Consultant guy states the obvious: your firm is only as good as your people.
Before you rage-click out of this post, give me a chance. It’s true. But how do you actually dial in your hiring process so you give yourself the best odds of consistently hiring the right person for the role?
Some agency owners pride themselves on their innate gut feeling or intangible skill in hiring the right person. Good on you… if you want to be the one responsible for hiring forever. I don’t imagine you do.
Other agency owners might be wondering how they misfired on a few hires over the last few years. We’ve all been there.
If you’re either of those people, this article is for you. Short and sweet, here’s the hiring process we honed over the years at my firm, which led to two key outcomes:
- I was able to hand off, confidently, all hiring except for my direct reports (since that was my job).
- Our hit rate for successful hires went way up.
Here’s what it looked like.
Step One: Simple Résumé Screen
This one’s basic. Résumés come in, alongside cover letters. Preferably through an HRIS so you can maintain a backlog of candidates, but I digress. You (or someone else) assess them against the requirements and nice-to-haves in your job description.
You’re looking to answer one question: Does this résumé warrant an interview?
If everything lines up, you book them for step two.
Step Two: Behavioural Interview
In-person or video call – it doesn’t matter. You have a list of considered questions, and your job is to ask and listen. Don’t dominate the conversation. You’re getting a feel for who they are as a person, and a general sense of their experience and knowledge of the craft involved in the role.
You’re looking to answer these subjective questions: Does this person seem like someone I’d like to work with? Do their answers align with their résumé and what we need for the role? Do they feel like they’d be a good fit?
If those answers are yes, move them to step three.
Step Three: TestGorilla Assessment
Build a TestGorilla assessment for the role, and run your current “best person” through it to set a benchmark. Provide the link to the assessment to the applicant and ask them to complete it within (X) days.
TestGorilla is an objective way to measure an applicant’s skills. For example, if you’re hiring for a developer, your assessment might include the following:
- PHP
- JavaScript
- Time management
- Communication
- Problem-solving
This was a game changer for my firm. You can use other tools, of course – I’ve no affiliation with TestGorilla – I just found them to be the best option for our needs.
The top one or two applicants from all the above steps move to the final stage.
Note: Be mindful of how long you make the assessment. Applicants have lives, and other opportunities, and we want to respect that. Because that’s the type of person we want to be.
Step Four: Team Meeting
By this point, any applicants left have been vetted for experience, personality, and objective skill fit. The final step is determining whether they’ll be a good fit with their actual (potential) team.
To sort that out, we’d run them through a small team meeting or exercise. The applicant would meet their potential future teammates, collaborate on a short task, and have the chance to discuss the role and culture without the hiring manager present.
The intent here is twofold:
- The existing team gets a say and you get their perspective.
- The applicant hears about culture from real employees, not just leadership.
This step creates an accountability loop: leadership is incentivized to build a good place to work (because applicants will hear about it, and bail if it’s poor), and the applicant gets to vet the company, not just the other way around. It builds trust and shows you care about their satisfaction in the role.
This meeting should be a maximum of 60 minutes, have an itinerary, and be well organized and run (like all your meetings, right?).
After these steps, the hiring manager has a clear sense of who the top applicant is and can move into the offer and negotiation stage (but never the convincing stage, right?) — a different post for another day.
Applying This Process at Your Agency
This will likely work for you: a plug-and-play system to confidently hand off hiring and improve your success rate. If you want to steal & tweak it, go for it – just make sure of the following:
- Understand what each stage is meant to measure, and don’t include redundant steps.
- Have an objective, skill-measuring stage, not a gut-feel or bias-prone one.
- Be mindful of the effort you’re asking from applicants. Respect their time.
Finding the right folks and putting them in the right seats is a wonderful thing. It’s a win-win: they get to succeed, and you get to grow your agency… and take off a hat or two in the process.