The Product
Two assessments. One consistent standard.
The Hire Lens isn’t another personality test. It’s a restaurant-management skills assessment built by an operator to show you what a résumé and interview can’t.
The Hire Lens evaluates GM and District Manager candidates using the work restaurant leaders actually perform, not personality questions or generic management trivia. Candidates analyze P&Ls, food-cost reports, labor reports, staffing situations, compliance issues, leadership problems, and operational scenarios.
Every candidate faces the same standards. Every written assessment is scored against a defined answer key or rubric, and every structured interview uses the same scoring framework, giving hiring teams comparable evidence from one candidate to the next.
General Manager Assessment
165 points · 60 minutes
- P&L Interpretation25
- Food Cost: Report Based35
- Labor Cost: Report Based35
- Customer Relations & Conflict Resolution20
- Food Safety & Compliance25
- Hiring, Training & Development25
District Manager Assessment
105 points · 75 minutes
- District P&L Portfolio Analysis20
- GM Performance Management20
- Talent Pipeline & Development12
- Cross-Unit Crisis Triage20
- Financial Planning & Forecasting15
- Operational Standards & Compliance13
- Leadership & Situational Judgment5
Trusted by leading QSR operators
A Defined Scoring Standard
The GM written assessment is fully auto-graded by the same scoring engine for every candidate -- there is no evaluator variance: two hiring managers reviewing the same GM submission see the identical total, section breakdown, and rating. The DM written assessment auto-grades its situational-judgment section and routes its written-response sections to a trained evaluator at your organization, scoring against a defined rubric with every evaluator score logged to an audit trail.
Structured, Not Freeform
The interview that follows is scored, not just conducted. A hiring manager still runs the conversation, but rates it against a defined rubric instead of forming an unstructured impression: GM interviews are scored across all four STAR dimensions, DM interviews on the Action dimension only.
How It Works
Two stages. Two kinds of evidence.
The written assessment helps determine what should happen next and identifies what requires deeper investigation during the interview. A combined score, written plus interview, gives you a combined view before you decide — these are two different numbers answering two different questions, not the same band applied twice.
Written Assessment Result
Top-tier financial and operational judgment on paper — strong evidence for the interview stage.
Solid written competency.
Real gaps on paper. Weigh carefully against what the interview might clarify.
Below recommended competency threshold. Review carefully before the interview stage.
Final Candidate Rating
Top-tier on paper and in the room.
Solid evidence across both stages.
Real gaps remain after the interview. Weigh carefully.
Below recommended competency threshold. Review carefully before extending an offer.
Written Assessment Result
Top-tier financial and operational judgment on paper — strong evidence for the interview stage.
Solid written competency.
Real gaps on paper. Weigh carefully against what the interview might clarify.
Below recommended competency threshold. Review carefully before the interview stage.
Final Candidate Rating
Top-tier on paper and in the room.
Solid evidence across both stages.
Real gaps remain after the interview. Weigh carefully.
Below recommended competency threshold. Review carefully before extending an offer.
The STAR Interview
Structured Interview
The STAR Interview
Six structured behavioral questions require candidates to demonstrate how they have actually handled real restaurant-management situations, walked through the same S/T/A/R framework shown below. GM interviews are scored across all four dimensions individually; DM interviews are scored with a single Action score per question.
A great interview can’t hide weak operating skills. And a nervous interview shouldn’t erase demonstrated competency. The Hire Lens measures both, and the written score and the interview score combine into one final band, so neither can fully compensate for a real gap in the other.
Action is what carries the score: what the candidate says they actually did matters more than how they frame the situation or the outcome — for GM it’s the heaviest-weighted of the four dimensions, and for DM it’s the entire score.
Situation
Did the candidate correctly identify the actual problem in the scenario?
Task
Did they correctly identify what they were responsible for resolving?
Action
What they actually did, weighted heaviest of the four dimensions.
Result
Did the candidate describe a specific, measurable result, not just a general sense that things worked out?
General Manager Assessment
Six sections, weighted toward the report-based analysis a GM does every week.
P&L Interpretation
25 ptsRead a period-end P&L summary, identify the root cause of profit decline, and determine the correct corrective lever.
Food Cost: Report Based
35 ptsAnalyze a weekly item variance report, prioritize actions by dollar impact, and interpret the actual-vs-theoretical gap.
Labor Cost: Report Based
35 ptsRead a labor pacing report, manage overtime exposure, and interpret daily variance patterns.
