Our company was hot, and we were getting a ton of applications for open sales roles. My challenge was twofold. Getting the candidates organized and not letting top candidates slip through the cracks.
In today's issue, I will teach you how to use the Who method to build a sales rep interview scorecard.
Using a scorecard helps you:
When you hire without a scorecard, it's easy to fall victim to recency bias and shiny object syndrome.
When you use a scorecard, you'll get:
Here's how to do it:
You want to create a mission for the role to convey its importance. You're looking to answer the question, "Why do we need to hire for this position?"
A mission is different from a job description. A job description tells you WHAT the role is, not WHY it's needed. The mission lays out how the role fits into the bigger picture and the impact it will have.
Get specific, and make it easy to read.
Outcomes are important because they define what success looks like. When you're interviewing the candidate, you want outcomes top of mind.
To know if they are a good fit, you have to know what good looks like.
Like the Mission, you want to be clear and specific when defining outcomes.
They can be a great culture fit, but you'll waste a ton of time if they lack the behavioral qualities to hit the outcomes.
Consider them for a different position, but not this one.
If you have a team, take the top performers and figure out the top 5 qualities they all share. Don't have a team in place? Steal mine.
In the interview, look for patterns that identify these qualities.
Cultural fit competencies give us balance. We don't want a team full of lone wolves that hit the number but cause chaos with their co-workers. That may work for a short period, but it will not scale.
I like to use the company's values for this section. This works if you believe your company's culture aligns with your company's values. In the interview, I'm looking for times when they displayed these values in the past.
This is an excellent opportunity to bring in a teammate to assess these competencies.
All the heavy lifting is done! The last piece is to create your scorecard. You want this to be in a sharable format so other teammates can work off it.
This will serve as your guide for every interview. Get through the process and have gaps in the scorecard? You can always schedule more time or have a teammate interview the candidate to fill in the gaps.
Make sure to build it so all the scores roll up to one report. When you're interviewing a large number of candidates, it's easy to lose track of everyone.
By using this strategy, you'll remain objective and organized. This allows you to move much faster and increases your success rate of bringing on A-players. Better yet, you'll bring on A-players that are fit for YOUR company.
