Minimum Requirements Checklist
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Minimum Requirements Checklist
Free editable Word guide you can copy, fill in, and share with your band. Also readable on this page.
How to use this guide
Checklist of minimum requirements for bandmates. Work it through once and the search gains written hard floors, with preferences parked where they cannot bounce a great fit unfairly.
How to work it: lock the schedule, location, money, and skills floors before any ad goes live, then reopen the checklist each time a new search starts or early replies expose a bar set wrong.
Minimum requirements are the deal-breakers for the next ninety days—not your fantasy roster. Write them before you post, or you will audition people who can never meet the job and then feel guilty for “wasting their time.”.
Minimums versus nice-to-haves
Deal-breakers for the next ninety days might be a thirty-mile travel radius, Tuesday and Thursday nights free, reliable transportation, owning a working rig, or willingness to play private events. If Saturday privates pay the band's rent, availability on Saturdays is a hard floor, not a preference.
A preference for someone who also sings harmony belongs on the wish list unless the book genuinely cannot work without it, because mixing the two tiers produces unfair rejections and wasted audition evenings. A great fit should never be bounced for lacking a bonus skill the set list does not use.
Publish what you will enforce
Putting the hard floors in the public ad filters early and protects everyone, while hidden deal-breakers feel like betrayal when they surface after chemistry has formed over two promising rehearsals. Publish enough that a stranger can self-select out before anyone invests a weeknight and a babysitter.
Empty toughness backfires too: a rule nobody will actually enforce teaches applicants to ignore the rest of your standards. Whatever makes the list must appear identically in the ad, the screening call notes, and the trial-period criteria, so the story never shifts mid-pipeline.
Change control mid-search
Sometimes the search itself teaches you the bar was wrong — three strong replies all assume the gig is weekends-only while your calendar says Fridays. When the target moves after replies arrive, pause the pipeline, rewrite the ad, and tell every active candidate what changed and why.
Quiet goalpost shifts destroy trust fast in scenes small enough that the drummer you rejected on Tuesday plays with your singer's cousin on Friday. A transparent reset costs a week of silence; a reputation for moving targets costs the next three hiring cycles and every referral that would have come with them.
Fill-in: Our non-negotiables
Schedule minimums: ________
Location: ________
Money reality: ________
Skills required: ________
Nice-to-haves (not filters): ________
Putting it into practice
Write minimums once and paste them into every ad and screening note this cycle.
FAQ
What belongs in minimum requirements vs nice-to-haves?
Minimums are deal-breakers for the next ninety days (gear, schedule, city, reading ability, pay reality). Nice-to-haves are preferences that should not reject a great fit.
How public should requirements be in the ad?
Public enough to filter. Hide only sensitive details that belong in private screening—not the Saturday commitment you will later fight about.
Can requirements change after replies start?
Only with transparency. Moving goalposts mid-search damages reputation in small scenes.
How do requirements relate to the trial period?
Minimums get you in the room; trial measures whether they hold under real rehearsals and shows.
