - where do I begin?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Route this ops task to the right playbook in the collection", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "What conferences should our ops team attend this year?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Hire our first developer relations advocate", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Build the interview loop for a partnerships manager", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Write a scorecard for a developer platform engineer req", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Hire an SDR team from scratch", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Design the interview process for an account executive", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Build the hiring scorecard for a customer success manager", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Interview questions for a data analyst joining our BI team", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Hire an FP&A analyst for the finance team", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Source candidates and write the outreach for our ops req", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Post our RevOps job to the right job boards", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Set up applicant tracking for our ops req", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Write the offer letter for our new RevOps manager", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Is this non-compete clause enforceable for an ops hire?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Draft an employment contract for a revenue operations director", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Run a performance improvement plan for our underperforming ops manager", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How do I terminate our RevOps manager?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Design the comp plans for our AEs next year", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Build the quota and territory model for next fiscal year", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Set up our CRM sandbox and permission sets", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Write a promotion case for my ops analyst", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Plan the agenda for our weekly revenue meeting", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Onboard a new partner into our channel program", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Create a training curriculum for our sales enablement team", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Benchmark engineering salaries in Berlin", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Evaluate this outsourced ops agency's proposal and statement of work", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Write performance review criteria for our existing ops team", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Set up an employee referral bonus program", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Create a diversity hiring strategy for the whole company", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Write our employer brand page for the careers site", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Schedule the interviews and coordinate the panel's calendars", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Run a reference check on our finalist", "should_trigger": false }
]
}
references/competencies-and-question-bank.md›
# Competencies and Question Bank
## Competency set
Define 4-6 competencies per role; they become the scorecard's rows and everything else hangs off them. There is no survey-backed RevOps competency standard; the best published starting point is Fullcast's interview guide, which scores five areas:
- Strategic thinking / business acumen.
- Technical and analytical.
- Cross-functional leadership.
- Change management and execution.
- Systems thinking and problem solving.
Adapt the set to the archetype - a systems hire weights technical depth higher, a strategist weights cross-functional leadership - and to the segment (see the B2B and B2C section of SKILL.md).
## Requirements matrix
- Must-haves: 5-7 maximum, weighted to sum to 100%. "Listing 15+ requirements signals either an unrealistic expectation or a lack of role clarity" (SyncGTM).
- Nice-to-haves: additive bonus points on top, never part of the 100%.
- Disqualifiers: a separate checklist, never negative points inside the score.
- Experience scores level-relative: the same years-of-experience number scores differently per target level, and overqualified and underqualified both score low.
## Certifications and tool depth
- **Certs are table stakes, not predictors**: the core CRM administrator certification proves configuration ability and nothing else. Generic RevOps certificates from training companies carry less weight than demonstrable platform expertise, and "a candidate may have deep [CRM] expertise and still lack the commercial judgment to prioritize the right work."
- **Test depth without over-indexing**: probe one tool to bedrock - ask the candidate to explain one data-model or automation decision they made and the trade-offs they accepted - then weight process thinking and business acumen higher. The blunt practitioner version: "I'd rather hire someone who's phenomenal at process design and mediocre at [the CRM] than the inverse."
- **SQL** is the highest-leverage transferable technical skill at every level, because it survives a stack migration.
## Question bank structure
Per competency: 2-3 behavioral questions ("Tell me about a time..."), 1-2 situational ("How would you handle..."), plus follow-up probes.
Reusable probes:
- "What was the outcome?"
- "What would you do differently?"
- "Who else was involved and what was your specific role?"
- "What was the hardest part?"
Never ask leading questions ("We value collaboration - how collaborative are you?") and never bundle two questions into one. On top of the static bank, generate candidate-specific questions from each resume's gaps and concerns.
## Domain probes - hard to fake
The strongest questions come from RevOps's own documented failure modes, not a generic bank: a candidate can rehearse a conflict story, but cannot fake an opinion on why a scoring model decayed. Ask them to defend or attack, in this order - `rehearsability, hardest to fake first: define before automate > single source of truth > measure every handoff > revenue team alignment`. The first forces the candidate to name something they would refuse to automate, which no prepared story covers. The last is the most B2B-marketing-specific and lands flat on a PLG or consumer req - delete it there rather than asking it thin.
- Single source of truth - one canonical system per object; what to do when two systems disagree.
- Define before automate - "automating a broken process just creates broken results faster"; what would they refuse to automate on day one?
- Measure every handoff - every team-to-team handoff needs an SLA, tracking, and a named owner.
- Revenue team alignment - marketing calling something an MQL that sales will not work is a definitional failure, not a data failure.
Known mistakes to probe:
- Over-weighted content downloads in scoring.
- No negative scoring.
- Set-and-forget models.
- Stage-skips and silent close-date pushes.
- Stale-deal alerts reps ignore.
Industry-commonly-cited numbers (pipeline coverage around 3-4x, speed-to-lead decay, stage-conversion bands) are prompts, not facts to recite - the signal is whether the candidate questions a number's provenance.
## Discriminating questions
Ranked by discriminating power per interview minute, best ratio first:
- efficiency: tool-first vs process-first filter > systems and process design > forecast judgment > stakeholder backbone > first principles > CRM data modelling
- interview minutes: CRM data modelling > first principles > forecast judgment == systems and process design > stakeholder backbone > tool-first filter
- reaches a competency no other question does: CRM data modelling > forecast judgment > first principles > systems and process design == stakeholder backbone > tool-first filter
Ties:
- Forecast judgment and systems-and-process design cost the same - one scenario plus two probes, about ten minutes each.
- Systems design and stakeholder backbone tie on reach because both land on change management, so running both buys a second data point rather than a second competency.
- _Tool-first versus process-first_ - the highest-yield filter at every level, and it consumes no dedicated minutes because it rides on every other question. A candidate whose first question about any problem is "what tool do you use for that?" is a red flag.
- _Systems and process design_ - "Your VP of Sales tells you the CRM data is wrong and they don't trust it. What do you do in the first 30 days?" Wrong: "I'd clean up the data." Right: structured audit, stakeholder interviews, prioritization.
- _Forecast judgment_ - "Walk me through how you would assess forecast accuracy and identify where the forecast is failing." Strong answers compare forecast categories and commit values against actuals over time. Fullcast's variant: "Our forecast accuracy is consistently off by 20-30%. How would you diagnose and fix this?"
- _Stakeholder backbone_ - "Tell me about a time you had to push back on a sales leader's request."
- _First principles_ - "How would you build a revenue forecast at a company with no clean pipeline data?" The best answers start from data-quality baselines, not forecasting methodology.
