The Creative's Guide to Screening Your First Hire - Martine Severin

Hiring your first helper is exciting, but it can also be terrifying. After keeping the wrong person on my team for far too long, I realized I had been focusing on all the wrong things. Skills on a resume are table stakes, but you cannot teach someone to care about the details the way you do. In this episode (Part 2 of our hiring series), I am pulling back the curtain on the screening process that saved me from making that mistake again. I share the specific, behavioral questions I now ask to uncover a candidate's true values, the red flags that signal a poor fit, and the single most important step I take before making any commitment: the paid trial project. This is the guide I wish I had when I started building my team.   Chapters 00:00 Welcome Back & The Hiring Journey 00:45 The Mistake I Made With My First Hire 02:05 Looking Beyond the Resume: Skills vs. Values 03:00 Why "Culture Fit" Is Everything for a Small Creative Business 04:00 The Pre-Screening Trick for Attention to Detail 05:50 How to Ask About Past Work (The "Prioritization" Question) 07:45 Asking About Mistakes and Listening for Ownership 09:30 How Do They Handle Critical Feedback? 10:30 The Importance of a (Paid) Trial Project 11:50 The Truth Revealed in the Trial 12:20 Red Flags: Badmouthing and Vague Answers 13:00 Why the Questions They Ask Matter 13:30 The One Question I Wish I Had Asked 14:00 Final Thoughts: Aligned, Not Perfect   Support the Show Website: https://www.martineseverin.com/ Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martine.severin/ | https://www.instagram.com/thisishowwecreate_ Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.martineseverin.substack.com/ This is How We Create is produced by Martine Severin. This episode was edited by Daniel Espinosa.