Hiring & Onboarding for Agencies
A Predictable, Repeatable Process for Hiring and Retaining A-Players.
How We Help With Employee Hiring & Onboarding for Digital Marketing Agencies
Any business owner will tell you keeping your team staffed with rock stars is nearly impossible. The S.C.A.L.E framework points and laughs at that idea. From finding the right employee and weeding out the wrong employees, to onboarding and retention, ScaleTime has the hiring and onboarding process for digital marketing agencies down to a science. See for yourself, and ensure that your weakest link is as strong as steel with our FREE hiring & onboarding checklist.
You wouldn’t spend your Monday burning dolla bills, so don’t waste your money on a bad hire. A bad hire can cost your business $15k+.
Why so much money?
Because bad employees mean productivity suffers, and that just plain hurts. Plus, adding the wrong person to your payroll just makes your brand look bad.
How about let’s fix all that ASAP?
Good employees in the right positions empower the engine that is your brand.
Vroom vroom, people. It’s time to SCALE. your agency through an airtight, replicable hiring process and streamlined onboarding.
Ready to give us the reins? Here’s how we’ll right and steer that ship.
What's SCALE.?
We use a proprietary framework, called SCALE., to help agency owners take control of their internal and external processes with proven optimization strategies. The result is a business that scales with far less effort so you can find more harmony in your work-life balance.
Sound good? Let’s break down the SCALE. framework for hiring and onboarding.
S
The S in SCALE.
See what’s happening
See what’s happening
Your agency is as unique as you and your team members. The SCALE. framework is customized to your particular needs and business operations. During the first step, we’ll figure out exactly what you need to streamline your agency hiring processes.
‘cause here’s the thing, people:
Your agency is only as good as the people on your team. When you’ve got aces in their places, your revenue and growth are gonna rise into the stratosphere. But without those aces in their places, you’ll go the way of the Fyre festival.
‘cause here’s the thing, people:
Your agency is only as good as the people on your team. When you’ve got aces in their places, your revenue and growth are gonna rise into the stratosphere. But without those aces in their places, you’ll go the way of the Fyre festival.
We’ll show you how to attract, find, and retain the right people for your organization so you don’t keep running into all this not-so-fun stuff:
- You’ve hired the wrong people too many times to count. But you don’t know how you manage to keep churning.
- You’ve hired a great person for your job, with no idea how to replicate the process for future hires.
- Great candidates fill out your application, but many of them don’t finish the hiring and onboarding process.
- You’re struggling to retain great employees.
- You keep underestimating the costs of hiring new people.
- You have a great team but are growing too quickly and aren’t sure how new hires will jell.
Together, we’ll pinpoint what’s not working in your agency and engineer a strategy designed to tweak and fix the specific issues plaguing your productivity.
The second step in the SCALE. framework will look at your current hiring processes and see how they’re operating. Stick around, friend, ‘cause we’ve got a FREE toolkit on the way that will take your hiring process from boo to wahoo.
C
The C in SCALE.
Create a Baseline
Create a Baseline
Issue numero uno we see agencies make with hiring and onboarding is they significantly underestimate the costs associated with it.
During this part of the SCALE. Framework, we establish a baseline so we can optimize your processes for greater growth and success.Because when you don’t know what you’re up against, you can’t fix it.
So, we’ll take a fine toothed comb over your:
- Established budgets for hiring and onboarding
- Timelines for hiring and onboarding
- Gaps in talent, capabilities, and roles
Once we’ve established a baseline, we’ll fill in the cracks and gaps in your hiring and onboarding, and amplify the good stuff you’re doing.
A
The A in SCALE.
Amplify how you do it
Amplify how you do it
Here, we take what you’re doing well currently and bump it up a notch (or ten).
So, how do we work our optimization magic? We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves:
- Our Hiring Calculator gives us an accurate picture of your hiring and onboarding costs. Voila! Now we’ve got a budget to work with.
- We identify and quantify meaningful data related to your hiring and onboarding processes, so we have the insight needed for optimization.
- We use measurable, accurate, attainable KPIs for uncovering things like time to hire and time to productivity.
- We’ll systemize the recruiting and onboarding process so you can build a powerhouse team with high morale and explosive productivity.
- You’ll get guidance for training your team so you can cultivate that go-getter culture you want and stop repeating yourself eighty bazillion times a day.
You might be thinking we’ll have to stop your business operations to get under the hood of your hiring and onboarding vehicle. But nope, you’d be wrong (no offense).
We get it. Your business can’t just stop. We’ve gotta climb aboard a moving train that we’ll be fixing on the fly.
Once we get your hiring and onboarding processes buttoned up, it’s time to lead and delegate.
L
The L in SCALE.
Lead and delegate
Lead and delegate
You can’t sit back and relax while your business hums along in the background if you don’t delegate.
During the L step, we’ll show you how to lead with implementation and Learn how to delegate appropriately.
Track progress, and get your business scaling on autopilot and hiring the right people every time you’ve got a need to fill.
Next, it’s time to get out of the way and watch your business grow without you needing to manage it hands-on.
E
The E in SCALE.
Exit and oversee
Exit and oversee
This part wraps everything up so you can make a graceful exit from managing the day-to-day. You’ll be overseeing from afar because you’ll be watching your metrics create the A-players your business needs to grow and scale.