- _CRM data modelling_ - have them design a clean object structure, not populate fields: custom objects, account hierarchy, lead-to-account matching, when declarative automation beats code. Green flag: opinions about record types and the cost of nested formulas.
What this order starves: CRM data modelling - the highest ceiling on a systems req and last on ratio, because it eats a whole session and only an interviewer who has built a data model can grade it. Promote it to first when the archetype is systems and someone on the panel qualifies to score it.
Delete, do not demote: on a strategist req with no systems ownership, drop the data-modelling question outright rather than shortening it. A half-asked data model scores noise, and the shortened question still consumes the slot a better one wanted.
The ordering is a default, not a law. Re-rank it against the archetype, the level, and the panel you actually have - a panel with no forecast owner cannot grade forecast judgment, whatever its ratio says.
## Red/green scoring anchors
Camela Thompson (Head of Marketing, RevOps Co-op) published these pairs for vetting consultants; they transfer directly as anchors because the weak and strong answers are near-identical in confidence and differ only in method:
| Weak answer | Strong answer |
| ------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| "We use a standard setup across all clients" | "Let's meet with every stakeholder before we make changes" |
| "We'll clean up your CRM first" | "We'll talk to users before we touch a single record" |
| "We'll define the scope after a few requirements calls" | "We need access first, then we'll provide thorough scope" |
Further red flags from the same source:
- Vague timelines.
- "We'll figure that out in discovery."
- No documentation plan.
- No handoff process.
## Anchored scale and scoring rules
- Pick a scale: 1/3/5 and 1-4 are both in common use. No published research compares point counts for discriminative validity in structured-interview scorecards - the field's own comprehensive review (Levashina, Hartwell, Morgeson & Campion, 2014, Personnel Psychology) names this an open question, so ordering the two here would be false precision.
- Anchor every point, not just the endpoints: on a fixed scale length, full-point anchoring measurably resists disability bias better than endpoints-only anchoring (Reilly, Bocketti, Maser & Wennet, 2006). Write a behavioral description of what each anchor looks like _for this role_. A bare number or a generic label like "Strong" collapses into gut-feel scoring.
- Every score cites evidence: a quote or a concrete example. No evidence, no score.
- Interviewers submit scores before the debrief; debrief time goes where scores diverged; disqualifying signals are recorded separately from the score.
- Weight the recommendation by (fit × confidence), not fit alone: strong fit at low confidence means "proceed, verify later", and "insufficient data" is a valid output.
- Bias mitigations, ranked by bias removed per unit of process friction, best first: score before discussion (near-zero - a form and a rule, and it kills the anchoring on the first confident voice) > score each criterion separately (a template change, defeats the halo effect) > judge qualifications only (a redaction step someone runs per resume, for name and gender bias) > diverse panel (a standing constraint on who you have, for affinity bias). The order starves the last one, which is also the only mitigation that changes what the loop can see at all - promote it when the panel is currently homogeneous, because no scoring discipline recovers a signal nobody in the room recognizes.
## Resume flags
**Red** (Pulse, VEN Studio):
- "Strategic thinker" claimed at analyst level.
- "Owned full RevOps function" at a 30-person company.
- "Drove $50M in pipeline" from an analyst.
- Heavy consulting jargon with no named tools.
**Green:**
- Named tools with versions and stack layers.
- Specific numbers tied to specific work ("cut lead-routing SLA from 18 hours to 4").
- Promotion inside the same company.
- Candid mention of a failure and its fix.
references/ramp-plan-template.md›
# Ramp Plan Template
The core principle: "You weren't hired to fix [the CRM]. You were hired to orchestrate revenue." The skeleton below synthesizes this insight with generic onboarding practices and RevOps practitioner guidance.
## Sequencing rules
1. **Day 1 light, Week 2 deep.** Day 1 is setup and relationships; substantive ownership starts Week 2. Overloading Day 1 is a named trap.
2. **Assign a buddy who is not the manager.**
3. **Branch on seniority** - time to productivity runs 4-6 months junior, 2-4 mid, 1-3 senior, 3-6 executive, so the same calendar horizons carry very different expectations.
4. **Branch on archetype** - a systems hire, an analyst, and a strategist should not get the same first deliverable.
5. **End with watch areas** - the early warning signals, specific to this hire's profile, that they are struggling. A distinct section from the goals.
6. Gate connector-dependent steps on capability, never on a named product: if an HR system is reachable, auto-populate the access list; if a knowledge base is, link the existing docs; otherwise ask.
## Skeleton
- **Pre-start**: welcome email with logistics, account setup, equipment, calendar and recurring-meeting invitations, named buddy.
- **Day 1**, hour by hour (time / activity / with whom): orientation, tool setup, team intros, company overview, an explicit slot walking through role expectations and this 30-60-90 plan itself, unstructured exploration time.
- **Week 1** checklist:
- Compliance training.
- Role-specific reading.
- A 1:1 with every GTM stakeholder.
- Shadowing key meetings.
- One small first task.
- End-of-week manager check-in.
- RevOps-specific access list, granted in week one, not on request: CRM admin permissions, a CRM sandbox, data warehouse and BI access, the marketing automation platform, and a seat in the meetings that matter (weekly pipeline, the forecast call, the monthly funnel review, QBRs).
- Consequence of skipping the access list: a RevOps hire who can't see your real pipeline data, get a direct line to the VP of Sales, and make changes to the CRM without a 3-week approval process is a RevOps hire who will fail slowly.
- **30 / 60 / 90-day goals**: three separate numbered lists, written from the scorecard's ranked outcomes - never generic.
- **Key contacts** table (manager, buddy, IT, HR, executive sponsor - each with "for what") and a **tools access** table (tool / access level / requested).
- **Watch areas**: last section, per the rules above.
## Honest milestones
Practitioner-sourced timeline:
- 60-90 days: early wins, cleaner data and better reporting.
- 6 months: structural improvements, process documentation, CRM architecture changes.
- 12+ months: measurable outcomes at the revenue level.
The management implication is explicit: do not fire a good hire at month six for lack of revenue movement, and "Anyone promising revenue impact in 30 days is selling you something."
## Archetype branches
- **Systems hire**: first deliverable is a stack and data-quality audit with a prioritized fix list - not a rebuild. Watch area: heads-down configuration with no stakeholder interviews.
- **Analyst**: first deliverable is a baseline report leadership actually trusts (pipeline or funnel), with definitions written down. Watch area: producing dashboards nobody asked for instead of answering the questions leadership has.
- **Strategist**: first deliverable is a stakeholder-interview synthesis and a process map of one revenue motion, with a proposed operating cadence. Watch area: strategy documents with no shipped change by day 60 - the wrong-altitude failure where "sprints don't ship".
