Key to hiring the best sales people? Invest in interviewing

Learning and development are the bedrocks of the most successful organizations – from start-ups with fewer than 50 employees to large corporations with more than 50,000. Organizations that invest in growing their people’s skills see the return not just in increased innovation or better ability to serve customers, but also in motivated and engaged employees, as well as higher retention.

This isn’t exactly a newsflash – in fact it is pretty common knowledge – but it’s why I continue to be amazed at the lack of investment in what I consider a critical skill: interviewing.

I see time and again the assumption that because someone is a great sales manager, he or she will be a great interviewer and capable of hiring sales talent. While many sales managers are naturally adept at assessing basic qualifications and skills, without interview training they may not be well positioned to fully determine a candidate’s fit for the role – perhaps ultimately hiring a qualified candidate, but not the right person for the job.

For example, without training unconscious bias often creeps into the interview process. We hear a lot about unconscious bias these days – often with respect to gender and race. But unconscious bias can affect the interview process in many other ways.

Consider this scenario: There are two candidates for a sales position. Both have similar levels of experience. One was a college athlete. Who is likely going to sail through initial interviews and advance to final rounds? The athlete, of course, because in sales there is a bias toward hiring athletes that stems from the assumption that athletes are motivated, competitive and team players – all important qualities for salespeople.

But if the interviewers were trained to eliminate bias and possessed the tools to assess a candidate’s motivation and competitiveness, perhaps they would discover that the non-athlete candidate at the age of 14 turned his or her summer ice cream job into a mini empire, missing out on lazy days of summer but earning enough money to buy his or her dream car at 17 or offset tuition payment for college. Suddenly candidate #2 is looking good in the motivation and competitiveness categories.

Interview training goes beyond providing skills to conduct the actual interview – it’s also about having a well-defined process that everyone understands. That means that the right team members are conducting interviews and they understand the objective of their interviews – whether they are assessing for skills, culture or just saying hi – and know the questions to ask.

When I take my clients through interviewing training, I start with the three actions every company should take ahead of hiring for a new role:

• Assemble the interview team. Interviewing is definitely a team sport (for non-athletes too!), and each team member has a different role to play. Decide who your team will be – from how many people you need to where they are best positioned for your process. If your organization numbers 20 people, you likely don’t need six people on the team – three will do. Who will assess candidates for their skills? For culture? For growth potential? Make sure only supervisors are interviewing for skills and potential, with peer interviews reserved for cultural and team fit. This will avoid a situation where the interviewer could potentially feel inadequate when compared to the candidate and feel a sense of job insecurity – and perhaps not offer an honest assessment of the candidate’s ability to do the job. Once you have your team, make sure everyone knows who is responsible for what.

• Define the interview process. You want all candidates to go through the same process – from whom they meet with to how long the interviews are to how many rounds of interviewing you will do. Think about which interviews you want to start with for each candidate. For example, it is absolutely essential that the cultural interview come first. This prevents a hiring manager from gravitating too much toward a candidate’s skill set and potentially hiring someone who does not embody the company’s values. (For more on this check out our article Interview Process.)

• Develop the questions … and know the right (or at least the wrong) answers. Don’t leave it to each interviewer to prepare a set questions or worse, wing it. Having a list of carefully crafted, insightful questions designed to elicit key information will help the interviewers as well as ensure all candidates are being given the same opportunity to share their stories, ideas and perspectives. Finally, when developing questions make sure the team is properly trained and in agreement on how to identify a good answer versus a bad answer without bias!

Need help refining your interview process and training your team? Contact Captivate Talent to understand how you can optimize the interview experience and build the best candidate experience possible.