Customer Relations & Conflict Resolution
20 ptsNavigate guest complaints, crew conflict, online reviews, and direct insubordination — with correct sequencing and communication.
Food Safety & Compliance
25 ptsTemperature standards, contamination prevention, illness exclusion, receiving protocols, and allergen management.
Hiring, Training & Development
25 ptsEvaluate candidates using behavioral evidence, diagnose performance problems correctly, and read turnover patterns.
District Manager Assessment
Seven sections covering portfolio-level judgment: managing multiple GMs and units at once, not running a single restaurant.
District P&L Portfolio Analysis
20 ptsRead a 5-unit district dashboard, identify which units require priority attention, and articulate the reasoning behind that ranking.
GM Performance Management
20 ptsDiagnose whether a GM performance problem is a capability gap or a unit circumstance problem, and build a coaching conversation that develops the GM.
Talent Pipeline & Development
12 ptsMaintain a named pipeline of internal GM candidates, respond to a GM vacancy, and build a permanent system that prevents vacancy-readiness failures.
Cross-Unit Crisis Triage
20 ptsCommit to a priority ranking across three simultaneous multi-unit crises, name specific delegation decisions, and articulate the risk of the lowest-priority choice.
Financial Planning & Forecasting
15 ptsRead a period-over-period district trend table and allocate DM visit days proportional to financial risk.
Operational Standards & Compliance
13 ptsDiagnose whether a multi-unit food safety failure pattern is systemic or unit-specific, and manage a high performer who undercuts brand standards.
Leadership & Situational Judgment
5 ptsFour scenarios test DM leadership judgment: GM accountability, responding to employee concerns, decisions made at a distance, and balancing financial results against people and culture.
This is what you actually see when you score a candidate.
What You Get
This is what you actually see when you score a candidate.
A scored, section-by-section report with a specific risk and a specific follow-up question, built from the actual gap in the candidate’s answers.
Candidate understands labor concepts correctly but struggled to apply them under staffing variance — the written answers showed the right formula and the wrong read on when to use it.
Ask about a specific same-day staffing decision made under a forecast variance: what they changed, when, and what they were watching to know it was working.
Illustrative sample report. Not a real candidate.
Trust The Methodology
How Scoring Works
Why 93 / 77 / 55? Where do these thresholds come from?+
These thresholds are based on 25+ years of QSR operator experience, not an external, statistically validated study. They were not derived by running thousands of candidates through the assessment and regressing scores against hiring outcomes.
They come from three things an operator weighs when grading real candidates: how difficult a given question actually is to get right, how much operational damage a wrong answer on that topic causes in a real restaurant, and a direct calibration against the kind of answer a genuinely hire-ready GM or DM gives versus one who still needs development. Food cost and labor sections, for example, carry more total points than customer relations, because a miss there compounds on the P&L every week it goes uncaught.
Limitation: these are one experienced operator’s calibrated judgment, not a peer-reviewed instrument, and we don’t claim otherwise. If your own hiring bar sits in a different place, you can set custom thresholds for your organization in account settings rather than use ours. The Hire Lens is built to inform a hiring decision, not replace the judgment of the person making it.
Can candidates cheat?
A straight answer on what integrity measures exist today, and which ones don’t yet.
Is it timed?
Yes. A countdown timer starts when the candidate clicks Begin and auto-submits whatever is answered when it hits zero -- it does not pause, even if the candidate closes the tab. An evaluator can grant extra time (1.5x or 2x) as an ADA accommodation when creating the candidate’s link; it cannot be requested or granted mid-assessment.
Is question order randomized?
Not yet. Every candidate currently sees questions in the same fixed order. Per-candidate randomization is on the roadmap, not live today.
Is copy-paste blocked?
No. A candidate can paste text into an answer field. We rely on the questions themselves, built around a specific P&L, report, or scenario, being hard to answer well from a pasted definition.
Does the employer see completion time?
Yes. Time spent is shown on every result, so a 9-minute written assessment is visible alongside the score, not hidden.
Are the questions searchable on Google?
The questions are built from real P&Ls, variance reports, and staffing scenarios specific to this assessment, not generic management trivia, so there is no single page to search for the answer. That is a design choice, not a guarantee against every possible shortcut.
Are question versions rotated across candidates?
Partially. Additional DM assessment forms are already built. Automatic rotation so no two candidates from the same employer necessarily see the identical form is planned, not yet turned on.
See it against your own hiring bar.
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