## Greenfield vs existing team
- **Greenfield (no predecessor)**: ramps _diagnostically_ - stakeholder interviews, systems audit, data-quality baselines - and tolerance for ambiguity is a hiring criterion in its own right.
- **Existing team**: week one shifts toward absorbing documented processes and standards instead.
## Defend the calendar
Protect the first 90 days from the ticket queue: "if their first 90 days are spent closing tickets, they will never build the strategic muscle you hired them for." Agree with the sponsor, before day one, what share of time goes to the queue and who absorbs the rest.
Do not cite general tenure statistics (e.g. BLS median tenure) as if they apply to RevOps; they do not.
references/role-archetypes-and-leveling.md›
# Role Archetypes and Leveling
No survey-backed RevOps competency matrix or leveling standard exists - the field lacks one, and that absence is a finding, not an omission. Everything below is practitioner opinion from named sources; attribute it when you reuse it.
## The five tracks
RevOps Co-op's "The 5 RevOps Career Tracks" (revopscoop.com) is the de facto archetype taxonomy:
- **Analyst** - assesses large datasets, connects data to business problems, gathers stakeholder requirements. "Your goal isn't just to understand the data, but how the data relates to the problems you're trying to solve."
- **Systems Manager / Administrator** - configures system changes against business priorities, translates requirements into system outputs, owns data quality and implementations. "Systems are a means to acquiring business data that can support good decision-making."
- **Enablement** - trains teams on systems and process, surfaces what top reps do, feeds requirements back to ops.
- **Deal Desk** - analyzes contract data, recommends pricing, balances sales need against compliance. Sits at the intersection of sales, legal, finance, and RevOps; owns quote-to-cash and pricing governance. Close to a B2B-only archetype.
- **Project Manager** - runs initiatives and prioritization; the source frames it as the natural feeder into ops manager and director roles.
For hiring, compress these into three profiles:
- **Systems**: builds and maintains the stack.
- **Analyst**: turns data into answers.
- **Strategist / business partner**: designs process and owns cross-team agreements.
Most failed RevOps hires are a mismatch on this axis rather than a competence failure.
## The profile-choice test
First a scope check, not a ranking - three jobs that are not this hire:
- **Single-function pain**: confined inside one function is Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, or CS Ops, not RevOps - "Hire RevOps when revenue problems cross team boundaries."
- **Marketing ops**: owns the marketing automation platform and lead routing and usually reports to marketing; the handoff to RevOps "lives in the field mapping and the data sync between the two systems".
- **BizOps**: a different job entirely - board decks, market sizing, M&A diligence, often with no CRM access.
Then choose how to close the gap. This is the first and most consequential decision in the engagement - whether to open a requisition at all - so make it here, ranked, before any scorecard exists. Ranked by value returned per hour the hiring manager and panel spend, best ratio first:
- efficiency: fractional operator > scoped agency project > in-house specialist > in-house strategist
- your effort to get someone working: in-house strategist > in-house specialist > scoped agency project > fractional operator
- calendar to first useful output: in-house strategist > in-house specialist > scoped agency project == fractional operator
- reversibility cost, hardest to unwind first: in-house strategist > in-house specialist > scoped agency project > fractional operator
- value at 12 months: in-house strategist > in-house specialist > scoped agency project == fractional operator
Ties:
- Agency and fractional tie on calendar because neither needs a requisition, an approval, or a notice period - both start inside a week.
- They tie again at 12 months because neither leaves compounding capability behind; the artifacts stay, the judgment walks out with the contract.
| Option | Buys you | Your effort | Reversibility |
| ------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Fractional operator | Senior judgment on the diagnosis itself, part-time - the answer when the pain is capacity or you sit below the ARR floor | An hour of calls to start, then a standing hour a week to direct | Near-zero - a notice period, no backfill |
| Scoped agency project | One bounded fix shipped - an implementation, a migration, a cleanup - with no headcount | A week to scope and select, then a standing review slot while it runs | A quarter - the contract term, plus whatever they built is now yours to run |
| In-house specialist (systems or analyst, per the pain) | Standing capacity inside the archetype the pain points at; the ticket queue and the reporting stop being someone's side job | A quarter of manager and panel hours to hire, then a standing job to manage | A quarter or more to unwind, and it is a person |
| In-house strategist / business partner | Cross-team process ownership and agreements nobody else has standing to enforce | A quarter of hours to hire, a quarter to ramp, then a standing job | Worst on the page - hardest to unwind, most visible when it fails |
Route the two in-house rows by pain:
- Reporting-trust pain wants the analyst.
- An admin and configuration backlog wants the systems specialist.
- Cross-boundary alignment and process design wants the strategist.
Price the in-house rows against the bands and the fully-loaded multiplier in Compensation input below, and their calendar against Timelines below - but decide the ranking on hours and reversibility, never on the salary figure. Money answers "can we fund this"; the ranking answers "should we do this at all".
- **Default**: the in-house specialist matching the diagnosed archetype, once the company is past the fractional floor (roughly $3M ARR) and the sales team is past about five reps.
- **Move up** to the strategist when the pain genuinely crosses team boundaries _and_ a VP-or-C-level sponsor is committed in writing - without the sponsor that row fails exactly as the negative worked example does.
- **Move down** to fractional or agency when the pain is capacity, when the fix is one bounded project, or when you sit below the floor.
**What this order starves**: the in-house strategist - highest value at 12 months, worst ratio in the first two quarters. Twelve to sixteen weeks to fill plus one to three months to ramp puts the first structural change a quarter and a half out, with revenue-level outcomes at 12+ months. Promote it anyway when cross-team agreements are the actual product you need: a contractor or an agency can map a process, but neither can hold another team to it once the engagement ends.
**Delete, do not demote** - then name the rows you removed and why:
- A hiring freeze or unapproved headcount deletes both in-house rows outright. Rank the remaining two; a requisition parked at the bottom of a list reappears as scope three weeks later.
- Below roughly $3M ARR the same rule deletes them - the sourced guidance is to stay fractional, not to hire junior.
- An agency already retained deletes the agency row into "you already have this", and the rest re-rank around what it does not cover.
**Re-rank against what you already know about this company:**
- An in-house recruiter or a warm bench roughly halves the in-house rows' effort and promotes them.
- A fifth ops hire onto an existing team ramps far faster than a first hire with no documentation and no predecessor, promoting them again.
- A manager with no free hours this quarter demotes them whatever the stage.
The ordering is a default, not a law - it shifts with context and with who executes it.
