From Defeat to Dream Team: 12-Year Hiring Struggle Solved

Emma Dewey had been running BabyEm, a training agency with a strong brand in their niche, for 12 years when she reached her breaking point. Despite her experience and industry reputation, she couldn't solve what should have been a straightforward problem: hiring people who actually fit.

The pattern had become painfully familiar. She'd try a new approach—Fiverr one time, recent graduates another, expensive consultants the next. People would interview well, claim they had the skills and shared the values, and get hired. Within weeks or months, the truth would emerge: they couldn't actually do what they'd promised, or they fundamentally didn't align with the culture. The cycle would repeat. For two years, this kept happening. The business stalled, surviving only because of the strong brand they'd built. Emma stopped trying to grow and focused on just getting through each day.

"I wanted to quit," Emma says plainly. "I took it personally—after two years of not being able to hire, I thought it was me. I was frustrated and defeated." She'd watch other organizations with clear roles, shared values, and teams that genuinely worked well together, wondering why she couldn't create that for herself. The answer seemed to elude her: she didn't have the know-how for writing proper job specs, designing meaningful assessment tasks, or building a systematic hiring process that actually worked.

Then came the discovery process that changed everything. When SuperHired began working with Emma, they didn't start by posting a job or searching LinkedIn. They started with questions—30 to 40 detailed, probing questions that Emma had never been asked before. About her culture. About her values. About how she felt about the business and where it was headed. About the team dynamics and what made people succeed or fail in her organization.

"You didn't just ask a few questions and then disappear to find people online," Emma recalls. "You wanted to understand me, the organization, where we were at. The questionnaire took a long time, but it showed how skilled you were in HR—not just recruitment. You asked questions no one ever had—about culture, values, how I felt about the business. It blew me away."

That deep understanding translated into something Emma had never experienced: job specifications that candidates themselves praised. "The candidates kept saying, 'Hats off to Ana and Joshua—they've put together the most incredible job spec,'" Emma shares. "They were clear on their role, expectations, and the organization. I'd ask if they had questions, and they'd say no because everything was clear. For the first time, everyone I interviewed was the right level and aligned. It felt like I could've hired any of them—it was just about finding the perfect one."

The contrast with traditional recruiting was stark. SuperHired actually headhunted—something Emma had been skeptical about. "When you said you 'headhunt,' not just search job boards, I was skeptical—but you actually did it," she says. "The people you found matched everything perfectly." The candidates came prepared with deep assimilation tasks completed, enabling conversations at an entirely different level than the surface-level interviews she'd endured for years.

Yelena, the Operations Manager, was the first or second candidate Emma interviewed. "I was blown away by her skills and cultural fit," Emma says. "We talked a lot about values. She'd done so much prep through the assimilation tasks, so the conversation was at another level." The confidence Emma felt was entirely new—and entirely justified. Yelena has exceeded every expectation. She brought the team together, sorted out systems that had been languishing, and immediately took responsibilities off Emma's plate. She runs the L10 meetings with articulation and drive. "She's going to change the organization," Emma says with confidence.

When the first round of searching for a Marketing Lead didn't produce the right fit, Emma's confidence didn't waver. "I never felt pushed into anything," she explains. "Ana was unbelievably responsive—we went back and forth many times. I knew she had my back. Even when the first round didn't work out, I trusted the process." That trust was rewarded: the second round produced Diego, who scored mostly fives on the assessment tasks and emerged as the clear frontrunner.

The speed of the entire process shocked Emma. "I couldn't believe how quickly you brought back great candidates," she says. "Faster than any other service, even though you were headhunting. It felt like working with people who genuinely cared about helping me succeed, not just a recruitment agency."

For the first time in 12 years, Emma has seen what great hiring actually looks like. "I now know that getting great candidates is totally doable if you follow the right process," she reflects. "It starts with doing the deep work—really getting to know the business, the culture, the mission. When you do that, everything else flows. The candidates are right, the conversations are meaningful, and it's miles away from traditional recruiting."

Most importantly, Emma's relationship with her own business has transformed. "I finally feel excited about the future of my business," she says, "and that hasn't happened in a very long time."

‍