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Day 1 of Prepathon was a BLAST! ⚡

With in-depth discussions on WordPress security, optimization, and UI/UX mistakes to avoid, attendees gained valuable insights. We also had winners for various challenges.

If you missed it, don't worry. Today, we're diving into revenue and demand generation. Our expert speakers will share their proven strategies for:

• Digital Agency Success: Learn how to maximize revenue for your digital agency.

• Demand Generation Mastery: Discover effective techniques to generate consistent demand for your products or services.

Workshops on lead magnets and winning LinkedIn strategies are also on the agenda.

It's not too late to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and turn your business around.

DEEP DIVE WITH IBRAHIM

Happy Wednesday!

Today, I'm going to walk you through how I hire at Peel Away, where I currently work as a CMO. Over the last 30 months, we’ve grown our team, and everyone we’ve hired is really good at what they do. We’ve got absolute killers on our payroll, and a lot of it comes back to how we hire. Whether I’m hiring someone from India or someone in the US, we use the same process. We’ve never lost an employee at Peel Away, which is not easy for most companies to say. This process has netted us incredible talent.

The Broken Hiring System

So, if you think about the typical hiring practice for a company, it usually look like the following sequence:

1. A company realizes that it needs to fill a new role for any number of reasons

2. They create a job description with their ideal “role and responsibilities”

3. The job description talks about the “requirements” which are typically made up like “This person needs a bachelor's degree or a certain GPA, or 5 years of experience in a similar role or field” etc.

4. They post on LinkedIn (that damn “Easy Apply” button) and on various job boards hoping that they get some qualified leads for the role

5. They don’t do a good enough job selling the position to the candidate and convincing them WHY they might be interested to apply in the first place

6. They also don’t talk enough about the downsides and why this role might not be a good fit

And the truth is, the old way of hiring is pretty broken. I think that the idea of having strict “requirements” or “years of experience”' doesn't matter at all. The only thing that really matters is the cultural fit and the results achieved as they pertain to your specific company and the specific role that you’re hiring for.

When I was 19 and applying to roles, I got automatically rejected from almost every role I applied to because I didn’t have a college degree yet, and at the time, only had 1 proper tech job, and that’s doing some social media for a couple of smaller brands. I like to think that a ton of companies missed the opportunity to hire someone like me, who was incredibly hungry, ready to grind, and was extremely passionate about digital marketing. As a result, our hiring practice is setup to filter for candidates based on their knowledge and potential, versus just people who only have a college degree.

Disclaimer: Obviously, if you’re going into a field that requires a degree (medicine, law, etc.), then you need a degree and need to filter for it. And this is also not an endorsement to not go to college either.

In my process, I have a few key steps:

• Identify the need

• Job description

• Qualifying the candidate

• Phone interview

• In-person interview (if possible)

• Test project, if applicable

Let me walk you through each step.

For The Job Description

In the job description, I begin with selling WHY a candidate might want to work with Peel Away or other ventures such as an agency I’m part of in the first place. I talk about our recent growth, our amazing clients, our growing team and our recent wins. I always start with the sizzle to get candidates excited to apply.

Then, I talk about the RESULTS that need to be achieved in this specific role, not the “years of experience” that are required. And in my opinion, if you take one thing away from this email, it should be that you (or your hiring managers) should avoid “requirements” and focus exclusively on results when hiring for all new roles.

The more specific that you are about the results that need to be achieved each week, month, quarter, and year, the better your hiring (and management process) will be.

For our design team’s lead for the agency, the result was, “Build team capabilities (resources, processes, team) to produce 40 landing pages per month with 2-3 variations per page with pages delivered within 10 days for clients.” and then use this baseline to manage performance on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis for that specific role. This is an old result, but you can see how it’s very clear, including the task, the context, and the timeline. The best part of results is now when you have 1:1’s with team members, you can just review progress toward these results and not waste time or try to find things to talk about last-minute.

Qualifying The Candidate

The next question that comes to mind is once a candidate sees the role and decides they want it, how do we qualify them?

Once the role is posted, the candidate can see the results that we want them to achieve. To qualify them properly, I put together a Google Form (you can use any form software), which will ask them to complete a writing assignment. At the top, I have a very blunt explanation for what the role requires.

For example, I’d say:

“I'm looking to hire someone based anywhere in the US, has the ability to travel when needed, and wants to be a CEO or COO in a few years. Across the 7 active projects I have, I need someone who is organized, attentive, analytical, and can be where I need them to be. You must have exceptional attention to detail.”

Below that, I take the top 3 results from the job posting, and make 3 questions out of them with long-form written responses. I tell candidates each question should take anywhere from 10-30 minutes per question.