## Level ladder
The most concrete public leveling frame is Kory White's four-rung ladder (pulserevops.com, 2026 - a single detailed practitioner source, not a standard):
| Level | A normal Tuesday | Must-haves | Resume anti-signal |
| -------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Analyst | Dashboards, ad-hoc analysis, data hygiene, ticket queue, pipeline reports | Intermediate SQL, CRM admin cert, spreadsheets, one BI tool | "Strategic thinker driving transformation" at analyst level |
| Manager | Owns forecast cadence, territory and quota planning, one workflow end to end; manages 1-2 analysts | Advanced SQL, deeper platform cert, a transformation layer, forecast math, change management | "Owned full RevOps function" at a 50-person Series A |
| Director | Stack roadmap, vendor contracts, data architecture; leads 3-8 people | Architecture thinking, vendor management, comp-plan design, hiring | "Built our entire data warehouse from scratch" - should be deciding, not building |
| VP | Co-owns the number with the CRO, board narrative, org design | Revenue-model architecture, board communication, P&L literacy | "Hands-on with the CRM daily" - signals weak delegation |
Generic HR bands (entry 0-2 years / mid 2-5 / senior 5-8 / staff-lead 8-12 / principal-director 12+) are a starting frame only; reconcile them with the archetype actually being hired.
No efficiency ranking across these rungs, deliberately: the level is set by the scope of the problem you diagnosed, not chosen for its ratio, and ordering rungs against each other would be false precision dressed as a recommendation. The one ordering that is real between them is calendar - see Timelines.
## First hire vs Nth hire
Practitioner consensus places the first dedicated ops hire between Series A and Series C:
- Most commonly Series A at 25-50 employees, once the sales team passes about five reps.
- One source gives $2M-$8M ARR with $4-5M as the sweet spot, and recommends staying fractional below roughly $3M ARR - the source behind the fractional floor the profile-choice test deletes the in-house rows below.
- Above the floor, the dominant profile advice for a first hire - which is how the ranking's in-house specialist row reads at Series A - a "strategic generalist who understands the GTM motion and is willing to perform tactical CRM tasks", 4+ years, at least one end-to-end CRM implementation owned.
- Series B splits the generalist into specialists; at ten-plus people the role becomes leader-of-leaders.
Reporting line:
- A CRO line works at Series A and early B.
- Territorial fights at scale favor a COO or CEO line from Series C onward.
On the generalist question, GTMnow's practitioners: "[Invest in] being a generalist... with a few areas of specialty" (Jen Igartua); the underrated skill is "process-driven advice... define and map GTM processes and workflows" (Asia Corbett).
## Compensation input
Rank sources before quoting - `source trust: survey-backed > recruiter placement data > job-scrape and algorithmic estimates`.
- The sources disagree materially - show the conflict, never average it away.
- Quote every figure with source and date; never invent a band for a geography a source does not cover (UK/EU public data is too thin to anchor on).
- This is scoping input only - offer terms need HR/legal review.
| Source (date) | Method | Key figures (US) |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| RevOps Co-op / BoostUp 2025 Compensation & Impact Report (Nov 2024) | Survey, 1,200+ professionals | Median across all levels $129,155; roughly $100K OTE at 0-50 employees vs $162K at 1,000+ |
| RevOps Co-op 2026 Salary Report | Survey plus panel commentary | Entry $85K-$125K; director and leaders $187K-$300K+ total |
| Betts Recruiting (2024) | Recruiter placements | Manager base $100K-$160K under 3 years; $150K-$235K at 3+ years |
| GTMnow (updated Jul 2026; underlying dataset not independently confirmed) | Reported averages | Specialist $77.7K ($62-99K); Analyst $90.2K ($73-113K); Manager $128.2K ($102-163K); Director $216.4K ($171-279K) |
| Glassdoor (2025) | Crowd-sourced scrape | Overall median ~$114K; Manager ~$128K; Director ~$187K |
Structure:
- RevOps variable is a target bonus tied to company performance, not commission - roughly 5-10% of total for ICs, 15-25% at manager and above.
- SF/NY/Boston carry a 15-30% premium; the remote discount has narrowed to roughly 5-10%.
- Fully-loaded cost rule of thumb: base × 1.30-1.40 plus equity.
Funding the req, from RevOps Co-op:
- "Your company is going to try to provide you with the absolute minimum money required to hire a human."
- "An aspirational hire is a risk to you as a hiring manager on multiple levels" - underfunding produces either a struggling junior or an aspirational title the company cannot support.
## Timelines
Time to fill and time to productivity run inverse (startup-planning source, generic not RevOps-specific):
| Level | Time to fill | Time to productivity |
| --------- | ------------ | -------------------- |
| Junior | 6-8 weeks | 4-6 months |
| Mid | 8-12 weeks | 2-4 months |
| Senior | 12-16 weeks | 1-3 months |
| Executive | 16-24 weeks | 3-6 months |
- time to fill, longest first: executive > senior > mid > junior
- time to productivity, longest first: junior > executive > mid > senior
- total calendar to first useful output, longest first: executive > junior > senior == mid
The two axes disagree, and that is the whole point: senior hires take longest to find and ramp fastest, so the junior req that looks quick to fill is not the quick option once ramp is counted. Mid and senior tie on total calendar - roughly two quarters each - because senior's extra month of search buys back a month of ramp. Budget the req timeline and the ramp plan against the total, never against time-to-fill alone.
references/work-sample-design.md›
# Work Sample Design
Any numeric rubric you produce here is this skill's own convention - label it as such to the hiring team, never imply a published standard. The one documented exercise pair below comes from an agency's published guidance; its point values do not.
## Choosing the format
Three formats compete for the same slot in the loop. Ranked by signal returned per hour you spend, best ratio first:
- efficiency: live mock exercise > paid take-home + debrief > unpaid take-home + debrief
- candidate drop-off, worst first: unpaid take-home > paid take-home > live mock
- your effort to build it once: live mock == take-home
- your effort per candidate: live mock (two interviewers for an hour, scored on the spot) > paid take-home (an hour grading, a debrief hour, plus raising a payment) > unpaid take-home (an hour grading, a debrief hour)
- compliance cost, highest first: unpaid take-home > paid take-home > live mock
Ties: the two build efforts are genuinely equal - each needs the scenario _and_ its scorecard written before any candidate sees it, and neither can be shortened without breaking the rubric-first rule.
Compliance cost is real here and belongs in the choice, not in a footnote:
- An unpaid exercise producing output you could actually use is unpaid labour in several jurisdictions, and an unpaid product-specific task reads as free spec work; paying converts it into a contracted engagement with a record.
- A take-home also ships you a candidate file you then store, retain, and must be able to delete on request, where a live exercise leaves only your own scorecard.
