The hiring process is not just an interview. It's a six-phase system: define your ideal candidate profile, market the role with messaging that attracts the right people, filter candidates by their responsiveness and effort before you ever schedule an interview, use the first interview to verify capacity, use the second to verify character, then decide based on a scorecard of evidence. Every phase reveals something. If you skip a phase or rush it, you leave truth on the table.
Most businesses don't have a hiring process. They have an interview. Post a job, screen some resumes, talk to someone for 30 minutes, and make a call. Sometimes it works. When it doesn't, you spend months figuring out who you actually hired. The problem isn't that you had bad conversations. It's that the process wasn't built to find out what you needed to know.
This episode maps the full hiring process from start to finish: four core principles and six phases, from defining your ideal candidate profile through orientation and into retention. It's the most complete overview in the series so far. Think of it as the blueprint. The individual phases are covered in depth in surrounding episodes.
- Treat your hiring process like your sales process. Start with who your ideal candidate is the same way you'd start with your ideal customer. Build the messaging, the process, and the criteria from there.
- How someone responds to a calendar invite, the energy in their voice on a screening call, how fast they get back to you: that's all evidence. Actions speak louder than a resume. Always.
- Your job description is marketing. Most businesses write theirs exactly the same. Write yours like a sales message — here's what working for us offers you, here's the impact you'll have — and you stand out from everyone else before the first conversation.
- The first interview is for capacity: can they do the role? The second is for character: will they thrive here? They are completely different conversations with completely different questions. Do not repeat the first in the second.
- After two interviews you have three options: reject based on your scorecard, follow up with a third touch point if you're missing information on one element, or make the offer because the evidence supports it. Not gut feel. Evidence.
- Orientation is not the same as onboarding. Onboarding is paperwork. Orientation is giving your new hire a picture of what success looks like, the people they need to know, and how the business works. Don't skip it.
- Retention problems almost always trace back to misalignment. And misalignment starts in the hiring process. Get the hiring right and most of the retention problems you're dealing with today go away.
What should a complete hiring process actually look like from start to finish?
Six phases. Most businesses only do one of them.
Phase one is clarity and criteria: define your ideal candidate profile, starting with your brand profile — values, work style, non-negotiables, and the traits of your best people — then mapping to the specific role. Phase two is marketing: write your job posting like a sales message, not a bullet point list. Phase three is filtering: read resumes for behavior and effort, not credentials, and do a short screening call or video before you ever book a full interview.
Phase four is the first interview, focused on capacity. Phase five is the second interview, focused on character. Phase six is the decision: reject, follow up, or make an offer based on a scorecard. Then orientation — not just onboarding. Orientation is giving your new hire a picture of what success looks like, the people they need to know, and how the business works. Think of it like having the picture on the puzzle box. Those basic guidelines set you up to actually build the thing.
Hiring has one job. Like the whole process is built to accomplish this one goal: you need to reveal the truth about a person before you make the offer.
Amy Dardis, Episode 38How do I filter candidates before wasting time on a full interview?
Watch what people do, not just what they say. I've never been a big believer in resumes because a resume is not a good indicator of what somebody is capable of. I'm looking for how they wrote it, what else they included, was there a cover letter or an email, how fast they respond, what's the energy in their voice on a call, whether they confirm a calendar invite. People are willing to put in extra effort up front when they want you to consider them. That speaks volumes.
People who don't put in effort, who take a long time to get back to you, who don't respond at all — those are all signals, all red flags, all evidence. They're showing you who they are before you've even scheduled a conversation.
Do a screening call before committing to a full interview. A traditional phone call, or a 15-20 minute Zoom or Teams screen where you can see their face. Or ask them to send a short video introduction. We read so much into body language, visual cues, tone, and voice that we are never going to see in a resume or an email.
People are willing to put in extra effort up front, especially when they want you to consider them. That speaks volumes. And it's amazing how people will kind of just not put in any effort in these things.
