Build your own research step in plain English

Four parts, and all four matter

1. 1

   Write the question as a question

   Not "hiring activity" but "is this company currently hiring for a revenue or sales operations role".

2. 2

   State what counts as yes

   The tool has to make a judgement call on ambiguous rows, and if you have not told it where the line is, it will put it somewhere different on every row.

3. 3

   Force a fixed output format

   One of a small set of values, or a number, or a date. Add a value for cannot tell. Never leave the format open.

4. 4

   Name the sources it should prefer

   The company careers page, the main site, a specific kind of listing. Naming sources cuts noise and makes the answer auditable.

5. 5

   Preview on five rows and read the reasoning

   You are checking whether the tool interpreted the boundary the same way you did. If two of the five are judgement calls you disagree with, tighten the outcome and preview again before creating the column.

   

A prompt that works, written out in full

OBJECTIVE
Determine whether this company is currently hiring for a revenue operations, sales operations or growth operations role.

WHAT COUNTS AS YES
An open role, posted or updated in the last 90 days, whose responsibilities include owning the sales or revenue tooling stack, pipeline reporting, or go to market systems. The title does not have to contain the word operations. A generalist operations role at a company under 30 people counts if the description mentions CRM or pipeline ownership.

WHAT COUNTS AS NO
Roles that are purely finance operations, purely people operations, or purely customer support. Agency and recruiter postings on behalf of an unnamed client.

OUTPUT FORMAT
Return exactly one of: YES, NO, UNCLEAR.
Then a second field with the role title if YES, or an empty string.
Then a third field with the URL you based the answer on.

SOURCES
Prefer the company careers page on their own domain. Then major job boards. Do not use aggregator pages that republish listings without a date.

Notice there are three fields, not one. The verdict is what you filter and score on. The title is what you write the first line with. The URL is what makes the claim defensible when someone asks where it came from.