Questions to Ask Before Making Your Next Hire

When scaling your business and hiring for all the roles you need, there’s a lot to learn as a business owner. Here’s a look into what we’re learning on that journey at OrangeBall and the questions we’re asking ourselves along the way…

To set the stage, at OrangeBall we’re moving through two seasons at once. To scale and serve our clients at the highest levels, we need to grow and add depth to our bench. At the same time, for our leaders to focus on leading vs. doing, working on the business rather than in it, we need amazing individuals to delegate to.

With that in mind, 2024 has started with us hiring for a handful of roles to meet/exceed the needs of our clients and support the team we already have in place. That has led us to develop our own internal process for looking at these hires using a series of simple questions…

First, we explore the role itself…

• Why this role now? (Is this the “right time”?)
• What if we DO hire for this role? (The results we’re expecting)
• What if we DON’T hire for this role? (Opportunity cost)
• Reasons to NOT hire? (For each reason, is it true and valid?)
• Finally, do we really need this role? (Yes/No)

Next, we explore the candidate…

If the answer is yes, that we DO need this role, we move on to asking questions about the candidates we’re talking to and exploring how they fit the seat we see them in. We’ll use “Jack” as our example…

• Why Jack? (What the candidate brings to the table)
• Why Not Jack? (Unknowns, red flags, gaps in skillsets)
• Is Jack the right fit for this role? (Yes/No)

Finally, we explore what we BELIEVE…

Essentially, we’re making a simple list of Jack’s pros and cons and asking if he’s the right fit for what we need now. It would be easy to stop there, but we take this one step deeper, moving on to some of the most important questions we ask about any candidate. These are OrangeBall’s “Do We Believe” questions…

• Do we believe that Jack will add value to our clients? (Yes/No)
• Do we believe that Jack will pay for himself in this seat? (Yes/No)
• Do we believe that Jack will help us grow this business? (Yes/No)
• Do we believe that Jack can do the work? (Yes/No)
• Do we believe that Jack will delight clients and exceed expectations? (Yes/No)
• Do we believe that Jack will make our culture stronger? (Yes/No)

For the answers to these final “Do We Believe” questions, there needs to be confidence behind each “Yes.” If there is hesitation or a “No” to any of these questions, it causes us to step back. This final list is a set of non-negotiables, so a “No” to any of these is a red flag.

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Many of you have been doing this longer than we have, and you have your own processes for making hiring and scaling decisions. Some of you run businesses dedicated to recruiting and staffing, and you have your own set of questions.

We’d love to hear from all of you… and to share what you share with us in future posts. Let us know what we’re missing here, how your approach is different, and where you’ve seen success in building your own teams.

Finally, if you’re reading this far down, all the way at the bottom of this post, we are grateful for you. Thank you for being part of OrangeBall’s circle.