How to Integrate Behavioral & Hypothetical Interviewing with Hiring Assessments

Hey Enablers, happy Friday, and welcome to Episode 9 of Sales Enablement Straight Talk!

So... sales hiring.

"Sales hiring is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a sales forecast print-out."

~ Mike Kunkle (with apologies to Winston Churchill)

Today, I'd like to share some quick but important highlights on The Sales Hiring System (part of The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement), specifically, how to integrate your behavioral interviewing and hypothetical interviewing questions with sales hiring assessments. Before the video, I think some review is in order.

I've written about behavioral interviewing and The Sales Hiring System before, so I won't rehash deep details on either today. I will, though, provide a brief overview here in the written portion of the newsletter, as well as introduce some sales hiring assessment details, since I haven't written about this here before.

Let's dig in.

The Sales Hiring System

Here is a system review, in three images:

I'll provide additional links in the Resources section if you need (or would like) a refresher.

Interviewing: Behavioral & Hypothetical Questions

Behavioral Questions

An easy way to ask behavioral interview questions is to follow the STAR framework which stands for situation, task, action, and result. I add L at the end, for Learning. Think STAR-L.

First, ask the candidate to give you an example of a time when they displayed a behavior you want to assess.?Most start with the phrases, "Tell me about a time when..." or "Share an example of when you..."

Then, listen, or as needed, guide them with follow-up questions to get full responses focused on:

• The Situation (related to the competency or trait you’re assessing).?
• The Task to be completed.
• The Action taken.
• The Result achieved.
• And what they Learned from the experience.?(And, if there is a learning experience, I often ask them to tell me how they have since applied that lesson.)

1. PRO-TIP: Tell candidates upfront that you will be asking for stories and examples throughout the interview. Mention that they may need to think quietly for a moment before responding, to select a good example from their experience, and that this is both expected and okay. Quality trumps speed, in this case. Then, when asking your questions, give them the time they need to think of an appropriate example and begin their story.

Hypothetical Questions

Occasionally, even an experienced candidate may not have a STAR-L story for you. Or, if you are hiring straight out of school or lesser-experienced candidates for certain roles, behavioral questions may not be as effective.

In these cases, you can flip your behavioral question to a hypothetical question. These are not as predictive, but it can help you assess the candidate's judgment, compared to your top performers. (Note: I'd also consider it to be more of an issue if an experienced candidate couldn't provide a behavioral answer about a key competency that's important to the role.)

Hypothetical questions are "Imagine that you are…” or “What would you do if…” questions. They are:

• Posed around challenging situations, likely ones they haven’t faced yet.
• Often built from real scenarios that your top-performers faced, and overcame.
• Designed to test judgment and compare to top-performer practices.

SALES HIRING ASSESSMENTS

Next, let's layer in sales hiring assessments, and then we'll tie everything together.

A good assessment can radically improve the effectiveness of your hiring decisions. Here are some thoughts on choosing a psychometric sales hiring assessment:

• Ensure it's based on sales competencies and mindsets/beliefs/traits (not generic competencies/traits, and not personality-based).
• Seek normative, not ipsative?assessments (if it's normative, it can compare candidates to a pool of others and layer performance data).
• Look for regular statistical studies to prove validity (especially seek predictive validity). Assessment companies sometimes refer to these as their Technical Manual. Ongoing validations (such as every 5 years) are better than one big study 15 years ago.
• Ensure the assessment can be customized by role expectations (not to change the assessment questions, because that would negate certain types of validity and norming, but to adjust how the answers are interpreted, for a specific role).
• Find one that can compare your top performers to bottom performers, to further refine the interpretation of the assessment answers and the recommendations.
• Look for assessments that can employ a "test once and compare to multiple open roles" methodology. If you're hiring for different sales roles, this will tell you which roles the candidate fits, or to what degree they fit for each.
• Ensure the assessment will provide specific recommendations, on whether you should consider a candidate (or not), and the reasons why (or why not).
• Ask whether the assessment has a confidence score, or a way to assess whether candidates are likely trying to "game the test" and answer what they think you want to hear. There are ways to do this, that expert test designers understand.
• Look for assessments that suggest interview questions, based on way candidates answered questions and scored.

