- October 21, 2018
- Blog
When you seek candidates for a business development / sales position, I am certain you will be inundated with hundreds of resumes. If the count failed to kill, the quality almost certainly will. Most resumes will actually be just rehash of job descriptions. They would include phrases such as “In-charge of northern region sales”, “Responsible for analyzing and contacting new leads and converting them into B2C sales,” and my favorite from a Wharton student “Undertook market trips to various cities”. Worse, I have noticed entrepreneurs / recruiters getting totally conned into hiring them, believing what the candidates have typed in the resume is indeed what they have done and excelled! I was no different in my initial hires.
But having built several top management teams for medium / large sized firms and also having the start-ups that I mentor build entry level positions, I have some tips that could share with you. There are three action parts to the recruitment process: Source, Reduce and Select – in that order. Since most face problems in Select, I cover that first. Here are some points to consider in an interview:
- Look for context of performance. It may be a good idea to start with the last job and ask specific questions. For e.g., ‘what was the level of sales in your company / team when you joined and what is it now?’, ‘Is it a new market?’, ‘New product?’, ‘How competitive is the market?’ and ‘How many potential customers are there?’
- Look for her or his colleagues’ performance. Is the candidate one among the few who performed or most of them performed well? How does her/his performance rank when compared to other colleagues?
- Look for real contributions. ‘What was your first month sales and what is it now?’ The answer to the question would reveal if the candidate consistently grew the portfolio. It is also likely that the growth came from increase in team members under the candidate. Sometimes, growth could have been fueled by organization support such as special advertisements, promotions, deals, discounts, and so on.
- Look for personal growth. Has the candidate been promoted? Pay hike? Certificates of performance? Number of times and the amount of incentives earned. These are concrete proofs of good contributions. Designation changes are usually suspect.
- Understand ‘how’ it was done. Usually, even the best stumble to articulate an answer to this question. So, give time. A good start-question can be ‘Take the best deal you secured and tell us elaborately how you got it?’ The candidate can cover items such as how s/he analyzed customer needs and created a customized solution, how s/he built relationship with all the decision makers at the customer premises, number of follow-ups, how objections were handled and so on. The answers give great insights into a candidate’s planning and sales approach skills.
- To err is common, to learn is divine. ‘Take the worst failure in the recent times and describe why it is a failure and what are the lessons learnt’. A good salesman is made out of bad mistakes. A case for rejection is when the candidate fails to state any failure and if s/he indeed did state one but blamed someone else for it.
- Use your JD. Most recruiters pay low or no attention to the JD or its use in the interview; they consequently suffer. One can take a JD from common internet sources. But it must be customized to your requirement. E.g. of customization can be what products will be sold, geography, reporting relationships, designation, number of people reporting, specific skills, etc. Specifically, your sales environment may be powered by a particular CRM system such as Salesforce or Zoho. The candidate will have to have rudimentary knowledge of similar systems. Post customization, the interview questions have to center around the specific skills required.
- Seek reasons for quitting. A good answer is ‘I am happy and I have little reasons to quit’. Bad ones can be everything about externalizing blames – poor bosses, team, support, etc.
- Ask what s/he knows about us.
- Challenge. Provide details about your product, a problem that you currently face and see how s/he provides a solution.
- Peep into her or his future. Ask what are their career or life goals. A good candidate is the one who states a meaningful position in a meaningful time. The best one is the candidate who has hunger to create significant value to a firm.
- Stress the candidate a bit. ‘Tell us why we should recruit you?’ or ‘What if we say some of your contributions do not seem directly attributable to you’. There are no right or wrong answers to this question. But the check points are how emotional or cool the answer is.
- Know what the world thinks about her/him. If the previous question would not stress the candidate, this one will: ‘If we called your friends, what would they tell us about you?’ This question has evoked very wide answers and the answers provide an idea of the personality of the candidate. The best answer I got till now: “Recall the movie Sholay and the scene where Amitabh is seeking Hema’s hand for Dharmendra from Mausi? If I were Dharmendra, my friend would be Amitabh Bachchan, you would be Mausi and the job Hema!”. We hired him.
- Seek reference checks. It is important (for any position or level) in the company to seek at least one reference check. I usually request two names who are immediate bosses. Sometimes candidate may provide a name that is indeed quite senior and do not have direct experience of how the candidate works. The important aspect is what to ask. A bad one is ‘tell us something about this candidate’. A good one is ‘tell us three things that the candidate needs to improve upon’. Sometimes, I accept a reference check from a customer.
Now, I take you briefly to the Sourcing part. My most preferred source of recruitment is referrals. The advantages are immense: the candidate comes in with more considered information about us. Fit is likely to be quite high. The flip side is that the number can be quite low.
My next preferred mechanism is our HR reaching out to a candidate that we want. There are some benefits to this technique. The candidate is in no hurry to decide and hence s/he is not compelled to make a choice. If s/he do choose us, then it is because s/he likes our job and not because s/he needs a job or exiting in a hurry. The flip side to this technique of sourcing is that the number of interested candidates may be quite small.
The last alternative is to post a job in popular job portals. In such a case, you will get a ton of resumes.
Therefore, I move on to Reduce part. It is impossible but to use heuristics to reduce the number of resumes. I am not saying such heuristics are always right – but they do help making a mole-hill out of the mountain.
- Reject if total experience over total job changes is < 2.5 years. Lacks stability. If the candidate is from industries that have large sales cycles, even higher tenure is a must to deliver real contribution.
- Reject if there are gaps between jobs and it is NOT explained in the resume. In my experience, most short gaps have reasons that point to a candidate’s poor mental make-up or poor performance or both. Here are some typical reasons that candidates have offered in the past in an interview: (a) misunderstanding with the boss (b) there were some unethical practices (c) wanted to try own business and (d) either of the parents was sick and required care.
- Reject if relevant sales experience is not at least 50% of the total experience. Sometimes, forced or ill-considered opportunities, such as placements in a b-school, may have taken a candidate to an unattractive career. Allow some latitude for it.
- Reject if the earlier position was a team-lead or managerial and the current position is an individual contributor role.
- Reject if most of the industries worked are not similar to your sales process. For example, it is not a great idea to hire a sales professional from an FMCG background to say a CRM sales team.
- Reject if the resume lacks simple spell checks and neatness. If one is not careful about selling oneself to a recruiter, it is likely that s/he will do a poor job selling your product to a customer.
- Reject if the resume has consistently poor academic records (HSC, SSC, Graduate and PG). It may be possible that an B.Tech score of 95% from Tamil Nadu is the same as 80% from West Bengal. But a score less than 60% in either is a poor one. One or two poor scores are fine. And I usually make it a point ask why the scores are low. Usually answers should point to how they tackle personal set-backs.
- Reject if the choice of educational institutions is consistently poor. I am not saying recruit only from top schools.
- Reject if there are more than two years with arrears in exams.
Getting to recruit a Super-sales-man is quite a feat. It takes long practice. It takes even more practice in a world where pinnacle of sales is considered to be selling a comb to a bald person.
Share in the comments below if I have missed anything.
