A Novel Thought About Screening Candidates For Presales Positions

How do we assess theskills and competence of candidates for presales positions? I look carefully at resumes, but there is awonderful expression that “you are perfect twice in your life: once when you are born and the second time onyour resume…” References are important,of course, as are typical interview questions. However, I like to ask candidates for three additional opportunities toevaluate them:
1. Ask them to do apresentation on a subject near and dear to their hearts to evaluate theirability to “tell” (many hiring managers do this today).

2. Ask them to perform aDiscovery session with you, on a topic they know intimately such as their currentcompany’s offerings, to evaluate their ability to “ask”. This is rather novel, I think, and may helpto uncover presales people that are particularly strong at doing Discovery.

3. As them to present a demobased on what they learned in their Discovery session with you, to see how wellthey listened and incorporated what they learned into their demo – and to evaluatetheir demo-specific delivery skills (extra points for structuring their demo ina Great Demo! format, of course!).

This strategy gives youan opportunity to evaluate candidates’ ability to “tell”, “ask”, “listen”, and “show”.