Adapted from a real OPS Staffing article originally posted by Mitchell Riley (Oct 2026).
Screen estimators for live scoping experience in Xactimate, photo and documentation discipline, carrier and program-work familiarity, and negotiation temperament. Screen project managers for field credibility, crew leadership under surge conditions, customer communication in hard moments, and job-cost awareness — with IICRC credentials as the floor, not the ceiling.
An estimator who cannot scope will lose the margin before the crew ever pulls up. A project manager who cannot lead will lose the crew, and then the client, while the job is still open. Those two seats are where a restoration company feels a bad hire first. The resume looked right. The file did not.
Estimating is the job before the job. A loose scope, a missed room, a price that cannot survive the carrier’s review: the loss is already in the file. No amount of hustle on site puts that margin back without a fight. Project management is the job during the job. A weak PM does not just miss a schedule. The techs stop believing the plan, the homeowner stops believing the company, and your better people start taking calls from somewhere calmer.
That is why these seats deserve a harder screen than a pleasant interview. The cost is operational. You see it in the scope, in the crew, and in the relationship with the adjuster. You do not need a study to recognize it after you have lived through one.
Coursework is not the experience. The valuable background is live scoping: files they wrote, carriers they had to defend them to, and jobs they had to go back and fix when the scope was wrong.
Xactimate proficiency means the software and the judgment. Ask which version they work in on real files, not which class they sat through. Then have them walk a scope. You are listening for line-item discipline: what they include, what they refuse to pad, and whether they can explain a number without getting defensive. Someone who can click through a sketch and someone who can build a file an adjuster will accept are not the same person.
Photo and documentation habits. The estimators who hold up under review can tell you how they document a room, what they photograph before anything is moved, and how they tie the photos to the line items. If documentation is something “the techs handle,” you are about to inherit arguments you will lose.
Carrier and program-work familiarity. Program work, TPA workflows, and carrier expectations are not trivia. An estimator who has only ever written for one friendly local adjuster will feel the difference the first time a program desk rejects the file. Ask which programs they have written for and what those desks usually fight them on. Specific answers are the experience. Vague answers are a tour.
Negotiation temperament. Estimating is a conversation with someone whose job is to pay the right number, not your number. You want someone who can hold a line without turning the call into a contest. Hot tempers and people-pleasers both give margin away, just on different days.
Field credibility comes first. The PM has run work, not only attended meetings about work. Crews can tell the difference in a morning. If the person has never pulled a meter, set a room, or stood in a wet structure and made the next call, the title will not carry them. Management experience from outside restoration can transfer. It does not replace time on the work.
Crew leadership under surge conditions is the second screen. A calm book of five jobs is not the job. Ask about a week when the volume jumped: who they put where, what they stopped promising, and how they kept the people doing the work from quitting on them. You are listening for priorities, not hero stories.
Customer communication in a bad moment matters as much as production. Homeowners are scared, angry, or both. The PM is often the company, as far as that family is concerned. Have them describe a conversation that went poorly and what they did next. People who have done this can tell it plainly. People who have not will give you a slogan.
Job-cost awareness keeps a good producer from becoming an expensive one. A PM who can rally a crew and cannot tell you whether the job is making money will grow your top line and hurt the file. Ask how they watch labor and materials against the scope, and what they do when the job is slipping. You want a specific habit, not “I stay on top of it.”
Treat IICRC credentials as a floor, not a ceiling. A water restoration technician credential, or the equivalent for the work you do, tells you they have a shared language with the crew. It does not tell you they can run the job. The better candidates have the credential and a body of work past it: larger losses, harder customers, people they have trained. If the certificate is the whole answer, keep looking.
In our placements, keywords are the filter we do not trust. “Xactimate” on a resume is a starting flag. It is not evidence. The screen that predicts the first 90 days is practical.
For estimators, that is a sample scope review. Give them a real set of photos and notes, with the identifying details stripped, and have them talk through how they would build the file. You will learn more in that half hour than in a list of software versions. Watch whether they ask about the carrier, the category of water, and what was already demoed. Those questions are the job.
For project managers, scenario questions beat strengths-and-weaknesses. The dry log is behind, the homeowner wants a different answer than the one you can give, and a tech just called out. What do they do in the next two hours, and what do they not promise? The operators sequence the work. The interviewees perform concern.
What shows up in the first 90 days, when the screen was honest, is usually this: the estimator’s files need a normal review, not a rescue, and the PM’s crew knows who is in charge by the second week. When the screen was a conversation about culture fit, the rescue work starts in month one and the search starts again before the quarter is over.
The best interviewee is often not the best operator. Restoration rewards people who are clear in a wet room and plain with an adjuster. Those people can be average in a conference room. The reverse is common too: polished, warm, quick with a story, and light on the file.
Do not hire the performance. Hire the person who can show you the work. If you want that screen run by people who do it on restoration searches every week, start with OPS Staffing’s restoration recruiting. We place estimators and project managers into direct-hire roles.
Call (888) 482-6019 and tell us which seat is open. The first question we will ask is what the last person in it could not do.