Neither is a fine to budget for - both are a review to run and a decision you cannot cheaply reverse once candidates have submitted.
| Format | Buys you | Costs you | Source |
| ---------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Live mock exercise (60-90 min) | Reasoning under questioning directly - the thing the debrief exists to extract, with no artifact in between | Two interviewers live per candidate, and a house format you build and maintain | RevPartners' documented pair, below |
| Paid take-home (2-3h, around $500) | The artifact plus the debrief, with the drop-off removed | A per-candidate budget line and an approval most first reqs do not have | Teams paying report strong completion and no declines |
| Unpaid take-home (~2h) | The artifact plus the debrief, at no budget | Your best candidates - those with a demanding job or caring responsibilities decline first | Volm: "something that'll take 2ish hours"; three hours is the unpaid ceiling |
Deleted, not demoted: the eight-hour unpaid exercise. It "select[s] for eight uncommitted hours", and no rubric recovers the candidates it filtered out before you ever saw them. Where local rules or your own policy prohibit unpaid candidate work, that same rule deletes both take-home rows - run the live mock, and say the rows were removed rather than deprioritized.
- **Default**: the two-hour unpaid take-home plus a scored debrief.
- **Move up to paid** when candidates start declining, when the finalist pool is senior and employed, or when the prompt touches anything resembling your real backlog.
- **Move to the live mock** when you will run this req shape repeatedly and the house format amortizes across reqs.
**What this order starves**: the paid take-home - the best drop-off-to-signal trade on the page, and the row that loses every efficiency round because it needs a budget line nobody pre-approved. Promote it anyway when the finalist pool is three or fewer: the spend is bounded, and the failure it prevents - your first choice declining the exercise - is the expensive one.
**Re-rank against what you already have:**
- An existing scored live-interview format promotes the live mock to first outright.
- A team that has never run a structured debrief should not start there, since scoring and facilitation happen at once.
Whatever the ranking says, three hours is the ceiling for an unpaid exercise, "because almost all of the signal is there by hour two" - and test the cap on your own team first, because authors know the answer and candidates take roughly twice as long.
Write the rubric before the first submission arrives. The assignment "works best to set the scene, not as a take-home exam" - the debrief conversation carries the signal, not the artifact.
## Prompt design
A good prompt looks like a real defect, not a project. Give a small, messy, synthetic artifact and ask for a diagnosis, a prioritized fix list, and what the candidate would ask stakeholders before touching anything. Grade the reasoning and the stakeholder step, not the polish - the loop's red/green anchors apply here too: the weak submission jumps straight to the system change, the strong one talks to users first.
Three artifacts to fabricate, ranked by signal per hour spent building them, best ratio first:
- efficiency: messy CRM export > broken funnel report > forecast reconciliation
- your effort to build: forecast reconciliation > broken funnel report > messy CRM export (a day making three views disagree coherently > a day of wrong-but-consistent math > an hour of dirty rows)
- competency reached: forecast reconciliation == broken funnel report > messy CRM export
Ties: the two report artifacts are equal on reach because each lands exactly one competency the export cannot - forecast judgment and funnel-definition judgment - and neither reaches past its own.
- A messy CRM export: duplicate accounts, blank close dates, inconsistent stage names, orphaned contacts.
- A broken funnel report whose stage-conversion math does not reconcile.
- A forecast-reconciliation task where rep commit, manager roll-up, and finance disagree.
Pick by the competency your stage map still leaves unowned first, and by this order only when two artifacts would cover it equally. What the order starves: the forecast-reconciliation task, the only prompt probing forecast judgment on an artifact rather than in conversation - promote it when the req's top-ranked outcome is forecast accuracy.
Real tasks lifted from live postings, usable as seeds:
- A CRM opportunity-and-account field and layout clean-up (inventory fields, flag redundant/unused/inconsistently named ones, propose a revised layout plus a change-management plan).
- An opportunity risk-and-recovery scoring build.
- A data-analysis case with three to five business questions delivered as a five-to-ten-slide deck to a panel.
That last one costs the whole panel an hour on top of the candidate's preparation, so budget it as a live stage, not as a take-home.
## The one documented exercise-and-rubric pair
RevPartners, "RevOps Experts: Hiring a Revenue Operations Jedi" (Matt Bolian, Oct 2021, updated Jan 2026):
- _Mock mapping_, live: the candidate maps a fictional client's sales or marketing ops flows on a shared canvas in real time to find bottlenecks. Scored on Process (uses the house format, sets up beforehand, maps while talking, uses decision boxes, delays decisions) and Knowledge (sales ops, holding stages, marketing ops, search issues, email database). Roughly 60% pass rate.
- _Mock weekly sync_, live: a 25-minute timed meeting plus five minutes of feedback. Scored on Required items (bottom line up front; drives decisions) plus bonus items (clarity, recaps, forward momentum, tasks with what/who/when). Roughly 80% pass rate.
- Mechanics worth copying: every mock has a scorecard; two graders score independently and average; "not looking for perfect - looking for about a required + threshold".
## Grading rubric
Grade against the same anchored competency scale as the interviews, never on a separate ad-hoc impression. Dimensions one practitioner names, without attaching point values to them:
- Translation of business goals into requirements.
- Analytical rigor.
- Systems thinking.
- Clean execution.
- Stakeholder management.
- Tool fluency.
A workable convention: score each dimension on the loop's anchor scale, require cited evidence from the submission or debrief per score, and set the bar at "all required dimensions at meets-bar" rather than a summed total - a sum lets polish subsidize a missing stakeholder step.
## Debrief
Run a structured debrief: what to look for, how to score it, which follow-ups to ask. Probe the reasoning behind two or three choices in the submission ("why this fix first?", "what would you have asked the VP of Sales before doing this?") - reasoning under questioning separates a genuine author from a coached one. Score the debrief on the same rubric, and never let the work-sample score override the loop: it is one data point among many, and scoring is guidance, not absolute.
references/worked-examples.md›
# Worked Examples
## Positive: first RevOps hire at a Series A B2B SaaS
Interview answers:
- Company: 45 people, Series A.
- GTM team: seven sales reps, four marketers, three CS.
- First dedicated ops hire.
- Pain: (b) + (c) - nobody trusts the forecast and lead handoffs leak.
- Stack: CRM plus marketing automation, messy.
- Budget: req funded at manager level.
- Reporting: reports to the CRO, who sponsors it.
- Panel: the CRO, the VP Marketing, a senior AE, and the CEO for the final round.
- Headcount: approved.
- Mandate: a compounding capability, not a one-off.
- Forcing date: the next fiscal year's planning cycle, not this quarter.
**Profile choice**: headcount is approved and the mandate is compounding, so no row was deleted and the default order held - `fractional > agency > in-house specialist > in-house strategist` on value per hour spent.