Amy Dardis, Episode 38How should the first and second interview be structured differently?
They are completely different conversations with completely different questions. Do not repeat the first interview in the second.
First interview: capacity. Do they have the skills, abilities, talents, and bandwidth to actually excel in this specific role? This is what 95% of interviews already cover, but ask the questions differently. We know what we're looking for from our candidate profile, so we're asking for evidence of it in real life, not just in past jobs. Process-driven and organized? Ask about systems they run at work and systems they run at home. Grocery shopping, meal planning, workout routines. Same wiring, different setting.
If they pass, invite them back. That callback itself lowers their guard because it signals they said something right. Second interview: character. Values, motivations, what drives them to show up when life gets hard. You can only go there because you established enough trust in the first interview. Ask these questions first and they're too guarded to answer honestly.
Why do most retention problems trace back to the hiring process?
Because retention problems are almost always misalignment problems. And misalignment starts in the hiring process.
If you bring someone on who doesn't actually share your values, who isn't wired for the role, or who wasn't told the truth about what working for your organization is really like, you're going to have a retention problem. Nothing you do to fix culture or engagement or performance afterward is going to work if you keep putting the wrong people through the door.
There's no such thing as 100% retention because of life and people. But the avoidable ones, the ones caused by misalignment, are fixable. And fixing them starts before you ever post the job.
If you don't get this right, nothing you do to solve the other problems is ever gonna matter if you keep bringing the wrong people on board. And you're always gonna bring the wrong people on board if you don't define who the right people are.
Amy Dardis, Episode 38Resources mentioned
- Free Candidate Alignment Evaluation — The scorecard for making objective hiring decisions based on evidence
- Free Interview Questions Download — Questions designed to reveal capacity, character, and evidence in both interviews
- Ep 37 — The 3 Things Every Interview Must Reveal — Capacity, character, and evidence explained in depth
- Ep 35 — The 6 Objectives of Interviewing to Hire with Confidence — The six objectives the hiring process must accomplish
Full transcript
Hiring has one job. Like the whole process is built to accomplish this one goal: you need to reveal the truth about a person before you make the offer. This whole process has to result in you hiring the right person for your company and for this specific role. We need this process to reveal the real person, the person who's going to show up 90 days from now, not the person who shows up on interview day. How we curate this experience, how we structure it, 100% impacts who you see through this process.
The process is working to reveal the capacity to excel in the role, the character of the person, and whether or not they're going to thrive in your company, and evidence that proves both of these things.
Principles of hiring. First: treat your hiring process like you would your sales process. When you do a sales process, you always start with who is your ICP, your ideal customer profile. You understand who they are, where they spend time, what they care about, what their problems are. You build your marketing messaging, your sales process, your pitch call, your follow-up, your proposal, your onboarding. We're going to use these same principles for the entire hiring process.
We're also making sure we're very intentional and strategic in how we curate this whole experience to meet the six objectives: seeing who the real person is, verifying capacity to excel in the role, verifying character to thrive in the organization, setting very clear expectations about how we operate and our non-negotiables, making a pitch for our company and why we're different, and making a confident decision because we've established all of this information and we have clear criteria.
Third principle: we are always looking for evidence. Does this person have a track record that proves what they're saying? What are they saying? What are the words they're using? What's their body language? What are the specific real-life examples they're providing that reveal how they acted? Are we seeing consistency in patterns?
Fourth principle: we always make objective decisions based on defined criteria and a scorecard that measures the evidence provided within their answers.
Phase one is clarity and criteria: define your ideal candidate profile, which starts with your brand profile — your values, work style, non-negotiables, and the traits of your best people — and then maps to the specific role you're hiring for. What are the requirements of the job? What are the actual skills and abilities we need? What are the red flags that would signal this person wouldn't be a good fit?
