Knowledge Base / Management / HR & Hiring
HR & Hiring
How we hire, what we look for per role, the interview kit, the first two weeks of a new teammate's life, and how we handle performance honestly. Small team, high bar: every hire changes the company's average.
What we hire for (in this order)
Taste and standards
Someone who can tell good from generic, and who is bothered by "almost right". Skills grow; taste rarely gets installed later. Every role here touches quality, including sales.
Honesty under pressure
Our brand promise is "the web industry lies to beginners, we don't". A candidate who fudges a deadline story in the interview will fudge a client update in month two. Disqualifying.
Speed with follow-through
We deliver in days, not months. That takes people who move fast AND finish: QA checked, handover sent, loop closed. Fast-but-sloppy and careful-but-slow both break the model.
Plain-language communication
Everyone talks to non-technical clients eventually. If a candidate cannot explain their own work simply, they will confuse clients and teammates alike.
Role profiles
| Role | The job in one line | Must-haves | Warning signs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seller | Turn cold local businesses into signed builds, honestly | Comfortable calling strangers; listens more than pitches; knows (or learns) the objection playbook cold; tracks follow-ups religiously | Overpromises to close; trash-talks competitors; cannot roleplay the "too expensive" objection after reading our playbook |
| Designer | Make every deliverable look intentionally, distinctively designed | Portfolio with range (not one style repeated); can explain WHY behind choices; typography fundamentals; fluency in at least two fields from the Design page | Portfolio full of template look-alikes or AI-tell layouts; can't critique their own work; "I just liked it" as rationale |
| Developer | Ship fast, clean, SEO-sound sites on our stack | React/Next.js + Tailwind; understands static export, semantic HTML and Core Web Vitals; test-submits their own forms without being told | Reaches for heavy libraries by default; "SEO is marketing's job"; no opinion on page speed |
| Production manager | Every project has a stage, an owner and a date, always | Ruthless about checklists and dates; writes clear client emails; comfortable saying "that's out of scope" kindly | Conflict-avoidant (scope creep waves through); keeps status in their head instead of the tracker |
| Marketer / SMM | Grow client (and our) audiences with content that converts | Can show content they made that performed; writes hooks; knows the numbers table on the Marketing page; designs or briefs to our taste rules | Reports likes as results; buys followers "to start momentum"; posts the same thing on every platform |
The hiring process (five steps, no committee loops)
Screen (15 min call)
Can they hold a conversation, do they meet the must-haves, what do they actually want? Kill fast and kindly if the answer is no.
Portfolio / track-record review
Work, not words. Sellers: numbers and a story of a deal saved. Designers/devs: real deliverables plus WHY. Marketers: content plus its results.
Paid trial task (small, real, ours)
2 to 4 hours, paid, representative: seller roleplays two objections; designer does a flyer or homepage section in a given vibe; dev builds one section to our standards; marketer drafts a week's calendar + 2 posts. Judged against the KB standards they were given.
Deep interview (60 min)
Values probes + working-style specifics using the kit below. Include whoever they'd report to.
Offer + 30-day mutual trial
Clear expectations in writing (see Performance), a named buddy, and an honest "either side can call it at day 30" clause. It protects both sides and lowers offer anxiety.
Rules that keep hiring honest
Trial tasks are always paid and never used commercially unless hired and agreed. References actually get called (ask: "would you rehire them?"). We never poach from clients. And we hire slow, fire fast-but-fair: a mis-hire kept too long costs morale, clients, and the person's own time.
Interview kit (questions that reveal, not rehearse)
For everyone
- "Walk me through something you shipped that you're proud of. What part did YOU do?" (Listen for I vs we precision.)
- "Tell me about a time you missed a deadline or shipped something broken. What happened next?" (Honesty check; everyone has one. 'Never happened' is the wrong answer.)
- "Explain [their own recent work] like I'm a plumber with no website." (Plain-language test.)
- "What's something you changed your mind about professionally in the last year?" (Learning reflex.)
Role-specific probes
- Seller: live roleplay: "I'm a landscaper, my nephew builds sites for free. Go." Then: "Sell me our $99 care plan at delivery day." Judge structure (acknowledge → reframe → proof → ask), not slickness.
- Designer: show them a mediocre local-business site: "Critique it, then tell me the ONE change with the most impact." Taste + prioritization in one question.
- Developer: "A client's site loads in 4 seconds. Walk me through how you'd find and fix why." Then: "What breaks when a form has no backend?" (Yes, that is on our own audit; it's a great tell.)
- PM: "A client demands a feature mid-build and swears the seller promised it. The seller says no. Walk me through your next 24 hours."
- Marketer: "Here's a plumber with $300/month total budget. Where does it go and why?" (Right answer weighs Google/LSA + reviews over Instagram aesthetics.)
Team onboarding (first two weeks)
- Day 1: accounts and access (email, drive, trackers), tour of F:\projects structure, the Design Library, and the Starter Kit. Read: Start Here, Foundations, their discipline page, and the Production standards.
- Day 2: study the brand: llamamakers.com with the vibe switcher, brand guidelines, the characters, the no-emoji and anti-AI-tell rules. Quiz over coffee: the five must-know facts.
- Day 3–5: shadow their role: seller listens to calls / dev pairs on a build stage / designer recreates one section per vibe as an exercise.
- Week 2: first real, small, owned deliverable, reviewed against the KB checklist by their buddy before anything reaches a client.
- Day 14: two-way check-in with the co-founders: what's confusing, what's missing from this KB (they update it: fresh eyes find the gaps), and whether day-30 is on track.
Performance, comp & parting ways
- Expectations are the KB. Every role's bar is written here (sales targets in KPIs, production quality in the QA gate, SLAs in Management). Reviews compare against written standards, not vibes.
- Cadence: the day-30 trial review, then a monthly 1:1 (15 minutes: wins, blockers, one improvement), then a light quarterly review. No annual-review theater.
- Comp shape: sellers = base + commission per closed build and per attached subscription (attach rate is where the business lives, pay for it). Production/design/marketing = salary or per-project rate + quality bonus for zero-QA-escape months. Exact numbers are set by the co-founders per hire; this section documents the shape, not the figures.
- When it isn't working: one honest written warning with specifics and a 2-week window, real help to fix it, then a clean, respectful exit if unchanged. Access revoked same day, owed work paid in full, no ghosting people we hired.
- Knowledge never walks out: everything a leaver knows should already be in this KB, the trackers, and the project folders. If a departure would hurt, the documentation was late; fix that this week, not at resignation.