At my employer, we have partnered with Objective Management Group, since their assessments meet the above requirements, have been around for decades, have assessed over 2 million candidates, and have an exceptionally-high degree of predictive validity. They assess 21 core sales competencies, including both mindsets, beliefs, and traits, as well as 10 selling competencies. (Will to Sell, Sales DNA, and Selling Competencies).

Sample Overview of Assessment Results

[This is a snippet, not a full report, from Objective Management Group]

And, for the piece that will help you tie the assessment to the interviews:

VIDEO

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

The Assessment

I recommend assessing candidates early in the hiring process, usually after the initial resume screen, for a variety of reasons.

• It avoids bias, which frequently clouds good judgment in hiring. Many managers hire people like themselves, or with pleasing personalities, or who have honed their interview answers through practice (they are salespeople, after all).
• Well-validated assessments offer far-higher predictive validity (90%) than interviewing (it varies: I've seen study results as low as 17% and as high as 35-40% for interviewing alone).
• It allows you to prioritize candidates. OMG recommends only interviewing "Recommended" candidates, but based on the volume of applications, you may need to review candidates who are "Worthy of Consideration," as well. (Note: the third status from OMG is "Not Recommended.") At a minimum, it allows for being selective to start.
• The assessment should, as OMG's does, offer suggested interview questions to further probe into possible problem areas, to seek clarification. This is important since no assessment is perfect. Even an assessment with 90% predictive validity has a 10% margin of error. And if the confidence score (mentioned above) is low, the possibly error percentage could increase.

In the assessment, look for key strengths to validate and key weaknesses to further explore. Pay attention to the difference between mindsets, beliefs, and traits, and selling competencies. Someone with "the right stuff" can be trained and coached on competencies, if they have the will to sell and the right DNA, and especially if they are coachable with a high "Figure It Out Factor." It's not impossible to shape mindsets, beliefs, and traits, but it certainly is a lot more difficult. In a sense, it's a lot like the old joke:

Q. How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. Just one, but the lightbulb must want to change.

The Interview

If you've designed your behavioral interviewing questions well, they will target the key competencies and behaviors that you know are important for success in the specific sales role at your company, to allow you to dig deeper in a dialogue with the candidate. Add the suggested questions from the assessment, and dig in.?

As you already know, if the candidate does not have deep sales experience for an entry-level role, or doesn't have a behavioral story, you can shift to a hypothetical question to at least test their judgment. This is not as good as having a behavioral response, so take that into consideration in your scoring, but it's better than not having a response on a key competency.

In addition to adding the recommended interview questions from the assessment, you may want to "peel the onion" on other areas of concern, based on the assessment scores and report. To be consistent and fair, you can't ignore the pre-planned questions (unless they don't apply to the role), so don't swap questions. The assessment-recommended questions are additive, not replacements.

SIDEBAR: While it's not the purpose of this edition, remember the other elements of The Sales Hiring System. One that I strongly recommended and endorse is the skill validation step, or orchestrating a role play to allow the candidate to demonstrate something relevant. It might be a prospecting call, writing an email, leaving a voicemail, conducting pre-call planning, or whatever you'd like to test them on, to validate their actual skill, versus a verbal assertion of having that skill. Anyone can say that they're a great appointment setter. Asking them to demonstrate it, provides a deeper level of validation.

RESOURCES

The Sales Hiring System:

Objective Management Group's Assessments:

SPECIAL OFFER!

Here's something unrelated to hiring, but that I believe you'll want to know. My partner,?Felix Krueger?of?FFWD, has announced an End-of-Fiscal-Year (EOFY) sale on?The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience. Through June 30, 2023 (one week to go), he's offering a 30% discount on the course!

To learn more or to sign up, visit:?https://bit.ly/BBofSE-EOFY

Well, that's it for this week, Enablers! Did you learn something new reading/watching this newsletter? If you did, or if it just made you think (and maybe chuckle from time to time - bonus points if you snorted), share it with your favorite enablement colleague, subscribe right here on LinkedIn, and check out?The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience.?Felix Krueger?and?Mike Kunkle?are both Building Blocks Mentors for the weekly group coaching sessions, and we hope to see you there!?For other courses and content from Mike, see:?https://linktr.ee/mikekunkle

Until next time, stay the course, Enablers, and #MakeAnImpact With #Enablement!