Over three months I had the pleasure to speak with 31 companies about an Account Executive position. The different processes of these many organizations inspired me to write some observations and suggestions.
The phone screen is the first step in any interview process. This is usually conducted by a recruiter, whose main goal is to understand that 1) you are a live human, 2) you don’t seem like a serial killer and 3) that you fit some of the buckets on their list: “1-3 years of closing experience,” “deal size $25-100K,” etc. The problem with many phone screens is that they take a scripted approach and leave little room for someone outside the box. The analogy I often draw is of players on a Bobby Knight basketball team. They can play good basketball when they are in Knight’s system, but how many great pro players have been developed by coach Knight? When you have a rigid structure for your first phone screen, you are excluding talent from entering the top of your funnel. What happens if I have four years of closing experience? “Does that mean that I am over-qualified?” What if I’ve never sold SaaS before? Great recruiting teams understand the nuances and don’t get stuck in the process of asking checkbox questions.
Once you’ve passed the phone screen, an on-site meeting is often the next step. Some companies want you to “pitch” them their product. Others want you to sell a totally different product; and some even want you to show up in a suit and meet with different people on their team to see if you are a “culture fit.” The rationale of all these different approaches still eludes me.
The idea of making a sales presentation about something that is familiar to the audience and unfamiliar to the sales candidate makes zero sense. Let’s be clear, how often do you send a sales rep who has been on the job for five days to meet with a top prospect---never! Then what are you trying to understand from re-creating that exact situation as part of the interview process? If the goal is to understand how a sales rep speaks to a group of people, why not ask the candidate weeks in advance to sell you on a topic that she or he is passionate about. This way the interviewee is fully prepared and has had time to gather his/her thoughts—just as they would for a real sales presentation.
The third component to the interview process is the 1:1 or 2:1 interview. This is where the candidate will encounter some classic paradigms like good cop/bad cop, forensic accountant, and the famous rapid-fire questions. I think all these approaches are worthless in providing insight into the candidate, though they may well pump the egos of the interviewers.
For the interviewee to perform well in these situations, it’s critical that she or he interview the interviewers in an attempt to understand if this is a company you want to work for. This approach puts you in the driver's seat and, most importantly, reveals a tremendous amount about the company and its leaders. For example, I was interviewing with two sales managers of a company in a competitive market and I said: “I don’t understand how you differentiate from XYZ company. Can you explain?” Instead of clarifying where my question was coming from, one manager started spouting off a feature/function rundown of everything his company had that was better than the competition. I told him, “look, I have to tell you I’m not an expert on your market and everything you just said blew by me. Can you explain the answer again like I was a 10 year old.” He then laughed, looked at the other sales manager and proceeded to give a slightly better explanation. By driving this interaction I quickly understood that this manager was not someone I could learn from and not someone I wanted to work with. I immediately crossed that company off my list.
Perhaps the most important improvement that companies could make to their interview process is the closing or breaking up with the candidate. Far too often, when I would close the interview with something like: “do you want me on your team?” I would hear “Yes, but I need to huddle up with the other members to make sure we’re on the same page.” As a candidate you are then in limbo for days and, in some cases, weeks. I think it’s best for both parties to make a decision quickly and move on---leaving everyone with the best possible feelings.