Look forward to going from, “OMG I have to run everything and why is nothing working the way I want?!”
to
“Oh, this is nice — hanging out in my PJs at home watching Netflix while my business makes money.” #covidJokes
So let’s get you there!
You can get started RIGHT NOW on tightening up your team hiring process. Use our handy dandy and FREE Team Onboarding Toolkit.
Get Started with our FREE Team Onboarding Toolkit
So, what makes our proprietary Team Onboarding Toolkit so incredibly kickas$? It will show you how to:
- Hire the right people
- Delegate effectively so you’re freed up to work on the business = Mo’ Money!
- Reduce overwhelm for you and current team
- Never worry again about an employee bailing on you
- Introduce new ideas and perspectives. #innovation!
So what’s in the handy dandy magical (and did we mention FREE?) Team Onboarding Toolkit?
The following easy steps for A-player team success. Keep scrolling to check out the roadmap.
Step 1 for team hiring: Know your vision for your team
To get the right people on your team, you need a crystal clear vision of who you are, what you’re trying to accomplish, and what you can offer.
To get this clarity you should:
- Create a list of business values
- Create a list of future positions you want to fill
- Define your budget for hiring
- Decide how you are you keeping track of candidates
- Distill how you are different from the competition
Make sure you complete this step before moving on.
And if you’d like some help, drop us a line!
And if you’d like some help, drop us a line!
Step 2: Understand goals and define your metrics
To help you plan your business, you’ve got to get some baseline metrics for hiring and employment.
Those metrics include:
- Average lifetime of employee in your business – length of when the team member starts to when they leave
- Employee turnover – the rate at which employees stay and leave
- Cost of team member acquisition – cost of all of your team member salary and expenses over a given period of time
Step 3: Tracking the hiring process
Get every step of the process in a system so that you always have a snapshot of the process available.
E.g. Asana — workflow in a project manager
Step 4: Optimizing the hiring process: Understanding the ROI of individual team members
Do you know what you’re hiring someone for? Do you have that documented anywhere? Hold yourself and your team accountable by defining key metrics that will help you track progress towards achieving key business goals.
- What are your business KPI’s (key performance indicators)?
- What are the tasks projects that this person is going to accomplish to help improve those KPIs?
- Do you need someone full time, part time, contractor?
- What training or resources do they need to accomplish these goals?
- What will make them stay with your business?
Understanding your personal working style and culture:
…so you know which employees are easier and better to work with, what kind of employees you are trying to attract, and what aspects about your business will attract them.
List the reasons for lost employees in the past.
This will help you see the patterns of why you are losing talent in the past. When you’ve identified these patterns, you can quickly work to address them.
- Did you hire a team of friends and acquaintances?
- Did you not hire the right candidates?
- Was the environment not the right fit for the people who left?
- Did they get poached for higher paying jobs?
Organization of candidates:
Defining how you’ll receive, manage, and evaluate new candidates will make hiring as easy as saying yes to free tacos.
- What email do applications get sent to?
- How are you rating candidates?
- How are you keeping track of candidates?
- How are you assessing the trial period?
Step 5: Delegate hiring
Testing for performance. Talk the talk. Walk the walk.
Applications are indicators of someone’s past performance.
The interview process gives you a person’s potential performance.
Their performance on-the-job gives you insight into their true capabilities.
How do you find team members?
Activity checklist:
- Referrals – list all possible referral sources
- Job Posts – which job boards work best for your industry?
- Conferences – make a list of relevant upcoming conferences
- Networking – list relevant events
What is your hiring budget? Your Must-have Documents and Training Materials:
- Job post – this is the first impression a candidate will have of your business. It’s a great tool to filter out unwanted peeps. Ask for submissions beyond Resume/ Linkedin profile, including:
1. Digital Portfolio
2. Work product
3. Video submission - Phone/Video screening questions – filter the riff-raff.
1. What are your top 3-5 deal breakers for this position? Wage, availability, specific credential, start time, etc? - Interview types
1. Are they conducted on video or in person?
2. How many interviews?
3. Are you conducting 1-1 or group interviews?
4. Will they be interviewing with different team members? (how does operations adjust for interviewing process) - Interview questions – can they talk the talk?
1. Go Beyond “why do you want to work here and walk me through your resume?”
2. Ask behavioral questions – questions that tell you how they behave in different situations ie. conflict with teams, managers, dealing with stress, missed deadlines, crazy clients etc.
3. Ask fit questions – how do you know that this person is going to be a cultural fit for your growing team?
4. Ask crystal ball questions – insight to how they would deal with current or future problems that your business is dealing with in reality. - Give them a trial assessment – can they walk the walk?
1. Test project
2. Technical assessments
3. A day in the office working with team for in-house trial
4. Offer letter
Make sure you complete this step before moving on.
And if you’d like some help, drop us a line!
And if you’d like some help, drop us a line!
Level Up Your Agency Hiring and Onboarding Process with ScaleTime and the SCALE. Framework
You’re only as good as your weakest link. Let’s make sure that your weakest link is as strong as steel.
Tighten up your hiring process and save weeks looking for your huckleberry. Optimize your onboarding, and you’ll retain employees, increase morale, and scale your agency fast.
Free Hiring & Onboarding ChecklistTighten up your hiring process and save weeks looking for your huckleberry. Optimize your onboarding, and you’ll retain employees, increase morale, and scale your agency fast.
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