When you’re hiring, it’s tempting to focus on the skills someone already has. Can they write? Do they know the software you use? Have they worked in your industry before?
Those things matter. But here’s what matters more: can they solve problems?
Because the reality is that you can teach someone your processes. You can educate them about your clients. You can give them resources to develop new skills. AI tools can even make them better writers in ways that weren’t possible five years ago.
But teaching someone to be a problem-solver? That’s much more difficult.
This week I want to talk about why problem-solving ability should be at the top of your hiring criteria, along with how to evaluate it during the interview process.
But first let’s look at what Jen has rounded up for us this week.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Latest from SAGA
CURIOSITY IS NO LONGER A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE. It’s the baseline requirement for survival. Agency owners who treat “that’s how we’ve always done it” as a reasonable answer aren’t making a neutral choice. They’re choosing decline. I wrote about why curiosity has become an existential requirement for agency owners, and what it actually looks like as a leadership discipline rather than a personality trait.
Jen’s Weekly Roundup
This week’s reading list provides the same insight from different angles: having the right pieces doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to put them together. Whether it’s marketing channels that don’t integrate, skills without judgment, or data without strategy, agencies are discovering that the gap isn’t knowledge—it’s the ability to connect what they already know and form a coherent picture.
WHAT CAUGHT OUR EYE THIS WEEK:
INTEGRATION IS THE HARD PART — Spin Sucks explains why the PESO Model falls apart without integration. Having paid, earned, shared, and owned tactics is meaningless if they don’t work together toward a common objective. The Innovative Agency reinforces this with Zino Rost van Tonningen on turning data into loyalty—because collecting data and actually using it to build relationships are completely different things. The message: your tools only matter if you know how to connect them.
JUDGMENT BEATS SKILLS — PR Daily explores 4 ways to amplify creativity with AI, but the emphasis is on “amplify”—AI makes good judgment better and bad judgment faster. Spin Sucks nails the real problem: MarComm doesn’t have a skills gap, it has a judgment gap. You can teach someone to use AI, build a media list, or write a press release. You can’t easily teach them when to do those things, why, or what the effects will be.
THE NEW BUSINESS MYSTERY SOLVED — RSW/US identifies one big reason why you’re not driving more new business—and spoiler, it’s not that you need better pitch decks. The Digital Agency Growth Podcast features Chris Rose on how to win big agency deals without the RFP, offering a roadmap for getting in before the formal process starts. And you probably know how we feel about RFPs. Both pieces offer the same insight: if you’re waiting for opportunities to come to you fully formed, you’ve already lost.
NAVIGATING TRANSITIONS AND DYSFUNCTION — David C. Baker at Punctuation walks through what happens when a new CMO takes over at a client—one of the most vulnerable moments in agency-client relationships. For Immediate Release tackles the messier side of workplace dynamics with when your boss throws you under the bus, offering guidance for handling professional betrayal without burning down your career. Different contexts, same challenge: how to navigate power shifts without losing your footing.
ALSO WORTH YOUR TIME — PR Week examines how brands are earning Gen Z’s trust and dollars through AI—not by replacing human connection, but by using technology to enable more authentic engagement at scale. It’s a case study in integration: AI as enabler, not replacement.
THE BOTTOM LINE — The agencies winning right now aren’t the ones with the most tactics, the fanciest tools, or the longest service menus. They’re the ones with the judgment to know which pieces to use, when to use them, and how to make them work together. AI may be becoming more skilled, but the human abilities of integration and judgment give you the competitive advantage.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
Hire for problem-solving ability first
When you’re evaluating job candidates, it’s natural to focus on the skills they already have. Can they write a solid press release? Do they know how to use your project management software? Have they worked with clients in your industry?
Skills matter. But if you make them your primary hiring requirement, you’re focusing on the wrong thing.
Because the reality is that most skills can be taught. Problem-solving ability? That’s almost impossible for most agencies to teach new hires.