Phase two: market the role and use messaging that attracts. We're using messaging on our careers page, in company profiles on LinkedIn, Indeed, or other job posting sites. And especially into the way we write our job description. Most people write their job descriptions exactly the same. They are so boring, so stale, so generic. Roles, requirements, benefits, experience, bullet point list. Let's put some life in there. Write it the way we would write a sales message to capture the attention of our ideal candidate. Hey, look, we have something to offer you that's worth your time, worth your skills, worth you taking a risk and coming to work for us. Here's why we stand out, here's the impact you're going to have, here's the contribution you're going to make. That alone would put you far above what everybody else is doing.
Phase three is filtering. We're filtering candidate applications, reading resumes, doing screening calls, and looking for responsiveness, communication, and confirmation. I've never been a big believer in resumes because a resume is not a good indicator of what somebody is capable of. I'm looking for how did they write their resume, what else did they include, was there a cover letter or an email, how fast do they respond, what's the energy in their voice on a screening call, how fast do they call me back, are they confirming a calendar invite. People are willing to put in extra effort up front when they want you to consider them. That speaks volumes. Those who don't are all signals, all red flags, all evidence.
Do a screening call before you commit to a full interview. A traditional phone call, or a 15-20 minute Zoom or Teams screen where you can see their face. Or ask them to send a short video introduction. We read so much into body language, visual cues, tone, and voice that we are never going to see in a resume or in an email.
Phase four is the first interview, focused on capacity. Do they have the capacity to excel in this role? What are their skills, abilities, talents, strengths, background, experience? This is what 95% of interviews consist of. But we're asking our questions differently because we know what we're looking for based on our candidate profile. If the role requires someone process-driven and organized, we're asking about times they've improved processes, systems they run at work, as well as systems they run in their real life. Grocery shopping, meal planning, workout routines. All indicators of the same wiring.
If they pass the capacity test, if you leave confident based on the questions and the evidence and your scoring rubric that this person has the ability, the potential, and the bandwidth to excel in this role, and you enjoyed the time you spent with them, you move them on to the second interview.
Phase five is the second interview, focused on character. What are their values? What are their motivations? What drives them to show up when life gets hard? We are not repeating the first interview. Completely different set of questions. A much deeper level conversation. You can only go there because you established enough trust and rapport in the first interview. You invite them back, which immediately lowers their guard because they received a positive signal. In the second interview, everybody is more comfortable, there's more rapport, and you're getting into the things that really matter.
After two interviews plus your initial screening, you should have all the information you need to make a confident decision. There are really only three things you can do: reject based on your scorecard, follow up with a third touch point if you're still missing information on one element, or make an offer because the evidence supports it. Verbal offer first, followed by formal written offer.
Then orientation. I don't love the term onboarding because to me, onboarding means paperwork. Orientation is different. This is orienting your new hire to your company. Think of building a puzzle: what helps you build a puzzle is having a picture of what it looks like when it's done. Then some guidelines: start with the border pieces, then separate by color. Those three things set you up. We need to give our new employees that same intentional guidance: here's what success looks like, here's how we define it, here's how you know you're doing well, here's how often we'll check in, these are the people you need to know.
Everything in this whole process goes back to retention. Every single point along the way is a building block of your retention. If you don't get this process right, you will always have retention issues. There's no such thing as 100% retention because of life and people. We're not looking for 100% retention. We're looking to eliminate avoidable mishires.
Most retention issues today actually have to do with misalignment. And misalignment starts with the hiring process. If you don't get this right, nothing you do to solve the other problems is ever going to matter if you keep bringing the wrong people on board. And you're always going to bring the wrong people on board if you don't define who the right people are. So it always goes back to clarity. Always.
I know I get real fired up about this because it's people, it's talent, it's purpose, it's our life. Let's not waste it. Let's do work that we enjoy with people we want to be around. We have control over that. Getting rid of misalignment, whether through someone quitting or being let go, is always good for both parties. It doesn't feel like that in the short term, but it is. The employee needs alignment and the business needs alignment. That's the only way we can succeed.