you're not bad at hiring, you are bad at interviewing.

A few weeks ago I ran a final round interview for a senior enterprise sales role.

The candidate had over 10 years of experience…running an accessory brand. Never sold software. No experience in the industry whatsoever.

He had made it through four rounds of interviews to get to me.

Why? Because the company had no idea what they were looking for, and he kind of seemed like he could do the job.

This is an extreme example. But it is not that different from what most founders do when they go to hire.

Here's what a typical sales hiring process looks like:

1. You write a job description. 

2. You get a bunch of people to come in and interview (all of them have slightly different profiles). 

3. You evaluate each person based on the individual conversation you had with them. 

You don't ask everyone the same questions. You don't always record the interviews. You're not grading anyone on a consistent set of criteria.

At the end, you've got three or four candidates you kind of like. And those candidates are the equivalent of:

• A pineapple

• A strawberry

• A marshmallow

• A protein bar

And you try to decide, between them, who is going to do the best job.

Unsurprisingly, this doesn't get great results.

Here’s what to do instead: 

Step 1: Define what a great candidate looks like

Not a list of responsibilities or credentials.

Two lists of capabilities:

Non-negotiables: The characteristics this person must have to be successful in this role. 4-5 items max. 

Nice-to-haves: Everything else that would make them a stronger candidate. This list can be longer. 

Agree on these before you talk to a single candidate.

Step 2: Define your interview stages

For a sales role I’d do these three:

→ Phone screen: Vibe check and basic qualification

→ Operational interview: Go deep on their actual experience. Quota attainment, pipeline management, how they've handled specific situations that will come up in this role. Specificity over storytelling.

→ Role play interview: See how they perform IRL (ish). Watch how they prepare, how they handle objections, how they take feedback.

(Don’t overindex on 30/60/90s or GTM plans. Everyone just uses AI for those and it won’t give much signal.)

Step 3: Build an interview guide for each stage

For every stage, document:

• The questions you're asking

• What a strong answer sounds like

• What a weak answer sounds like

Then run every. single. candidate. through the same stages, with the same questions.

This does two things: 

1. No matter who runs the interview, you're collecting a consistent data set on every candidate. 

2. You're comparing each person to your own criteria, not how well they can sell themselves.

TRY THIS WEEK:

If you're actively hiring (or about to start): Write down your non-negotiables. Then write your nice-to-haves.

If you're not hiring right now: Pull up the job description from your last sales hire. How many of the requirements were non-negotiable? How many did the person you hired have? 

Let me know how it goes!