Re-ranked on this company's context: seven reps puts it past the roughly-five-rep threshold in the first-hire guidance, and the pain recurs weekly rather than resolving into one bounded project, which demotes both contract rows. Recommendation: in-house specialist. The strategist row was not deleted but stayed last - the cross-boundary pain is real, but a quarter to fill plus a quarter to ramp lands after the planning cycle the sponsor is hiring for.
**Archetype and level**: analyst-leaning generalist at manager level - the profile-choice test points to analytics-trust pain first, cross-boundary second, and first-hire guidance calls for a strategic generalist willing to do tactical CRM work. Budget checked against published bands: Revenue Operations Manager positions average $128.2K ($102-163K); the funded number sat below the range floor, so the sponsor raised it before posting rather than making an aspirational-junior compromise.
**Scorecard**:
- Mission: "make our pipeline data trustworthy enough to forecast from."
- Ranked outcomes: by day 60, a weekly pipeline report leadership trusts; by day 90, the sales process documented and reflected in the CRM; by month 6, forecast accuracy measured and improving against a written baseline. (This outcome shape follows the principle: define specific outcomes before they start.)
- Competencies (five, covering typical RevOps domains): technical and analytical; systems thinking; cross-functional communication; change management; forecast and pipeline judgment.
**Requirements matrix** (excerpt):
Must-haves weighted to 100%:
| Must-have | Weight |
| ------------------------------------------------- | ------ |
| Intermediate SQL | 25% |
| One end-to-end CRM implementation owned | 25% |
| Forecast/pipeline reporting experience | 20% |
| Stakeholder-facing process work | 20% |
| 4+ years in a GTM ops role, scored level-relative | 10% |
- Nice-to-haves as bonus: marketing automation admin experience, BI tool depth, CRM admin certification (not a must-have - this is not a pure systems req).
- Disqualifiers, separate checklist: no work authorization, tool-first answers to every process question.
**Stage map**:
| Stage | Interviewer | Competencies owned |
| ---------------------------- | ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Screen (30 min) | CRO | Trajectory, comp fit - no scored competency |
| Deep-dive (60 min) | CRO + VP Marketing | Forecast and pipeline judgment; cross-functional communication |
| Work-sample debrief (45 min) | Senior AE + CRO | Technical and analytical; systems thinking |
| Final (30 min) | CEO | Change management |
Three rounds plus one take-home per best practice guidance. Every score submitted with a quote before debrief.
Sample anchor, "forecast and pipeline judgment":
| Anchor | Behavior |
| ------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 5 | Diagnoses the forecast question by comparing commit categories against actuals over time and names the data-quality prerequisite unprompted. |
| 3 | Structured diagnosis after prompting, credible fix sequence. |
| 1 | Answers "I'd clean up the data" or names a tool as the fix. |
**Work sample**: the messy-CRM-export prompt - 40 synthetic opportunity rows with duplicate accounts, blank close dates, and inconsistent stage names; "diagnose, prioritize your fixes, and list what you would ask stakeholders before touching anything." Two-hour cap, tested on the senior AE first. Rubric written before sending, on the loop's 1/3/5 anchors across diagnosis, prioritization, stakeholder step, communication - all four required at 3+, no summed total (point values are this skill's convention).
**Ramp** (excerpt):
- Week one: CRM admin + sandbox, BI access, seat in the weekly pipeline and forecast calls, 1:1s with every rep and marketer; buddy is the senior AE, not the CRO.
- Day-60 goal maps to scorecard outcome one.
- Watch areas: dashboards nobody asked for; ticket-queue capture above the agreed one-day-per-week cap; no documented definition of pipeline stages by day 45.
## Negative: the aspirational strategist hire
A 30-person seed-stage company with a barely configured CRM hires a "Head of RevOps" - a strategist profile with a director title - because the founder wants "someone strategic".
- No executive sponsor is named.
- The role reports vaguely to "the founders".
- The req skips the archetype diagnosis that would have pointed at capacity-plus-systems pain.
What follows tracks the documented failure patterns: the hire is at the wrong altitude - "too senior to do the work, too junior to own the strategy. Sprints don't ship."
- Every improvement becomes a negotiation because no sponsor clears the way.
- The operating strategy decks pile up while reps still work from spreadsheets.
- The hire leaves inside a year.
This is the compound risk RevOps Co-op names: "An aspirational hire is a risk to you as a hiring manager on multiple levels."
The cost: a senior req takes 12-16 weeks to fill and the replacement ramps in 1-3 months (startup-planning timelines), so the redo costs roughly four to seven months of calendar on top of the failed hire's tenure and salary. A director-level year runs $171-279K, plus the un-fixed CRM the whole time. The fix was available before posting:
- Run the profile-choice test (capacity/systems pain wants a hands-on generalist or fractional help, not a Head-of title).
- Name a sponsor.
- Fund the level the diagnosis calls for - or per the fractional guidance, do not open the full-time req below roughly $3M ARR at all.
SKILL.md›
---
name: revops-hiring
description: Build the complete hiring packet for a RevOps or Sales Ops role - archetype and level decision, outcome scorecard, interview stage map with a competency question bank and anchored rating scales, a work-sample exercise with rubric and debrief, and a 30-60-90 ramp plan branched on seniority and archetype. For the hiring manager or founder recruiting the hire. Use whenever the user mentions hiring a RevOps manager, sales ops interview questions, a RevOps take-home exercise, a scorecard for a first ops hire, or a 30-60-90 for a new ops hire - even if they never say "hiring packet". Does not source candidates or post jobs. Do NOT use for a candidate's own interview prep - use mbfinotti/revops-skills@revops-career instead.
license: MIT
metadata:
author: Maya-Beth Finotti
version: "1.4.7"
---
# RevOps Hiring
Build the packet a hiring manager needs to recruit a RevOps or Sales Ops person: role definition, interview loop, scorecard, work sample, ramp plan.
The frame is the scorecard tradition of Geoff Smart and Randy Street's _Who: The A Method for Hiring_ - a mission, 3-8 ranked measurable outcomes, then competencies. It applies to the archetypes practitioners actually recognize:
- RevOps Co-op's five career tracks: analyst, systems administrator, enablement, deal desk, project manager.
- Compressed for hiring into three profiles: systems, analyst, strategist.
Two decisions come before any packet exists:
- Whether to open a requisition at all rather than take a fractional operator or a scoped agency project.
- Which archetype - because most failed RevOps hires are an archetype mismatch, not a competence failure.
This is the hirer's side only. It does not source candidates, post jobs, or track applicants, and it reports published compensation bands with source and date as scoping input - it never writes offer letters or gives legal or HR compliance advice; those need HR/legal review.
