Interviewing salespeople is tough!
Screening, uncovering, and selecting top talent takes a lot of practice and a reliable process. In order to better take advantage of every golden interview opportunity that comes your way, you need to know the common pitfalls — and then avoid them.
As far as interview questions go, the best are the ones provided in a validated scientific talent instrument used (toward the end of your selection process) by a certified Talent Analyst. The next best interview questions are those you yourself can ask each candidate to gain insight into their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to determine whether there is enough evidence of talent to invest more time in them.
We often work with our clients to help them improve their interview techniques and become better at moving the right people forward in the funnel. Those who are the very best at recruiting and selecting top talent know that strong screening in the beginning leads to a much more talented candidate pool every time. Those that don’t commit to that kind of consistent practice tend to get stuck in one of five common interviewing traps and often find themselves disappointed with the underperformance of those they’ve brought on board.
“Which color would you be if you were an M&M? And why?” might feel creative and even deep to some. However, the odds of you learning something that will help you to determine whether this candidate is likely to grow in their job, reach and exceed their goals, and consistently replicate their success over time are pretty slim. Don’t waste their time or yours with questions like that.
Even with the best intentions, most hiring managers don’t take enough time to prepare for the interview!
Instead, they pull out the resume right before the candidate arrives and proceed to fly by the seat of their pants, asking questions about resume items that look interesting. It’s often a long time later when they realize their missed opportunity.
Most interviews that we've observed (outside of the structured talent interviews we conduct) seem to fall into this pattern. Candidates might elaborate after each question, sharing a bit about the why or the how, but they intuitively know that the right answer to these questions is yes. Open-ended questions will provide you with much more to work with. For example:
If the candidate attended your alma mater, shares an interest in one of your hobbies, or just returned from your favorite vacation spot, it is much more difficult to get an unbiased read of their potential.
It’s easy to fall in love with the person you're interviewing and, with those rose-colored glasses on, throw a bunch of softballs at them before you make what might ultimately be the wrong hire.
In an effort to get to know the candidate better, hiring managers often toss a wide variety of questions at them in one sitting. They ask questions about:
Rather than taking the narrow and deep approach that would have provided great insight. They may leave with lots of notes, but little of value.
There's a simple and easy way to avoid these five interview pitfalls and prepare for an interview that will determine whether or not you should move forward with your candidate.
For years, we've taught clients to begin their interviews with an open-ended, experiential question like “Tell me about a time when you accomplished something that you felt was remarkable.” Or, “Give me an example of a goal you reached that you believe was life-changing.” These are what we call foundation questions.
After asking that foundation question, we instruct them to continue asking a series of follow-up questions that steadily dig deeper and uncover more specific information related to the candidate’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
We discovered someone who shares our philosophies and feels like a kindred spirit. Lou Adler announced that after “10 years of trial and error” he eventually discovered “the only interview question that matters."
“What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career to date?”
If you’re a manager who interviews recent college graduates, you could modify the question to ask, “What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment to date?”
After the initial question, he suggests the following follow-up questions:
Those are just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine what you could unearth after 15 more minutes of delving in to this single, meaningful, magic question!
Finding the right person for an open position is challenging, and it's very tempting to rush through the process or take shortcuts when possible. But making the wrong hire can cost your company up to five times their annual salary — and once you finally get rid of them, you’ll find yourself back at square one, sweating over your hiring process again.
If you don’t have time now to do it right, when will you have time to do it over again? Save yourself the headache and do it right the first time!