Pre-Search Intake Council for Heads of Talent at 200-1000 Person SaaS

Before a recruiter opens a search, the head of talent runs the intake (spec, hiring-manager brief, comp band, must-haves, headcount justification) through an adversarial council that compares it against the company's own prior role outcomes pulled from the ATS — at 200-1000 person SaaS this is 80-200 reqs/year with 5-15 comparable prior outcomes per level/function/band cohort, dense enough to ground concrete challenges (e.g. 'last four senior backend at band Y died week 8 with zero offers; restructure to staff+ or widen band'). Council emits pursue/restructure/kill plus a calibrated weeks-to-hire estimate; ATS resolves outcomes in 4-12 weeks (90 days for retention) and grades the forecast automatically, accumulating a per-company miss-pattern ledger. Output feeds the existing weekly intake review ritual the head of talent already runs with staff recruiters — not a solo veto of the founder. Heads of talent at this size carry £20-80K/year discretionary tooling budget and are measured on fill rate, time-to-hire, and 90-day retention; one prevented phantom search per month pays for the seat.

AE's calibrated-forecast and autopsy-ledger primitives fit the mid-market head-of-talent intake review better than any generic recruiting tool, with a budget-clearing ROI and a sales motion compatible with a solo introverted operator.

Killed: evidence_search_exhausted.