An Inside Look Into Our Hiring Best Practices
We all know hiring can be exciting, but also a huge challenge for many agencies. What can be even harder is coming up with your master plan ahead of time on how to vet the “right fit” candidate and take that next successful step towards scaling. Because we’re all in the business of building superstar teams, right!?
Carly from the DOT & Co. team is here to get you started on building out the perfect hiring process.
Carly is the leader of our hiring and marketing at DOT & Co. and she’s someone you should definitely learn from. In this blog, we dive into an inside look at our best practices when hiring superstar teams. Because we get it— In lean agencies and entrepreneurial “go-getter” environments, you need people with resiliency, openness, self-awareness, comfortability with ambiguity, and a killer attitude; but how do you find them?
1. Initial Stages: Applications, Resumes & Everything in Between
LinkedIn is a great primary tool when trying to source candidates from within close contacts of your network - this also is the #1 platform used in recruiting and often allows you to gather more than just a resume when posting jobs. And as much as you may not want to hear it, it’s critical to dedicate TIME to finding the right person. This means sifting through application materials, consulting teammates for their thoughts on who the best fit would be, and setting out your criteria for who will move onto next steps in the hiring process.
2. The Qualification Stage: Tips and Tricks
STEP 1) It all starts with the first email communications: are they responding well to your vibe and tone? Are the responses timely and well-written? In agency life, communication skills are paramount, and you can garner a ton about someone from those first back-and-fourths before even glancing at the other stuff.
STEP 2) The Classic: Check out their socials and ensure they are the REAL DEAL. In the world of digital marketing, EVERYTHING we do is online— so make sure your candidates are projecting their digital voice in a way that attracts you to learn more about them.
3. The Assessment Phase
In an exciting and fast-paced agency-life, it’s important to test potential superstars for their hard skills, soft skills and ability to work under pressure.
'Soft skills’ can be a total buzzword, but how can you narrow in on these traits? What are we really looking for?
There isn't really a secret sauce for assigning assessments, but the more info and data you can gather from a candidate, the better. Running candidates through a hybrid assessment/interview approach can really help narrow in on the nitty-gritty hard-to-capture attributes that you may be looking for...
Three approaches for harvesting soft skills include:
Early stage communications: Check their tone in emails/calls/coffee chats. Are they keen, authentic, driven by the industry, charismatic? [Use this as an informal assessment of the candidate.]
Case interviewing: Harvests both hard/soft skills [Remember: hard skills can be taught, soft skills are inherent and sometimes harder to teach]
Administer personality tests: Look for those “it” factor qualities that match what your hiring team is seeking and needing to fill talent gaps. Something like the StrengthsFinder test is a good starting point. Does the candidate have a growth mindset?
4. Interviews, Interviews, Interviews!
We use a hybrid approach where we start with a casual phone call/coffee chat before moving into more hard skill-focused assessments and cases where we look for star CAM qualities. A sample flow that we use (and you could use too!) is:
Start with a 15-min phone screen: Basic questions on the job post, verify they aren't a robot, initial gut check on personality.
Move to a Video Call next (or if you're lucky— an in person interview) [45 min - 1hr] - This will definitely vary based on the role + what your agency needs - but here's where we get to the true story telling and inside look at a candidate.
Test them - Once you've started to narrow your list, this is when it gets real. If you're looking to put this potential star on the spot, give them a quick homework task relating to a client at your agency, or have a follow up video call/interview that is solely case-based. This will get them working under pressure and see if they possess the critical thinking, quick-on-their-feet thinking that is so key to come by.
Now, make your pick! At this point— you and your team have put in the time to qualify this person from start to finish. Later stage candidates have jumped through hoops, let you inside the inner workings of their brains, and hopefully started to build relationships with you along the way. For us at DOT & Company, relationship-building is our thing: both internally and with our awesome clients. Our team is not just a group of efficient go-getters; we also are a family of hardworking and happy people who share many values and passions.
The Truth: You can never know for sure if things will work out. But please know you're never alone and you can always count on your DOT family to chat about your options!
→ Be the first to sign up for our Hiring Best Practices waitlist- these modules will give your agency a step-by-step guide on exactly what we do at DOT & Co. to build our superstar teams. Head over to www.dotandcompany.co/hiring to learn more about this exciting launch!
Until next time,
Cheers to happy clients!