Why a Hiring Process is Better Than Hiring People Just Like You

Hiring is both a short- and long-term game. To consistently win, you must look at the big picture and be willing to follow a systematic process.

There are three types of situations companies generally find themselves in:

• Hiring one or two salespeople to take your client base to the next stage

• Adding a select few people to an existing sales team to grow modestly

• Scaling big and wide as fast as possible for aggressive growth

No matter the scenario, you need a good hiring process and the reasoning is simple…

Most hiring sales managers were salespeople at one point. Naturally, there can be an attitude that sales is about likeability, connectivity, and confidence (which is it, but it’s not limited to this).

Far too often hiring managers can lose sight of the overall picture and fall into the trap of good charisma and the social aspect of interviewing. They then lean heavily on gut instincts and don’t implement a repeatable, scalable, and measurable process. And a lack of process can be a costly mistake…but it can be avoided.

You need a systematic hiring process that is designed to hone in on exactly what you are looking for and that allows people you’re interviewing to prove they are the right fit in more ways than just being charismatic.

Start with a strong candidate profile

While this is highly valuable and useful for your recruiting team, it’s super important that you know which key attributes to look for in top-performing candidates. Your candidate profile might look something like this:

• Key attributes (high self-drive, passionate, competitive)

• What they look for (strong leadership, lots of opportunity, personal growth, some creative freedom)

• What to caution (farmer vs hunter mentality, dull or over-bearing personality, don't ask enough questions or seem inquisitive)

Furthermore, the most overlooked sales skill is a sales EQ (aka. Emotional Intelligence). In short, they know themselves and how to handle pressure situations with different people. Sales reps with higher sales EQ tend to close deals faster with higher profit margins.

Words that describe this kind of person: team player, focused, accountable, confident but not arrogant.

Conduct standardized candidate IQ/ego drive testing prior to the interview

Use a standardized online test to dig deeper into a candidate’s personal drive, analytical thinking, or overall competency. And it can help guide the questions you ask during the interview.

I’m a big fan of the Caliper Profile which helps you find out which person is best suited for a given job based on their intrinsic motivation relative to the role responsibilities. I’ve also used Wonderlic which measures aptitudes, skills and personality traits and attitudes. While both are good tests, I’ve found the Caliper easier for sales managers to use for deeper questioning.

Create a comprehensive interview guide to stay focused

For the most part, anyone that works in sales is a social creature and loves to meet new people. The problem with that is that when we go into an interview we immediately either:

• Like the person and set up the questions to validate why we like them. It’s easy to think we are truly interviewing the person, but more likely we’re just making the interview easy.

• Don’t like the person or lack an immediate connection and so we set up questions to validate our doubts and concerns about them.

One way to overcome this problem is with a questioning and response tracking guide (interview guide). This guide will enable the hiring manager to choose appropriate questions by category and then score the candidates answers to each question.

The benefit of this process is two-fold: consistency across hiring managers and the ability to measure candidate scores over a period of time. 

Create scoring parameters within your interview guide

Gain quantitative feedback by scoring candidates during their interview. Keep it simple and objective by measuring drive, cultural fit, emotional intelligence, and business acumen on a simple scale (1 = bad and 5 = awesome). If a candidate doesn’t pan out after they are hired, take a look back at their scores and see if there’s any correlation.

It doesn’t take a ton of work or sophistication to create and implement a good hiring process. But it does take commitment and the right attitude to refine the process as time goes on so keep tabs on what you consistently score on and what you don't, then remove what you don't utilize after some time.

Implement sales skill testing as part of your process

Ask your candidates to do exactly what they are expected to do in the field: a cold call pitch or brief live presentation. They can pitch live in the meeting or via phone (just ask them to go in another room if their presentations are mainly web-based).

Be sure to let the candidate know this will be expected prior to the interview so they have time to prepare. Personally, I liked when sales candidates tried pitching the services/products we were selling (versus their current employer) even if they didn’t have the lingo down perfectly—this highlighted how well they researched and prepared for it. 

And if they tank this part of the process, well, that tells you a lot about their preparation and execution skills.

Trust the process

I remember the early days of scaling our sales team we were so confident in our own interviewing skills that we believed everyone we hired was going to be awesome—unfortunately, some of those "awesome" hires ended up being a costly mistake.

Once we implemented a formal hiring process, we started hiring proven sales reps that were highly-focused and self-driven which resulted in year-over-year significant growth.

The lesson: yes, you can hire people that you like, but don't deviate from a systematic process that helps you ensure you're getting the best performers out there.