Published: Nov 22, 2023
We know that having the right people on our teams is critical to success. But how do we get the right people on our teams?
As the Director of Operations at Business Made Simple and StoryBrand, I lead our hiring process. And it’s exciting. But it can also be scary. As a company, we’re taking responsibility for a new person’s livelihood and increasing our own overhead. And it’s risky for candidates, too. They’re in a tender place of transition, full of questions about their future, their career, and their livelihood.
So over the years, we’ve developed a helpful process that helps us find stand-out candidates whose skills and creativity help Business Made Simple grow. And in turn, we strive to serve them so they grow as well.
Here’s an overview of how our interview process works. If you’re adding new members to your team, I hope it can give you a starting framework to simplify and improve your hiring process.
Before I get into it, here are three reasons why we’ve designed it the way we have.
- It saves time. Without a good process, the time you spend vetting candidates can seem to spiral out of control, pulling you away from other key parts of your job. This process is fast. I can typically narrow down an applicant pool of dozens to three or four solid candidates within 3-4 hours.
- It protects people’s hearts. When you’re applying for a job, it can feel like an emotional rollercoaster. You’re worried about supporting yourself and your family, and you’re hyper-aware of people evaluating your every move. We try to care for people through the process by protecting their emotions and treating them the way we’d want to be treated.
- It ensures a great fit for employer and employee alike. We don’t ever want to “use” our employees in order to build Business Made Simple. In fact, our company only succeeds and grows as a whole if our individual staffers are all succeeding and growing, too. So at every point, this process is designed to help you find the people who’ll not just fill a role, but thrive in it.
Step #1: Fill out an online application
First, all candidates answer 5-10 questions in an online application. There’s some basic information on there, as well as questions we tailor to the specific job opening. For example, for our latest customer service opening, we asked candidates to tell us about a time when they had to navigate conflict.
Step #2: Answer questions on video
There’s a twist to the online application, and it’s the most important piece. For two questions, we ask candidates to give us their response on video.
One of the questions (which we got from our friends at Canlis) is this:
"How will working at Business Made Simple help you become the person you’re trying to become?"
This question matters deeply to us. We only want to make hires that are a mutually good fit. Yes, we want our employees’ talents to help Business Made Simple grow. But we also want Business Made Simple to help them grow toward whatever’s next.
Videos help me to evaluate applications quickly and easily. You can tell more about someone in 30 seconds of video than you can in the rest of the application. It’s a huge time-saver for me, so we can fill openings more quickly.
The added bonus is that it allows me to ensure our applicants have technical skills. Can they record, upload, and post a video? Can they pay attention to details and follow the process?
Step #3: Have a brief phone call
Candidates with excellent applications and videos then move forward to a 15-minute phone conversation with me.
This is a helpful way to get a sense of a candidate’s conversational style and presence. How do they engage in a back-and-forth scenario? How do they think on their feet and respond in the moment? I use this opportunity to clarify answers in their online applications and ask questions that show how candidates solve problems on the fly.
With a phone call, you can often see the conversational skills you’re looking for without an office visit. This is important to me because I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up too high. I’ve been a job candidate, too, and it’s easy to get emotionally attached to a potential job once you step foot into an office.
Along those lines, I’m also careful about using the word “you” in reference to the role. In other words:
Don’t say: “You would be monitoring this inbox for support requests.”
Do say: “The person in this role monitors this inbox for support requests.”
It’s all about respecting the person’s expectations at every step of the process.
Step #4: Have an face-to-face conversation
It seems like we’ve done a lot, but at this point, I’ve only invested about 3 hours of my time. In that time, I’m usually able to narrow the initial pool of applicants down to two or three solid candidates.
Now, each candidate either comes in for an in-person interview at the Business Made Simple office, or we conduct an interview over zoom. This interview is usually me, the hiring manager, and one other employee — typically whoever the person in this role would be working closely with. It’s important to make sure there’s a personal affinity and chemistry between people who collaborate.
Above all, I’m looking for those unteachable social skills, body language cues, and overall demeanor and comportment. We’d rather have a great person with a developable skill set than an all-star performer who has a hard time getting along with others.
That said, it’s a disservice to both our company and to our new employees if they don’t have the technical abilities to perform the job. So we do simple spot-checks for competency at this point.
For example, we were recently hiring someone to help equip our StoryBrand Guides with additional resources and training.
We gave her a time-bound test and asked her to brainstorm 50 topics she might present to guides.
For our customer service hires, we’ve given them a sample email, a few details for context, and asked them to write a response.
Step #5: Final interview with president
At this point, I’ve thoroughly vetted the candidate. Now, it’s time for a gut check with our president. He’s protective of our culture and wants to make sure that everyone who joins the team helps to edify and enrich it.
These conversations are fairly brief, but it’s important to see how the candidates react under the pressure of meeting with the president. Occasionally, the president spots a pitfall I missed, or the pressure of the situation reveals characteristics in candidates that make them a poor fit for the role.
Step #6: Conduct a reference check
As a final check, we reach out to three of the candidate's professional references. Reference checks are an important part of the process because, to this point, all you have is the candidate's word and your personal experience with them.
Talking to references gives you an outside perspective of the candidate and helps either uncover information that the candidate may have left out or assure you that the candidate is indeed who you thought they were.
A few questions we always ask references are:
Question 1: Why does this person no longer work for/with you?
Question 2: If you had the opportunity, would you hire this person again? If no, why? If yes, what expectations would you set up front for an even better experience?
Question 3: What are the candidate's strengths and areas for improvement?
Wrapping it all up
Finally, I get to make a VERY fun phone call and present a formal offer to our candidate. We offer new employees 90-day trial periods so they can make sure the job is going to help them grow, and we can make sure they’re a good fit to help Business Made Simple grow, too.
For everybody else who applied, I take the time to let them know we’ve gone in a different direction. I try to do this as soon as I know they won’t be moving on to the next round.
For example, I once interviewed someone on a Friday afternoon. I knew afterward that the person wouldn’t be a good fit for the role. So instead of letting her stew about it all weekend and tell friends and family, I gave her a call back right away to let her know.
This is just another way of respecting each candidate’s emotions throughout the process. And for candidates who didn’t get the job but who took the time to come to the office at any point, I always give them the courtesy of a phone call rather than letting them know over email.
Of course, no matter how dialed in your interview process is, every hire is an inherent risk. It takes time and experience to see what works for your culture. You will probably make a hire that’s not a good fit at some point along the way, and that’s OK. The important thing is to keep evolving and learning as you go.
