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Quick hiring tip

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

Our staffing agency is growing FAST.

We just opened a role for an account manager to help manage client demand.

And I’m shook.

3 days. 300 candidates.

Since all we do is hire talent for business owners I’ll share one tip from hiring we did to solve something that made me want to throw my laptop at the wall.

I’d used staffing agencies before.

But I wasn’t impressed with the quality we were getting.

It felt like the agency didn’t understand what a good candidate looked like.

So we solved for quality in two ways:

1) Niche down.

We ONLY hire marketers.

I’m a CMO. My co-founder just sold his email marketing agency.

We know what good looks like.

The more niche your business is the better you can deliver results to clients.

Better results? More referrals. Higher pricing. More testimonials.

You know the drill.

2) Since we only hire for ~6 roles we added an extra testing phase

I thought about the hiring process I went through at Deloitte.

And we built case studies for every role we hire for.

It’s a short simulation of what the day-to-day looks like.

We realized a lot of candidates look great until they get to this testing phase.

So niching down means we’re hiring for roles we understand AND built tests to find the best.

So if you’re hiring too. I’ll share a few examples of how we tested below.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

I’ll admit it’s hard to build a test if you don’t deeply understand the role you’re hiring for.

If you know the role build the test yourself. If not, get a staffing agency that deeply understands what you’re looking for.

Reply to this email if you want me to point you in the right direction.

Examples

⚠️ This section is nerdy and in the weeds so jump in if you want to nerd out with me.

Also - I’d love to share a screenshot but I think these tests are a competitive edge we have so my co-founder would kill me if I did.

I’ll describe them as best I can…

1) We hired a CRM Coordinator… so we built a mini CRM and had them fill it out.

And ready for my favorite part?
Just like an actual CRM we snuck mistakes into it.

And built out a comments column so they could talk through why they made the choices they did.

That way… we knew we hired someone who’s a problem solver, a thinker, and understands the big picture.

Let’s do another one.

2) We hired an Ad Creative Specialist.

We made this fancy term for a media buyer who makes the ads themselves.

Facebook. YouTube. Google etc.

So we made a test that had them review good and bad ads. And tell us why they weren’t good.

Turns out?

That test sucked.

It didn’t help us figure out what the person could do themselves.

So we pivoted and had them come up with their own mini-ads and explain their logic.

Learning:
Your first test won’t work. Keep iterating on your test until you feel you can get a good sense of who your candidate is.

Okay last example.

3) We’re currently hiring for an Account Manager.

So I made 5 tasks in a Google doc that really simulate the day to do.

Welcome a client. Have a hard conversation. Send an update email. etc.

Because charisma and communication is so important we ask them to do a Loom video explaining their thinking for each part.

A few guidelines to make your own test:

1) Keep the test around 40 min

That’s long enough that you really see them think. Short enough that you don’t scare people away.

They may be hard workers but are also hunting for multiple jobs just like you’re hunting for multiple candidates.

Someone sent me their test and it had 41 in-depth questions. We keep it at around 5.

2) On that note, use fewer questions that are more in depth.

You really want to see them think.

Don’t give them 20 questions that they answer high level.

Use fewer questions to find the limits of their thinking & experience.

3) Candidates WILL be using ChatGPT.

That’s completely okay. They’ll use ChatGPT on the job too and that makes them resourceful.

BUT what you want is someone who takes the ChatGPT output and customizes it with their knowledge and experience.

Without adjusting the output, the responses feel bland and high level.

So make sure they add their own knowledge and experience. If not, they aren’t thinking for themselves.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

Again… telling what’s ChatGPT vs what’s their own experience is hard to tell if you don’t deeply understand the role you’re hiring for.

The best talent will be better at the role than you are!

If you understand the role well… amazing.

If you don’t, get help from a staffing agency that knows it well.

Your business is just a group of people

There’s nothing more important than who you let into your business.

Take your time. Get it right.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
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