Having recruited Mid-Senior New Business Sales Executives for tens of FinTech companies here’s what we think is the most performant interview process. It juggles candidate experience & hiring team time but still ensures sales quality & cultural fit:
30 minutes with a Recruiter - to give information on company, ensure salary alignment, genuine interest and to shortlist the best 3-5 candidates.
1 hour with the Hiring Manager - this should be the Hiring Manager selling the team, product, culture & role to begin with. The hiring manager should be willing to talk through the current orgs revenue & financial performance and also the performance of the individuals in the team & what success looks like. Followed by sales & performance questions – good sales people can always talk through their KPIs, performance, deals closed, process, approach & methodology. This stage allows for rapport to be built between candidate and potential line manager.
1 hour Product Demo and Q&A by a Peer Level Sales Exec - this is the stage that a lot of FinTech companies don’t do but is an absolute necessity. The candidate gets to see what they will be potentially selling live & in the flesh. This really helps alleviate early churn – a lot of Sales Execs join firms and start looking within a couple of months citing the “the product isn’t fit for the market” or “isn’t as good as the competition.” They also get to speak with another person in the firm currently doing the role they will come in to do. The other reason this is an amazing interview stage for the client is they get real time feedback from candidates who sell competitor solutions on the product which can all be put to the Product team after.
1 hour Final Interview with the Hiring Manager and another senior member of the sales org (Head of Sales, CRO etc) - if you’ve already gone through sales figures and the candidate has agreed that the product is something they would like to sell after the demo, this interview should be on two things. What’s their 30-60-90 day plan if they were to join and cultural fit with the sales org & wider firm. With 10-15 minutes at the end for the candidate to ask all questions necessary to ensure they would be happy to accept an offer should one be forthcoming.
Important considerations are:
If candidates struggle to articulate their achievements over the last three years in the first interview - who they’ve signed and how they’ve done it this should be an instant red flag but is quite common.
The Hiring Managers and Interview Panel need to be trained on how to run interviews. Including what to test for both technically and behaviourally to align with company values & culture. Interview frameworks, set questions & scoring standardisation to help lessen biases here helps.
Whilst hiring, hiring managers should block 3-4 hours a week out at the start of the process for interviews where stakeholders will know they’re free. This should also be when they will be most happy to engage with candidates.
The demo stage of the interview should be a two way conversation where the candidate is encouraged to give their opinions on the product and they should be asked to write down questions to discuss at the end of the demo. A barometer of good sales people is often the quality of the questions they ask.
If any of the hiring team are on the fence, they should be empowered to reject candidates and not have to seek further opinion.
If you need help optimising your FinTech Sales Recruitment process or want to get a playlist of great questions to ask when interviewing FinTech Sales Executives get in touch on mike@volition.work
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