How to Source, Screen, and Select the Best Candidates for Your Agency

Erika Zeigyte, CEO of Prosana, joins the Agency Journey podcast to share her expertise on sourcing, screening, and selecting top talent for agencies. Prosana is a consulting and recruitment agency that specializes in placing candidates in agency roles, giving Erika a unique perspective on what makes agency hiring different - and what most agency owners get wrong.

What Makes a Great Agency Candidate

Agency work is fundamentally different from in-house roles. Candidates juggle multiple clients, shift between strategic and tactical work within the same day, and operate in environments where priorities change constantly. Erika explains that the best agency candidates share a few key traits: they thrive on variety, they can context-switch without losing quality, and they manage competing priorities without becoming paralyzed.

Screening for these traits requires specific questioning. Generic interview questions like “tell me about a challenge you overcame” do not surface agency-specific capabilities. Instead, ask candidates how they have handled situations with multiple stakeholders pulling them in different directions. Ask about a time they had to reprioritize their entire week on short notice. The answers reveal whether someone will survive - and enjoy - the pace of agency life.

Erika also notes that cultural fit matters more at agencies than in many other environments. Small to mid-size agency teams operate with tight collaboration. One misaligned hire can shift the entire team dynamic, so evaluating how a candidate communicates, collaborates, and handles feedback is just as important as assessing their technical skills.

Building a First-Class Hiring Process

The core elements of an effective agency hiring process start with clarity. Before posting any role, define exactly what success looks like at 30, 60, and 90 days. This forces specificity that flows through every downstream decision - the job description, the screening criteria, the interview questions, and the assessments.

Erika walks through Prosana’s typical hiring process: initial screening for basic qualifications and cultural signals, a deeper interview focused on role-specific scenarios, a practical assessment that mirrors actual agency work, and final interviews with team members the candidate would collaborate with daily.

The balance between thoroughness and candidate experience is critical. Erika has seen agencies lose excellent candidates because the process dragged on for weeks or required excessive time commitments. The best candidates have options. If your process feels disrespectful of their time, they will accept another offer. The goal is to gather enough information to make a confident decision without creating unnecessary friction.

Sourcing Strategies Beyond Job Boards

Relying solely on inbound applications from job boards limits your talent pool to people who are actively looking. Erika explains that many of the strongest agency candidates are not actively searching - they are passively open to the right opportunity but not scrolling job boards.

Reaching passive candidates requires proactive outreach. LinkedIn is the primary channel, but effectiveness depends on the quality of your messaging. Generic connection requests with a job link get ignored. Personalized outreach that references the candidate’s specific experience and explains why the role aligns with their career trajectory gets responses.

Erika also recommends building a talent pipeline before you have open roles. When you maintain relationships with strong candidates over time, you can move quickly when a position opens. This is one of the key advantages of working with a recruiting agency - firms like Prosana maintain active networks of pre-qualified candidates, compressing the sourcing phase from weeks to days.

Hiring Junior Candidates

Junior hiring presents unique challenges for agencies. Entry-level candidates lack the portfolio and track record that makes senior hiring more straightforward. Erika advises agencies to invest in onboarding infrastructure before hiring junior team members. Without structured training, mentorship, and clear progression paths, junior hires often struggle and leave within the first year.

When screening junior candidates, focus less on what they have done and more on how they think and learn. Give them a small practical exercise and observe their process. Do they ask clarifying questions? Do they structure their approach before diving in? Can they articulate their reasoning? These signals predict success far better than GPA or previous internship brand names.

Effective Interview Questions for Agency Roles

Erika shares several question categories that consistently surface the right information for agency roles. Scenario-based questions that place the candidate in realistic agency situations reveal more than abstract behavioral questions. Asking “how would you handle a client who changes the brief the day before a deadline” tells you more about agency readiness than “describe a time you dealt with a difficult situation.”

Questions about tools and workflows are also valuable. Agencies run on project management systems, and candidates who can speak fluently about how they have used tools like ClickUp, Asana, or similar platforms to manage their work demonstrate operational maturity that translates directly to agency performance.

Resources Mentioned

• Erika Zeigyte on LinkedIn
• Prosana
• Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount