How do I know if a sales rep will actually perform?
You sit across from someone for an hour. They say the right things. You hire them. Three months later, the interview told you nothing true. This happens because talking about work and doing work are two different skills, and an interview only tests one of them. Your team already knows this. You've all walked out of a great interview, hired the person, and watched the doubt turn out to be right. The problem was never the questions you asked. It was that you never asked the candidate to actually do anything. This is a team problem, not a you problem. Everyone in that interview room is probably judging something different, because nobody agreed, before the candidate walked in, on what good performance actually looks like. Fix that first, and the test writes itself.
You cannot predict a person from a conversation. You can only predict them from a test. Stop asking candidates to describe their work. Give them a small piece of the real job, paid, before you hire. Watch what they do with it. Build that test as a team, not around gut feeling.
What changes unlock by starting
- A written, shared definition of what good looks like, agreed before anyone interviews.
- A work-sample step in your process that tests output, not charm.
- Fewer hires who interview well and then underperform.
- A hiring team that argues about evidence instead of gut feeling.