Hiring delivery engineers with a scorecard, not a feeling
Most bad hires are decided in the first ten minutes of an interview, by a feeling. A scorecard slows that down. It says, before any candidate is met, what the role must achieve, which skills prove it and how each will be tested. Everyone gets the same questions, and the decision is made on written evidence.
Before opening the role: is it a hire at all?
When you own a practice P&L, a new hire is a fixed cost from their first day and billable only after onboarding. So the first question is whether the demand is real and lasting. I look at the pipeline, the bench and the three-month forecast. Sometimes the right answer is to move someone between accounts, or to decline work that would need a hire we cannot keep busy.
Write the scorecard first
A scorecard fits on one page and has three parts.
- Outcomes: what this person must achieve in the first six months, in plain terms. For a senior Adobe Commerce developer, for example: own a brand storefront's releases with no rollback in the quarter.
- Competencies: four to six skills that predict those outcomes, such as debugging under pressure, estimation accuracy or client communication.
- Evidence: how each competency will be tested, and by whom.
Same questions, written feedback
Every candidate for a role gets the same core questions, and every interviewer writes their feedback against the scorecard before talking to anyone else. This removes most of the noise from confident talkers and nervous experts. It also makes the debrief short, because people argue about evidence rather than impressions.
For delivery roles I always include one practical exercise tied to real work: reviewing a messy statement of work for missing assumptions, estimating a small feature and explaining the risks, or walking through how they would handle a production incident at 11 pm.
Signals I weigh heavily
- They talk about what went wrong on past projects and what they changed afterwards.
- They ask about the client, not only the technology.
- Their estimates come with assumptions, not just a number.
- They can explain a technical decision to a non-technical person in two sentences.
The first 30 days decide the hire
A good hiring process ends with a plan, not an offer letter. The scorecard's outcomes become the first 30, 60 and 90 day goals, with a named buddy on the team and one early piece of work that can be delivered and seen. People who get a clear first win settle faster and become billable sooner, which is good for them and for the practice.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a hiring scorecard?
- A one-page definition of what a role must achieve, the competencies that predict success and how each will be tested. Interviewers score candidates against it in writing before discussing them.
- How do you interview a project or delivery manager?
- Use structured questions about past projects that went wrong, plus a practical exercise such as reviewing a statement of work for missing assumptions or planning a response to a production incident, scored against a written scorecard.
- How do you decide whether to hire or reallocate?
- Check the sales pipeline, the current bench and a three-month demand forecast. Hire when demand is sustained; otherwise move people between accounts or decline work that would need an unsustainable hire.
If you are building or fixing a delivery organisation and want someone who has run one as a business, book 20 minutes.
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