The other day, a friend of mine was asking me for advice on hiring people for his small, but fast-growing business. While I’m no recruiting machine, I have hired a number of people in my day.

What have I learned?

1. Astute (but ultimately poor) candidates can put on a good show in an interview.
2. Professional/educational experience tells no more than 50 percent of the candidate’s story.
3. Even lackluster candidates can produce positive recommendations.

So how do you cut through the noise? Here are four helpful techniques that will help reinforce or debunk the feelings you have towards a candidate.

1. Request an audition

Hiring a sales rep? Get them to sell something to you. Hiring a software developer? Have them solve a logic problem. Hiring a creative designer? Get them to go through a consultation with you. The key is, go beyond their résumé and have them put their experience into practice for you to see firsthand.

One great technique I use to hire sales reps is to have them deliver a 15-minute presentation to me and a few others from my team. I give them the topic in advance, which includes a high-level case study that sets the context. I make sure the topic is relevant to our business and their potential role. I also make sure all the content needed to build their case can be readily found online.

Seeing how the candidates prepare for the task, how poised and confident they are during the exercise, and how they handle themselves after being asked tough questions from the audience speaks volumes about their potential and how quickly they would ramp up in our business.

I am constantly surprised (yet thankful) to see candidates who had been otherwise stellar until this point completely blow the audition step (which saved me much grief down the road).

2. Coach them through your corporate pitch

When I interview candidates, coachability is one of the most important attributes I look for. Coachability speaks to the candidate’s ability to listen (super-important for sales reps), adapt, and externalize knowledge quickly!

To test for this attribute, I use a simple technique. I ask the candidate to imagine that they just got out of the interview with me and a friend calls and says, “Hey, I heard you just had an interview with [company name]…what do they do?” I then ask how they would respond. The candidate will usually try to stumble through your corporate pitch, with some doing a better job than others.

After they’re finished, I thank them and casually say, “That wasn’t bad…let me tell you how I give the pitch.” I then proceed to deliver a well-practiced 30-second pitch and ask the candidate if my narrative made sense. After the innevitable smiling, nodding, and agreement, I ask the candidate to try again; “OK, so imagine the same friend calls and asks you what [company name] does…what would you say now?”

Mark my words: you will be able to immediately tell whether or not the candidate was listening and how skilled they are at being coached and synthesizing newly acquired knowledge!

3. Get stuck at the airport

One of the most important aspects to consider when hiring a candidate is cultural fit. Can you see this person being “one of you”? The reality is, most of us spend more time with the people we work with than we do with our actual families, making the prospect of a working relationship with this candidate kind of like a short-term marriage. That means that in addition to a candidate being able to deliver the professional goods, you need to generally “like” being around them. Can you see yourself working with this person? What about the other people on your team?

In addition to having multiple team members meet the candidate, a great litmus test is asking yourself this question: How would you feel if you were stuck for 10 hours with this person at Chicago O’Hare, in the middle of a snowstorm?

If most of the interviewers are cool with this prospect, you may have a good cultural fit.

4. “Put a gun to your head”

After spending time with a candidate and having your colleagues do the same, you’ll likely circle back as a group to discuss your thoughts. This is where the typical interview process can sometimes break down and make it difficult for the hiring manager to make a decision.

“Well, I don’t know…they have a lot of experience in [A,B, &C ] and I like the fact that they did [X, Y, & Z] really well, but one thing that still bothers me is….yada yada yada…”

Fail!

Want to know how to decide? Get everyone who interviewed the candidate together and first ask them this:

“Gun to your head…no explanations! I only want to hear ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Would you hire this person?”

If they’re a salesperson, would you trust your top prospect to them? Yes or no.
If they’re a developer, would you trust your biggest project to them? Yes or no.

You’d be amazed at the ease with which you can reconcile complex thoughts when you have a virtual gun pointed at your head and you are forced to give a binary answer! Explanations can then follow but by then everyone’s gut (and most likely correct) reaction has been surfaced.