The candidate side - preparing for and landing a RevOps role - is the mirror-image sibling `mbfinotti/revops-skills@revops-career`. Onboarding a _customer_ after closed-won is `mbfinotti/revops-skills@sales-to-cs-handoff`, a different job entirely.
## Interview
Ask before designing. One question per message; offer multiple-choice answers where possible. Skip anything already answered.
- What stage and size is the company? (a) pre-Series A / under 25 people, (b) Series A-B / 25-150, (c) Series C+ / 150+, (d) not venture-track - describe.
- What does the GTM team look like - roughly how many sales reps, marketers, and CS people?
- Is this the first dedicated ops hire, or joining an existing ops team? If existing: who is on it and what do they own?
- Which pain is driving the hire? (a) admin and ticket backlog - capacity, (b) nobody trusts the reporting or the forecast - analytics, (c) problems that cross team boundaries - process and alignment, (d) several of these.
- How mature is the stack? (a) CRM barely configured, (b) CRM plus marketing automation working but messy, (c) full GTM stack including a data warehouse and BI.
- What budget and level is the req funded at - and is that number negotiable if the market says it is too low?
- Who will this hire report to, and who is the executive sponsor?
- Who is on the interview panel, and how many rounds can you realistically run?
- By when must this be solved? (a) a dated event forces it inside a quarter - board meeting, quota reset, migration, (b) this fiscal year, (c) open. A hard date inside a quarter deletes the senior in-house options: the search alone outlasts the deadline.
- Do you want a one-off fix or a compounding capability? A one-off promotes fractional and agency; a compounding mandate promotes the in-house hire, and is the only answer that justifies its first two quarters.
- What is your effort ceiling - how many manager hours per week you have, whether panelists are available, whether headcount is actually approved, and whether you could unwind this in a month if it went wrong? A freeze or unapproved headcount deletes the requisition options outright; low tolerance for irreversibility promotes the contract ones.
## Workflow
1. Run the Interview; collect every answer before designing anything.
2. Decide whether to open a requisition at all, using the ranked profile-choice test in [references/role-archetypes-and-leveling.md](references/role-archetypes-and-leveling.md). By value returned per hour you spend: `fractional operator > scoped agency project > in-house specialist > in-house strategist`, with the in-house rows routed by pain - reporting-trust to the analyst, admin backlog to the systems specialist, cross-boundary process to the strategist - and pain confined to one function routed out of RevOps entirely to Sales, Marketing, or CS Ops. Delete the options the Interview answers rule out rather than ranking them last, and name which you deleted. Re-rank the rest against what you already know about this company: an agency already retained, an in-house recruiter, a fifth ops hire versus a first. Only an in-house outcome makes the rest of this workflow apply - then name the archetype and level in writing before drafting anything else.
3. Gate the req: lock the reporting line and a VP-or-C-level executive sponsor in writing - practitioners call sponsorship the single biggest predictor of first-hire success - and pressure-test the budget against the published bands in the same reference. Quote every band with its source and date. RevOps Co-op's warning applies: "It's better to fight for more money to hire an experienced professional than [to] work with the money you have and fail your new hire."
4. Write the role definition as a scorecard - one-line mission, 3-8 ranked outcomes with dates that are objective and observable, then competencies - and turn its must-haves into a requirements matrix. Sketch what "good" looks like even roughly; RevOps Co-op: "Your job is to sketch out what 'good' could look like - even if it's just a napkin drawing." Score experience level-relative - overqualified and underqualified both score low - and make a vendor certification a must-have only for a systems archetype at a company standardized on that platform. Requirements-matrix rules:
- Write around problems, not tools.
- Cap must-haves at 5-7 and weight them to sum to 100%.
- Keep nice-to-haves as additive bonus points.
- Hold disqualifiers in a separate checklist rather than as negative points inside the score.
5. Define 4-6 competencies and build the question bank from [references/competencies-and-question-bank.md](references/competencies-and-question-bank.md): 2-3 behavioral and 1-2 situational questions per competency with follow-up probes, domain failure modes as hard-to-fake probes, and red/green answer pairs as scoring anchors.
6. Map the loop as a stage table - stage, interviewer, competencies assessed - with each competency owned by exactly one stage and each panelist assigned a lane. Keep it tight: Matthew Volm (CEO, RevOps Co-op) argues for one roughly two-hour take-home and "keep it to 3 rounds max".
7. Fix the scoring discipline before anyone interviews. Write an anchored rating scale carrying a behavioral description of what each anchor point looks like for this specific role - a bare number is banned - and require every submitted score to cite evidence, a quote or a concrete example. Interviewers score independently before any discussion, disqualifying signals are recorded separately from the score, and the recommendation is weighted by confidence, not fit alone: "insufficient data" is a valid output, and no single score overrides the loop.
8. Design the work sample from [references/work-sample-design.md](references/work-sample-design.md). Pick the format from the ranked menu there - `live mock > paid take-home > unpaid take-home` on signal per hour spent, with the unpaid row carrying both the drop-off of your best candidates and a real compliance cost, and the eight-hour unpaid exercise deleted rather than demoted. Then build:
- A prompt that looks like a real defect, not a project.
- A hard time cap.
- A rubric written before the first submission.
- A debrief plan - the debrief carries more signal than the artifact.
9. Build the ramp plan from [references/ramp-plan-template.md](references/ramp-plan-template.md): pre-start, Day 1, Week 1, then 30/60/90 - branched on seniority and archetype, with the week-one access list, ticket-queue protection, honest milestone expectations, and closing watch areas.
10. Emit the packet (next section) section by section for user validation, grounding each section in the matching example from [references/worked-examples.md](references/worked-examples.md).
11. Iterate the packet until every item in Pass Threshold holds.
12. If your harness has persistent memory, memorize the approved packet - archetype, level, competencies, stage map, thresholds, ramp branches - so screening runs and the eventual ramp start from it instead of re-interviewing. Without memory, tell the user to keep the packet document as the standing input for future runs.
## The Hiring Packet
Deliver every engagement as this artifact. Fully worked versions live in [references/worked-examples.md](references/worked-examples.md).
```
HIRING PACKET - <company>, <role>, <date>, v<n>
Profile choice : ranked options with the ordering stated | options deleted + why | recommendation
Role definition : archetype + level | mission | 3-8 ranked outcomes with dates | competencies
Requirements : must-haves weighted to 100% | nice-to-haves as bonus | disqualifier checklist
Comp input : published band quoted with source + date | flag: offer terms need HR/legal
Stage map : stage -> interviewer -> competencies assessed (each owned by exactly one stage)
Question bank : per competency - behavioral + situational + follow-up probes | red/green anchors
Scorecard : anchored scale per competency | cited evidence per score | confidence rating
Work sample : prompt + time cap + paid/unpaid call | rubric (written first) | debrief agenda
Debrief rules : independent pre-scores | disqualifiers separate | confidence-weighted decision
Ramp plan : pre-start, Day 1, Week 1, 30/60/90 | seniority + archetype branches |
week-one access list | watch areas
```
## B2B and B2C
The hiring process is identical across segments - scorecard, loop, work sample, ramp - and say so when asked. What genuinely changes is which competencies carry weight, which metrics the role owns, which stack the candidate must know, and what the interview probes.
