Sales hiring can be a painful process. Sales recruiters spend a lot of time and effort in sourcing resumes and interviewing candidates.
And when you run job ads, once applications start pouring in, sales recruiters and the hiring managers must comb through these limitless applications to find the best candidates for their sales positions.
The interview process is incredibly important in sales hiring. A potential sales hire can look great on paper. But when it comes to the interview, they are not the right fit for your company. That is why insightful interview questions are vital to finding the right sales hire.
Your interview questions should cover four main criteria; general questions that a resume cannot answer, a candidate’s adaptability, whether they are a great culture fit for the company, and their growth potential.
Let’s look at the questions that will help you determine your sales candidates’ viability in your company.
General Questions
Get a lay of the land with these general questions. Your candidate’s resume will tell you all about their skills in sales, but not why they are applying for the job. These questions will help you determine why your candidate is seeking a new position at your company.
- How did you find out about this position?
- Why are you leaving your current employer?
- What about working for our company do you find most intriguing and alluring?
Adaptability Questions
Adaptability is one of the most important soft skills a candidate can have. It’s also one of the most critical to screen for. Your company has to be able to adapt and change to remain competitive in the industry. To facilitate this, employees must be able to adapt and change to support their employer’s business objectives.
You need to know whether your candidate can roll with the punches, improvise quickly, and develop innovative solutions to problems. Determining a candidate’s ability to adapt is important. Asking these questions will facilitate that.
- Describe a time in your job when you had to do something that you had never done before. What was your reaction, and did you learn something new?
- Was there a situation in a previous position where you needed to embrace a new system, technology, or idea at work that was a change from your old ways of doing things? How did that go?
- Describe a previous instance when you needed innovative thinking to close the sale.
Culture Fit Questions
Sales teams are all about strategy, personality, and driving sales. The vast majority of hiring failures are due to a bad culture fit. Employees who match your culture and elevate it are shown to have greater job satisfaction and better performance. They are also more likely to stay at the company for longer.
Take a look at these culture fit questions that will help you to assess whether a candidate matches your company’s culture.
- What is the most interesting thing about you that has nothing to do with your resume?
- What three things do you look for in the perfect job?
- What are the accomplishments that you are most proud of in your career?
Growth Potential Questions
High turnover rates are a factor that many sales teams struggle with. This makes it important for hiring managers to screen for a candidate’s growth potential in a sales environment.
You need to find candidates who won’t burn out in less than a year. Hiring people with growth potential saves the cost of replacing them, plus the effort of finding new candidates.
Ask your candidates these questions to find out their initiative and leadership potential.
- Where do you see yourself in your career in 5 to 10 years?
- Can you describe an instance where you volunteered to expand your knowledge and skills without being directed?
- What would motivate you to move into a new role in our company?
Feel Free to Improvise
Every company will have different questions that they will need to cover. The best candidate screening questions are the ones where the candidate is prompted to tell a story. These sales hiring questions are open-ended enough for the candidate to speak for themselves. Don’t hesitate to tweak your hiring questions if you need the candidate to offer more information.
The sales hiring process isn’t a walk in the park. The process is long and intensive, from a job description to sourcing resumes and finding the right candidates to interview.
Hiring a sales recruitment company, like ASPIRE Careers, will help you jump-start the hiring process. Find the best sales candidates that will match your company culture and business expectations with our sales recruitment services.