Professional and educational experience is important when considering a candidate, but they don’t always give you the complete picture. Follow these three techniques and I guarantee by the end of the interview process you’ll be much more confident in the decision you make!

As we’ve mentioned in an earlier post – scaling your sales team is a big responsibility as a Stretch VP of Sales. Recruiting, hiring and on-boarding Managers, Account Executives, SDRs, Sales Engineers and even Sales Enablement is a full time gig – especially as a Stretch VP, since you likely don’t have many luxuries that assist others in this process.

 

In doing so, I often find myself in interviews that frankly have wasted my time and left me begging for more. I’m amazed at how many interviews I walk away from either, surprised, disappointed, frustrated and confused. So much potential, but even fairly impressive candidates on paper are seemingly not willing to do simple things required to set themselves apart. If they can’t sell me in the first interview, how are they going to sell our much more finicky and demanding prospects?

 

After talking with a few other SaaS Sales leaders going through this same struggle, we collectively came up with the top things potential candidates do (or don’t) in that first interview, which in turn sabotages themselves from moving forward in the process.

 

Note: For the most part- this post doesn’t really (or shouldn’t) apply to more senior sales hires. But is directed to those looking to make a move, and HOPEFULLY those just getting started in the wonderful world of selling SaaS.

 

So…Ladies and Gentlemen. You have your first interview. Likely a phone/web screening interview. Don’t screw it up.

Top 8 Ways to Sabotage Your Sales Interview:

1. Being Late. (uh…table stakes right?) Even a first time phone conversation doesn’t mean you can show up last minute. Make sure you give yourself enough time to not be rushed. You may need to download the Zoom app. Make sure you have adequate cell service.
2. Noisy or distracted environment. This is brutal. Make sure you have a QUIET place to have a conversation. *Video Conferencing Tip: Please use a laptop and not your cell phone. This is not Instagram, Snap or Marco Polo. And…get dressed! My recommendation is to dress like you want the job instead of what the company dress code is (especially in Tech). I’ve had video interviews with people in T-shirts, Shorts, Walking along the street etc. Don’t do this.
3. No Prior Research. No knowledge of the company you are interviewing with is an immediate deal killer. Don’t ask me what we do. You have Google, LinkedIn and Twitter. Use them. Find out as much as you can about our company, me, our customers, our product and what our value proposition is.
4. No Questions. If you are not asking probing questions about how we differentiate in the market, our potential hurdles, how you can make an impact – shows me you don’t really care about this job. I’m looking for someone who can guide conversations, engage the customer and is interesting to talk with. Show me that.
5. No case studies. Have enough real-world examples to fall back on for questions like: “Tell me about a recent deal you won and what you had to overcome to land it?” or “How has hard work and perseverance shaped your career so far?” Not answering questions with specific real-life examples makes me think you haven’t done what you say you have done.
6. No Passion. Even if it means lying to yourself, make me believe you want the job and will crush it. With your tone (or body language, eye contact etc.) sound INTERESTED in the job. Convince me after a short phone interview that you will be excited, motivated and hungry to deliver exactly what I’m looking for. I’ve passed over seemingly “more qualified” candidates for more passionate ones and its most always paid off.
7. Not asking for the job. Tell me you’d be a good fit, are excited (see previous bullet) at the opportunity and that I’d be making a mistake at hiring anyone else. Close me. At the very least, you need to discover what next steps in the interview process is and ensure you are part of them. Especially in sales, this is exactly what you’ll be doing when hired. If you can’t establish next steps or ask for the close for yourself, chances are you won’t be able to do this for our company either.
8. No Immediate Follow Up. In talking with others, it seems like a good rule of thumb is within 24-48 hours. I think that’s too long. What will it hurt to immediately (or within a couple hours at the latest) send a follow up note thanking me for my time. This also lets you recap our conversation along with how and where you can add your talents to the team. Don’t have my email? Should have asked for it before the call was over. But if not? Google it. Stalk me on LinkedIn. Or Guess by sending to all the standard aliases companies use. Just follow up. *Bonus deal killer- if spelling and grammar is an issue, that’s an issue.