The friendly Martian (and four other useful interview questions for hiring great junior talent)

By Sara Osterholzer

We've been hiring non-stop since March, meaning we've had a few months of continuous development of our processes and refined our approach to ensure we are finding the best talent.

And because we hire CV-blind, we don’t have that nice sheet of facts to lean on if we haven’t properly prepared a solid interview question, so the interview process is critical to get right.

As a young business, it’s also been insightful to discover the way everyone in the team each interview, since we've not done it together before.

So we asked our senior leadership team and some of our recruiting advisors on our board, what questions they felt had worked for them. These are included in our own hiring process now which you can download for free here.

#failure

Second Voice Pro Co-Founder Ben?? Bennett suggests, “When was the last time you failed at something, and what did you learn from the experience?”

Ben says, “This is a great question as failure is part of life, and you can quickly weed out those candidates who claim to have never failed. Responses to this question tell you about a candidate's ability to reflect on their mistakes, embrace a growth mindset, and learn from failures. It provides insights into their resilience, self-awareness, and capacity for personal and professional development.”

That’s teamwork!

Rebecca West , Recruitment Manager at UCL and Second Voice Pro Advisor says “If you're looking for teamwork skills, obviously ask about a time the candidate worked on a team, their role, what went well, and what didn't go so well.”

Becky continues, “But, importantly, it’s not just about the question, but also the answer. Do they use the word ‘we’ to demonstrate sharing and teamwork? Do they take accountability and responsibility for things that didn't go well? Remember, interview questions can provide valuable information on what coaching and support is needed if the candidate is hired.”

Little men from Mars

Head of Strategy at Second Voice Pro Michael Piddock likes to pose an interesting scenario to candidates, “Imagine I’m an alien visiting from Mars and I want to take back one thing from Earth to tell my fellow Martians about. Now think of something you’re really passionate about - a sport, movie, food, whatever you like - and convince me I should choose that to take back.”

Mike says, “This was a question that was asked of me by a Head of Sales in a previous role and it really stuck. It’s great because it doesn’t require the candidate to have any specialist knowledge of a product, so they get to ‘sell’ something they love, and so ought to know it inside out. You get to see how they construct their argument, the passion they can put into it, and you can even throw in a few objection curveballs to see how they handle those as well.”

No No No No No

Second Voice Pro Co-founder Sara Osterholzer explains a question in her recruitment process when hiring SDRs: “Life is full of no’s. When did you last experience rejection, what was it and how did you deal with it?”.

Sara says, “This question is critical in understanding how someone might handle the worst part of an SDR’s role - people saying “no”. We aren’t looking for people who are emotional robots, as no one likes to be rejected and it would be unrealistic for a candidate to indicate that they aren’t impacted by it. What we are looking for is indications that this individual is emotionally disciplined and has a growth mindset. Do they accept rejection as a part of life? Do they know it’s not personal? Did they focus on what was in their control and look positively at the future or what they could learn about the situation? Those are the types of people who will be able to handle the realities of being an SDR.”

Do your Research

Shobhan Gajjar , business consultant, advisor and Chair of the Second Voice Pro board of advisors go-to for entry-level candidates "What’s?your understanding of what the job entails?"

He continues, "You’ll?get a good idea about how much?they’ve prepared, how they think and organise themselves, which is a good indicator to how they will show up to work. Red flag would be a blank face."

Download our full guide to finding and hiring SDRs, including the tools and templates we use ourselves to score them...