A few examples:

• Tell us about a time that you were responsible for documenting notes, date-bound action items, and date-bound accountability follow ups for another leader or executive.

• How did you ensure to drive each of those items to completion within the prescribed time frames?

• Describe any systems or tools you used or developed, how you used them, and who was responsible for each step in these processes. How effective was it? What evidence do you have to support that claim?”

With a ton of inbound interest for roles, these questions help you figure out who’s legit, and who’s not. When you strictly explain that you need systems, tools, processes, evidence, etc, you can quickly see if someone is BS’ing you or not.

For this part of the screening process, I’m trying to assess:

1. Can this person follow directions and answer my questions clearly with relevant responses?

2. Is this person telling the truth and do they have real world examples and data to back up their claims?

3. Is this candidate’s thinking reasonable and aligned with how I might approach the role or what I’d like this hire to do?

If the candidate can impress me regarding all 3 of these points with their written responses, I typically move to a Zoom call to learn more.

Why I Like This System

I like to ask questions and receive detailed written responses from potential candidates for a few reasons:

• It’s async and candidates can respond on their own time. I want candidates to have plenty of time to think carefully about their responses and reply with their best foot forward. I personally don’t like it when people do live “gotcha” questions on interviews and candidates don’t have enough time to prepare.

• This format gives someone the chance to apply without feeling like they may be judged on anything (race, skin color, religion, gender, etc.). It’s solely based on the replies they send in!

• 50% of people who I ask to answer questions like this in writing literally don’t answer the questions and are immediately disqualified at this stage. Saves us time.

• Another 25% answer the questions but, due to their answers, lack of effort in the answer, or something else, it’s clear that they aren’t the right fit.

• The final 25% write thoughtfully and I can tell pretty quickly that their responses align with what I’m looking for in this role. It’s the best way that I’ve found to know if we’re on the same page before moving forward to a call.

The Phone Interview

The next stage in my process is to do Google Meet/Zoom interview. Here, I ask a lot of the same questions that I ask in the form and I dig deeper into their responses. I’ll ask questions to get more granular detail. In this interview, I’m looking to ensure legitimacy of the answers they wrote in. I also begin to get a sense of what it might be like to work with this person as I get some time to interact with them live.

Additionally, the Zoom interview is a great opportunity for me to discuss all of the reasons why this job might NOT be a great fit. I clearly state in the job description what my expectations about work are.

That could be about the hours we’re working, the occasional request to jump in and do something on a weekend, or the need to reply on Sunday night before a big Monday meeting. Obviously, not every week is like this, but it’s important to set expectations upfront about what the work environment will be. I also talk about the fun stuff, such as, no work talk Thursday meetings, etc.

That said, we have a strong culture of excellence and I think it’s incredibly important to spend a few minutes on the call explaining why the job might not be a good fit. Explain these things and see how the candidate reacts to learn more. If they pass the Zoom interview, and it’s possible for them to come and meet me, I’ll invite them, if not, that’s usually okay too, and I try giving them a test project.

The In-Person Interview (if they meet me)

• In this section of the interview, I like to ask about their career aspirations, values, what they hope to achieve in 1-2-5 years.

• I also try to have the candidate meet whoever else they might be working with regularly on the team, if others are around in the same city. If not, I get this candidate to meet the team on Zoom, and after the candidate leaves, my team gives me high-level feedback on what they thought about this candidate and then I’ll know whether or not to move forward with extending an official offer to join.

• Although this sounds like a lot, it’s still a fast process. It’s typically 2-4 weeks to progress through all of the stages for senior hires. When we are serious about a candidate, we’ll move quickly to get them.

A Test Project

Now, this process does differ slightly based on the kind of role. For creative roles, we still focus a lot on their portfolio and then we typically do a paid test project alongside the exercise above. For a paid media role, we may do a paid media test or exercise. There is some variation for each type of role but the beginning of the process is always the same.

By running a strict hiring process and having a high-bar for talent, we end up hiring exceptional people who end up staying with us for a long time. So in the long run, you’re actually saving yourself a lot of time!

Hiring well and giving promotions are incredibly important and one of the most rewarding things that you can do as an entrepreneur or executive. There is nothing quite like the feeling of giving ambitious people new opportunities, helping them grow, and winning together.

The last thing I always recommend people keep open is the door for people who might be wanting to work with you, even if you’re not hiring for a formal role. I’ve had few people email me in the past just stating their intentions of why they wanted to work here, and it turned out to be a perfect fit—they are also the fastest people to get up to speed.

Alright folks, that’s it for today!

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