Just because you hired the most qualified MSP candidate does not necessarily mean you made a good hire. You have made a good hiring decision once you know you did not make a hiring mistake. Easier said than done, but that is why it is our job as interviewers to figure out who we are getting into bed with before the offer goes out. The point of the interview process is not to hope everything works out after the fact. The point is to uncover enough truth up front to know what you are actually signing up for.
That is why process matters. When you create a hiring process you can calibrate and improve. If you shoot from the hip, you may still make hires, but you will never know whether you are building a repeatable system or just getting lucky. Companies that hire well are usually not guessing better. They are interviewing better.
1. Create a Candidate Composite before you start interviewing.
A Candidate Composite is not a job description. A job description is an external facing document. A composite is what helps your team know who to look for, who is worth serious consideration, and by deduction, who is not. If your team cannot clearly define what a successful hire looks like before interviews begin, then too much of the process will come down to personal opinion.
Start by curating a list of the primary and secondary skill sets, traits, and tendencies that actually translate into success in the role. Then rank them. What matters more in your environment: someone who is organized or someone who is autonomous? Driven and hungry or polished and articulate? We all know you want it all, but that is not how the candidate pool works. Better hiring starts when you get honest about what matters most.
2. Get answers to the test by uncovering motivations.
We call this getting answers to the test. If the test is whether this person will be interested enough in your opportunity to sign your offer and stay, then the answers need to be uncovered during the interview process. Motivations are not a side note. They are one of the clearest indicators of whether you have a real match or just temporary excitement.
You can learn a lot by asking why someone is on the job market, but you usually do not get the whole truth the first time you ask. That is why good interviewers probe for more context and ask the question more than once at different stages of the process. Every MSP candidate says they want career growth. That phrase means very little until you unpack it. Why do they believe they are not getting it where they are now? What does growth actually look like to them? When do they expect to see it: day one, three months, six months? If you do not know what itch they are trying to scratch, you cannot know whether your opportunity will hold their attention once the dust settles.
3. Sell the opportunity using what the candidate told you.
Once you uncover what matters to the candidate, use it. Too many interviewers gather good information and then fail to bring it back into the conversation in a meaningful way. If a candidate told you they want more structure, more process, more exposure, more autonomy, or a clearer path forward, then those are the exact things you should be tying back to the role and company as you interview.
This is where the Question-Sell Method works well. Part of the interview should be for your edification, but part of it should also be for the candidate’s. Before asking a question, frame how your company operates, what you value, or what the role offers, then ask them to speak to that environment. That allows you to evaluate while also helping them understand why the opportunity may fit what they said they want. You are not overselling. You are helping them connect the dots.
At the end of the interview, do not assume the candidate sees their fit as clearly as you do. If you like someone, tell them. Tell them why. Be explicit about how the skills and experiences they possess are likely to translate into success in your environment. Candidates do not always naturally connect their background to your model. Good interviewers make that connection clear.
4. Interview tempo matters.
A sloppy process loses good candidates. A slow process does too. The candidates you actually want will almost always have options, which means tempo matters. If your company takes too long to move, someone else will make the decision for you.
An effective interview process is not just about asking better questions. It is about moving people through the process with enough speed and conviction to block out competition. Good candidates do not stay on the market long. If you like someone, act like it.
