Hiring duds is killing your agency’s growth, wasting precious resources and creating chaos inside your team.
Every agency owner has felt that sinking feeling after realizing they hired the wrong person. Let’s face the truth nobody tells you—it isn’t the candidate’s fault, it’s yours. Hiring mistakes come from broken hiring processes, gut-feeling guesswork, or desperation-driven decisions. To stop wasting your time and sabotaging your growth, get clear on the exact traits and skills proven to identify a rockstar agency hire.
These critical traits separate agency superstars from workplace liabilities:
First, look for relentless resourcefulness. Rockstar agency talent doesn’t wait to be handed instructions. They proactively dive into projects, creatively solve problems, and relentlessly find new ways to achieve client success. These people see opportunities when others see roadblocks.
Second, prioritize adaptability under pressure. At agencies, priorities change daily and clients constantly shift directions. Employees who can flexibly adapt without complaint are irreplaceable. They’re the rock-solid players still standing strong after stressful challenges crush average hires.
Next, zero in on coachability. No matter how experienced hires may initially seem, employees unwilling to admit mistakes, receive constructive feedback, and rapidly improve hold your agency back. Coachable team members can quickly evolve and scale alongside your agency’s growth.
Finally, seek proof of emotional intelligence, empathy, and integrity. Agency work hinges on relationships with team members and customers. Employees lacking character or emotional awareness can devastate your culture, burn bridges, and tarnish your reputation forever.
Now, here’s exactly how to swiftly upgrade your agency hiring process to spot rockstars reliably:
Step one is to aggressively screen candidates before they ever step foot in your agency. Stop wasting your team’s interview hours chatting with unqualified candidates. Set up clear pre-interview tasks, like short written prompts or video responses on specific topics relevant to the role you’re hiring for. Candidates unwilling to put in a brief upfront effort immediately disqualify themselves, freeing your resources quickly.
Next, conduct structured behavioral interviews designed explicitly to highlight key qualities. Stop vague and useless questions like “”Tell me about yourself.”” Instead, probe directly into real-world scenarios that test adaptability, resourcefulness, and emotional intelligence. For example:
- “”Tell me about a time when a client completely changed directions mid-project. How did you handle that?””
- “”Describe a situation where you made a mistake at work. How did you address it, and what was the outcome?””
- “”Can you share a specific situation where you creatively solved a significant problem without clear instructions?””
These real-life questions cut through fluffy, rehearsed answers, revealing true candidate qualities.
Then, involve your best current employees in the evaluation. Your highest-performing employees know precisely what makes someone successful at your agency. Include them in candidate interviews and assign weights to their feedback. Trust their insights—they honestly can spot red flags or hidden potential faster than you.
Finally, leverage clearly defined candidate scoring and evaluation methods. It’s time agencies stopped relying solely on intuition. Assign numerical scores to candidate answers, behaviors, and interactions. Track these scores consistently across every hiring decision. Reviewing objective scoring sheets reduces biases and leads to informed hiring decisions on facts rather than hunches.
Here’s the tough truth—most agencies never intentionally build a strategic hiring system.
They just cross their fingers, hire whoever sounds good on paper, and wonder why they end up stuck with duds.
Stop being like most agencies and instead take responsibility for your results. Commit right now to incorporating these methods immediately—structured behavioral questions, team involvement, and objective scoring—to reliably ramp up hiring quality.
Your rockstar team won’t build itself by accident. Do yourself and your agency a favor. Starting today, revamp your hiring process using the steps outlined here to find the players who will propel your agency to sustained growth, strength, and success.
I challenge you—before the week ends, implement just one improvement from this list into your hiring process.
Your future depends on the people you bring onboard. Don’t wait until another costly dud pushes your agency to the brink. Take control now, and finally build the rockstar team your agency needs and deserves.
