Hiring and Training Developers and Sales Staff for an IT Agency

Hire for the work you actually do

Agencies often copy hiring processes from product companies, with algorithm puzzles and abstract system design questions. Services work needs different strengths: reading unfamiliar codebases, communicating with clients, estimating honestly and shipping steadily under changing requirements. Start every hiring round by writing a short scorecard listing the five or six qualities the role needs, with examples of what good looks like. Every interviewer scores against the same list.

For developers, a practical work sample beats puzzles. Give a small task similar to real client work, such as adding a feature to an existing small repository or fixing a bug, and limit it to a few hours. Then discuss it in a follow-up call: why they chose that approach, what they would do with more time and how they would explain the change to a non-technical client. That last question reveals a lot about client readiness.

Hiring sales staff

Sales hires are harder to judge because confident interviews do not always predict results. Ask candidates to walk through a real deal they closed: how they found it, who was involved, what objections came up and why the client chose them. Probe for specifics such as the number of stakeholders and the length of the cycle. Vague answers usually mean the candidate was present for the deal rather than responsible for it.

Include a role play based on your niche. Give a short brief about a fictional prospect, such as a UK retailer wanting a loyalty app, and ask the candidate to run the first discovery call with you as the buyer. Watch whether they ask good questions before pitching. For a first sales hire in a small company, look for someone comfortable building pipeline from scratch, not only someone used to working warm leads from a large brand.

Give new sales hires clear early targets that they can control, such as the number of qualified discovery calls booked each week, before judging them on closed revenue. Services sales cycles can be long, so revenue alone tells you little in the first months. Pair each new seller with a senior delivery person for discovery calls, which improves scoping quality and teaches the seller how your projects actually run.

Onboarding that makes people productive

Most new hires take far longer to become productive than they need to, simply because nobody planned their first weeks. Write a written onboarding plan for each role, covering the first day, first week and first month. Assign a buddy who answers small questions, and set one concrete goal for the end of the first month, such as shipping a reviewed pull request to a client project or running a discovery call alone.

Keep a living handbook that explains how your company works: coding standards, branching and review rules, how to log time, how estimates are made, how demos run and how to escalate client problems. For sales, include your positioning, ideal customer profile, qualification questions, pricing guidelines and case studies. At XDQ Labs the handbook is updated whenever a process changes, so it never drifts too far from reality.

• Day 1: accounts, tools, handbook and meeting the buddy
• Week 1: shadow a client call and a code review or sales call
• Month 1: deliver one real piece of work with review
• Month 3: work independently on a defined area

Training that compounds

Training does not need a large budget. Run a short weekly internal session where one person presents something learned on a project: a tricky integration, a client objection that was handled well, or a deployment mistake and how it was fixed. Record sessions so new hires can watch them later. Over a year this becomes a library of practical knowledge specific to your niche, which no external course can replace.

Create clear growth paths so good people stay. Define levels for developers and sales staff with expectations at each level, and review progress twice a year against those expectations. Pair juniors with seniors on real client work rather than keeping juniors on internal tasks only. Retention matters in services because every departure takes client knowledge with it, and replacing that knowledge costs far more than keeping the person.

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