I want to use the interview to find out whether the opportunity makes sense for them and whether they've shown enough of the qualities we're looking for to earn a spot on the team. From there, their preparation, training, and first days in the field should help us understand how they're progressing and what they need from us. If you expect the interview to remove all the uncertainty, you'll either convince yourself you know more than you do or keep adding requirements until you've screened out people who could have succeeded.
Be careful with the person who looks the part
Somebody walks into an interview, makes eye contact, speaks confidently, and tells you about playing a competitive sport. You enjoy talking to them, they remind you of a rep who did well, and before the conversation is over you're already picturing them on the leaderboard. Those things can give you a reason to be interested. What they haven't shown you is how this person will respond when a homeowner cuts them off, when they have to practice the same opening again, or when their manager tells them that something they're doing needs to change.
You can hire the former athlete who quits at a doorbell, then hire the chess club kid who competes harder than anybody. Competitiveness can show up in a lot of different backgrounds, and you need to take enough interest in the person to find out what they've actually worked toward. If most of your hiring decision comes down to how much somebody reminds you of your best rep, you'll miss people whose strengths look different. You'll also give some candidates credit for qualities they haven't shown you simply because you liked their story. There's nothing wrong with being optimistic about someone. Just remember that you still need to see how they handle the work before you know whether your first impression holds up.
Make sure the job actually works for them
Before you try to figure out how good someone could become, make sure they can do the job you're offering. They need to understand the schedule, meet the transportation requirements, and know that they'll be approaching strangers and dealing with rejection. They also need a clear explanation of the pay and what the beginning is likely to look like financially. If the person can't work the hours you need or is expecting money sooner than your pay structure provides it, enjoying the interview doesn't solve that problem. You want those things understood before either of you commits to moving forward.
At the same time, be careful about adding requirements that come more from your preferences than from the work. If a gap on a résumé or an unfamiliar work history concerns you, ask about it and listen to the answer. The same goes for financial pressure. Needing money tells you somebody needs money; it doesn't tell you how ambitious they are or how hard they'll work. Find out what they've pursued, what they've stuck with, and whether they can realistically get through the period when they're learning. That's a much more useful conversation than deciding that desperation will make them successful or that a particular background makes them a bad fit.
Use the Five C's to get past the easy answers
At HIRE, we look for competitiveness, communication, confidence, commitment, and coachability. These give us a way to organize the interview and decide what we need to learn about the person. Almost anybody can tell you they're competitive or willing to take coaching, so the value comes from getting into an actual example. If someone says they're committed, I want to understand what they've stayed with after the excitement wore off, what made it difficult, and what they did when they wanted to stop. Their answer gives us something more useful than agreeing that commitment is important.
Communication is something you watch throughout the interview. Pay attention to how they explain their ideas and tell you stories about their experiences. Can you follow what they're saying and understand the point they're making? You're learning about their communication in the way they talk with you, without needing a separate question to test it.
Here are a few ways to look for the Five C's during the interview:
| Quality | How to evaluate it | What you're listening for |
|---|---|---|
| Competitiveness | Tell me about a goal you pursued when nobody was making you do it. | Something the person chose to work toward, and what the effort involved |
| Communication | Observe how they communicate throughout the interview. | How clearly they explain ideas, tell stories, and get their point across |
| Confidence | Tell me about a time you had to do something before you felt good at it. | Willingness to act and learn without pretending failure never happens |
| Commitment | What have you stayed with after the excitement wore off? | Specific actions over time, including how the person handled setbacks |
| Coachability | What difficult feedback have you received, and what did you change? | An actual adjustment, rather than a claim that every previous boss was wrong |
These questions and observations help you evaluate the Five C's. They're our framework for evaluating candidates, not a guarantee of door-to-door success. Give your interviewers a common set of questions and a shared understanding of what a useful answer looks like. That's consistent with the structured-interview approach described by the Office of Personnel Management, which uses predetermined questions and common rating standards. You still need to ask follow-up questions and have a real conversation, but you should be evaluating the same qualities regardless of who conducts the interview.
Take notes on their answers and use a consistent internal grading system to record how you assess their skills, commitment, and fit for the work and your team. Include what they said or did that led you to each grade, so you have more to look back on than a gut feeling. Over time, compare those assessments with their results in training and in the field. You're looking for patterns in which qualities and answers show up among the people who do well in your business.
Preparation tells you more than another promise
In our training conversations, I compare learning a sales script with learning a playbook. An athlete doesn't show up on game day and invent every route, and a new rep shouldn't have to walk up to a stranger's house and figure out the entire conversation on the spot. For companies we partner with in recruiting and training, we recommend script memorization before a rookie begins selling in the field. Ideally, they arrive at Sales School, our two-day live training program, already knowing the script so they can spend more of that time learning to use it. We give them the material, explain what they need to learn, and help them practice. That preparation gives them words to work with while giving the manager an early look at whether they follow through on what they've agreed to do.
You need to pay attention to the effort as well as the result. Somebody who hasn't practiced is showing you a different problem from somebody who's putting in the time and struggling to get it right. A manager should know which situation they're dealing with before deciding the person isn't committed. Have them practice with you, demonstrate the part they're struggling with, and give them one correction to work on. When they try again, you get to see how they respond to being taught. That tells you more about their coachability than asking whether they're open to feedback and accepting the yes.
Let the doors tell you what the interview couldn't
Something I've always respected about this business is that knocking on doors builds character, but before it builds character, it reveals it. Once somebody starts working, you get to see whether they come back after a rough day, keep working when nobody is standing beside them, and use the coaching you gave them yesterday. Those are things you could only discuss or look for clues about in the interview. Now you have a chance to watch what they do, and you should be willing to change your opinion as you learn more about them.
The manager has a responsibility in that process, too. If the rookie never saw a capable leader demonstrate the work, didn't understand what they were supposed to do, and couldn't reach anybody for help, their struggle doesn't tell you much about what they could have done with proper training. Before deciding they don't have what it takes, make sure you've explained the standard, shown them how to work toward it, and given them useful feedback. You'll still have people who won't do the work, but you need to know the difference between unwillingness and somebody who needs more help learning.
Look at their effort, their developing skill, and how they respond to coaching together. A quieter rep who keeps working and gets a little better each day may give you far more reason to keep investing than the confident person who impressed everybody in the interview but is already backing away from the work. Your first impression got them an opportunity. What they do with that opportunity should guide the decisions you make next.
Pay attention to who succeeds, including the people who surprise you
If you think a particular background or interview answer helps you choose better reps, go back and see how those hires actually did. Look across several groups so one superstar or one disappointing hire doesn't become the basis for your whole hiring process. Be specific about what happened, too. Somebody who accepted and never reached the field hasn't shown you whether they can sell, while somebody who started, received training, and consistently missed the work requirements has given you something different to learn from. The more clearly you understand the outcome, the more useful it is when you're deciding what to change in the interview.
You also won't know what every person you rejected could have become, so be careful about assuming that a more selective process is automatically a better one. I want meaningful standards and a strong interview, but I also want enough humility to let somebody surprise me. Give the people who meet your requirements and show promise a real opportunity, prepare them properly, and keep paying attention as they learn. You can make good hiring decisions without knowing in advance who your number-one rookie will be.
For help building that recruiting and training process, learn more about D2D HIRE.
Selection, training, compensation, and worker-classification requirements vary by role and jurisdiction. Review the actual criteria and arrangement with qualified advisers.
Sources
- U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Structured Interviews.