What you can teach
You can show new hires your processes. How you onboard clients. How you manage projects. How you communicate internally. These are learnable systems that anyone with basic competence can master given enough time and repetition.
You can educate them about your clients. Their industries, their goals, their quirks, what makes them happy and what sets them off. This is just information transfer. It takes time, but it’s straightforward.
You can give them resources to develop technical skills. Want someone to learn SEO? There are courses. Need them to understand media monitoring platforms? The vendors will train them. Looking for better writing? Send them to workshops or give them books or pair them with a strong editor.
And here’s the thing that’s changed dramatically in just the past few years: AI tools can now help people develop skills that used to take years to build.
Someone who’s a mediocre writer can use AI to help them structure better arguments, tighten their prose, and catch mistakes they’d never spot on their own. Someone who struggles with data analysis can use AI to help them identify patterns and draw insights. These tools don’t replace skill, but they dramatically lower the bar for acceptable performance.
That’s good news if you’re hiring. It means the technical skills you’re looking for are more accessible than ever. The playing field has leveled in ways that make your job easier.
But it also means those skills are less of a differentiator.
What you can’t teach
Problem-solving is different. You can help someone get marginally better at it over time. You can give them frameworks. You can model good thinking. But if someone doesn’t naturally look at a challenge and start reasoning through possible solutions, you’re not going to fix that in six months or a year.
You want people who can look at a problem and figure out a path forward. It doesn’t always need to be the perfect solution. But they need to know where to begin. They need to be able to break down complex challenges into manageable pieces. They need to be comfortable with ambiguity.
When a client comes to them with something unexpected, you want someone who thinks “let me figure this out” instead of “I need to ask my boss what to do.”
When a project hits a snag, you want someone who starts exploring options instead of just reporting the problem and waiting for instructions.
When faced with something they’ve never done before, you want someone who can reason through it based on principles instead of freezing up because they don’t have a template.
This isn’t about experience. Junior people can be excellent problem-solvers. Senior people can be terrible at it. It’s about how someone’s brain works and how they approach challenges.
I always tell people who work for me that I don’t care if they bring me bad news as long as they bring a proposed solution along with it. You can only do that if you are a problem-solver.
How to evaluate problem-solving during hiring
The interview process is where you figure this out. Don’t just ask about their background or what skills they have. Ask them to walk you through how they’ve confronted challenges in the past.
“Tell me about a time when you had to do something you’d never done before. How did you figure it out?”
“Walk me through a project that didn’t go as planned. What did you do when you realized things were off track?”
“Describe a situation where you had incomplete information but needed to make a decision. How did you approach it?”
Pay attention to how they answer. Do they talk about the process they went through? Do they explain their reasoning? Can they articulate what they considered and why they chose one path over another?
Or do they just describe what happened without showing you how they thought about it?
The best problem-solvers will naturally walk you through their thinking. They’ll explain not just what they did, but why. They’ll acknowledge what they didn’t know and how they worked around it. They’ll show you that they can reason through options even when the path isn’t obvious.
You can also give them a hypothetical scenario during the interview. Not a brain teaser or wacky puzzle like those that became popular in Silicon Valley job interviews but something relevant to the actual work they’d be doing. Then watch how they approach it.
You’re not looking for the “right” answer. You’re looking to understand how they think. Perhaps most important: do they ask clarifying questions? Do they break the problem down into pieces? Do they start exploring options? Or do they just stare at you waiting for more direction?
Why this matters even more now
AI has made it easier than ever to cover for skill gaps. Someone who’s weak at writing can produce acceptable work with AI assistance. Someone who struggles with research can use AI to accelerate their learning.
But AI doesn’t solve for poor problem-solving. In fact, it makes problem-solving ability more important, not less.
Tools are only as good as the person using them. A problem-solver will figure out how to use the tools effectively to amplify their capabilities. Someone who can’t think through challenges will just produce AI-generated nonsense faster.
When you’re hiring, focus on finding people who can solve problems. Then teach them everything else. That’s the formula for building a team that can actually handle the work your clients need—not just check boxes on a job description.
