The top two traits for new agency hires

If you're screening candidates on experience or technical skills, you may be making a mistake. In this episode, Chip and Gini make the case that curiosity and problem-solving are the two traits that separate great hires from mediocre ones, and neither one can be taught from scratch. Most agency skills, from writing a press release to running Google Ads to using AI tools, can be picked up on the job. Curiosity and problem-solving are different: people either arrive with some baseline capacity for them, or they don't. Gini makes it about AI, where ever-evolving tools and audience behavior reward the people who keep asking questions instead of coasting on routine. The two discuss how to actually screen for these traits in a couple hours of interviewing. Gini leaves 15 to 20 minutes at the end for the candidate's questions and reads a lot into what they ask, or whether they ask anything at all. Chip changes up the order entirely, opening by asking the candidate what questions they have for him before he's asked anything himself, and he'll throw a candidate's own question right back at them to see how they handle being put on the spot. Both dismiss scenario-based questions and interview theater like "what animal would you be" as close to useless. Gini also flags a habit she's trying to break on her own team, being "Gini-GPT," where people default to asking her for the fast answer instead of working through problems themselves.