- **B2B enterprise**: the role owns pipeline coverage, win rate, deal velocity, net revenue retention, forecast accuracy, territory and quota; the stack is CRM, sales engagement, revenue intelligence, CPQ - weight quote-to-cash depth, territory and comp design, and forecast-cadence judgment.
- **B2C and e-commerce**: the role owns CAC, conversion rate, average order value, purchase frequency, churn, and cohort-modeled LTV.
- **PLG**: activation, product-qualified leads, free-to-paid conversion, expansion signals - RevOps Co-op notes that in PLG "using funnel stages as a proxy for a team's effectiveness [becomes] nonsensical".
Directional vendor-report benchmarks for PLG, labeled directional and not authoritative:
- Activation: 25-40% of signups within 7-14 days.
- Free-to-paid: roughly 2-5% freemium, 15-25% free trial.
- PQL users convert around three times higher.
- Only about a quarter of PLG companies actually use PQLs.
PLG and consumer RevOps therefore demand analytics-engineering-adjacent skills - strong SQL, hands-on data-warehouse work, a transformation layer - and interviews should probe product-signal fluency over territory design.
- Deal desk is close to a B2B-only archetype; consumer subscription rarely has one.
- Its billing and payments complexity has no B2B analogue.
- Pure B2C subscription usually lacks the expansion pathway that pushes B2B net retention above 100%.
## Pass Threshold
Iterate until every item holds. Each item below is either sourced from practitioner guidance or this skill's own convention.
- Archetype and level are named in writing, and the reporting line plus executive sponsor are locked, before the role definition is drafted - no sponsor, no req (sourced).
- The role definition names problems and outcomes, not tools, and caps must-haves at 5-7 (sourced).
- 4-6 competencies; every question maps to exactly one; every competency is owned by exactly one interview stage (sourced).
- Every anchor point carries a role-specific behavioral description, and every submitted score cites a quote or concrete example (sourced); a bare number fails this check.
- The loop runs at most 3 rounds plus one take-home of about two hours, three-hour ceiling if unpaid (sourced).
- The work-sample rubric exists before the first submission; its numeric point values follow this skill's own convention.
- The ramp plan branches on both seniority and archetype, ends with watch areas, and sets the honest milestone timeline - early wins in 60-90 days, revenue-level outcomes at 12+ months (sourced).
- Every compensation figure in the packet carries its source and date; no invented bands, no figures for geographies the sources do not cover (self-set).
- Every option menu the packet presents - profile choice, work-sample format, question selection - states its ordering out loud, deletes ruled-out options instead of demoting them, and names one re-ranking against this company's own context (self-set).
## Common Failure Modes
Ranked by how much of this table each prevention removes, best ratio first: `committed executive sponsor > archetype diagnosis > stage map and independent scoring > defended ramp calendar`. The first two cost a conversation each and pre-empt the top four rows before the req opens; the rest are loop and onboarding discipline that only start paying once those two hold.
| Symptom | Root cause | Fix |
| ------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Impressive hire, CRM cleaner, forecast still shaky | Archetype mismatch - a systems admin hired for a process problem | Rerun the profile-choice test; the problem "was never the software; it was the revenue motion" |
| Hire spends months in meetings, then quits | Unclear mandate - three executives each think they own the hire | Write the charter, outcomes, and single sponsor before the req opens |
| Every improvement becomes a negotiation | No executive sponsor | Do not open the req until a VP or C-level sponsor is committed in writing |
| First 90 days eaten by the ticket queue | No defended calendar or mandate | Protect ramp time explicitly; make ticket-queue capture a named watch area |
| Panelists all ask the same questions | No stage map | One competency, one stage; assign each panelist a lane |
| Debrief converges on the first confident voice | Scores shared before being written | Independent scoring before discussion; spend debrief time where scores diverge |
| Strong candidate rejected over a missing certification | Vendor cert set as a must-have | Certs are table stakes, not predictors - nice-to-have unless systems archetype on a standardized platform |
| Polished interviewer, weak on the job | Loop rewards polish over method | Work sample plus red/green method anchors; the weak and strong answers differ in method, not confidence |
| Best candidates decline the take-home | Long unpaid exercise selects for uncommitted hours | Cap at 2-3 hours, consider paying, and move the signal to the debrief |
| Good hire pushed out at month six for no revenue impact | Unrealistic timeline | Set honest milestones up front - "Anyone promising revenue impact in 30 days is selling you something" |
## Invocation Examples
- "We're a 40-person Series A B2B SaaS, the CRM is a mess and nobody trusts the forecast - help me scope and hire our first RevOps person."
- "I have a RevOps analyst req open on an existing five-person ops team - build the interview loop, the scorecard, and a take-home that actually tests the job."
- "Our new Director of Revenue Operations starts in three weeks - write the 30-60-90 ramp plan."
## Reference
- Read [references/role-archetypes-and-leveling.md](references/role-archetypes-and-leveling.md) when diagnosing the archetype, picking the level, scoping a first hire versus an Nth hire, or pressure-testing the budget against published salary bands.
- Read [references/competencies-and-question-bank.md](references/competencies-and-question-bank.md) when defining competencies, writing questions and probes, or building the anchored scorecard and requirements matrix.
- Read [references/work-sample-design.md](references/work-sample-design.md) when designing the exercise - time and payment norms, synthetic-dataset construction, the grading rubric, and the debrief.
- Read [references/ramp-plan-template.md](references/ramp-plan-template.md) when writing the ramp plan - the pre-start-to-90-day skeleton with seniority and archetype branches and watch areas.
- Read [references/worked-examples.md](references/worked-examples.md) when shaping the deliverable - one full positive packet and one negative example with its cost spelled out.
- See `mbfinotti/revops-skills@revops-career` for the mirror-image candidate side - preparing for, positioning toward, and progressing in a RevOps role.
- See `mbfinotti/revops-skills@sales-to-cs-handoff` for onboarding a customer after closed-won - a different job this skill does not cover.
- See `mbfinotti/revops-skills@lead-scoring`, `mbfinotti/revops-skills@sales-forecast-diagnostic`, and `mbfinotti/revops-skills@pipeline-stage-definition-audit` for the domain depth behind the interview probes - the failure modes those skills fix are the material candidates are probed on.