Qualified candidates that emerge from the initial pool of interviewees should then participate in an additional test or series of tests to determine the finalist(s) for the role. These “tests”, for lack of a better term, should primarily focus on the Technical, Business, and Interpersonal skills categories from the Job Analysis phase.

Quite simply, candidates should be required to give a presentation that demonstrates a technical solution to a business problem. The presentation should be given in person to the hiring manager and, if possible, selected peer managers. This exercise will create a realistic simulation and estimate of on-the-job performance as well as a demonstration of the candidate’s capabilities in a selling environment. Preferably, the candidate would provide a solution overview of something that the company currently sells or at least something from a comparable technology or business domain. However, if the candidate has an extensive background in other business technology domains, they could pull from those experiences as well. The management team participating in the presentation should “role play” and ask questions typical of their customers.

Although admittedly very subjective, the candidates will be graded by the management team on a three point scale in the areas of:

• Business Applicability – what business problem was the customer trying to solve? How is the technical solution going to help them make money, save money, or mitigate risk for their business? Is there a particular broad industry-specific trend addressed by the solution?
• Technical Clarity – what products, components, and technologies are utilized in the solution? How do these elements interact with each other? How do they integrate and/or fit into the customer’s existing information technology environment? What does the customer need to do in order to take responsibility for the successful implementation of the solution?
• Audience Engagement – how well did the candidate engage the audience in the discussion? Were they able to expand the solution to include additional technologies (and therefore increase the size of the sales opportunity) in response to questions from the audience?
• Overall Presentation Style – candidate appearance, speaking ability, professional mannerisms.
• Would You Buy This Solution (or Anything, for that Matter) From This Candidate? – likely the ultimate question that provides a simple yes/no answer to the audience’s evaluation of the four previously mentioned criteria.

An “audition” of this nature is a reliable and valid method for determining the most qualified candidates for technical sales positions. The pressure of performing a significant part of the role in front of their potential management team will create an environment similar to what the candidate will face when interacting with customers.

A second test for should be the hiring manager’s simple evaluation of some form of technical writing or customer “deliverable quality” document developed by the candidate. Again, although somewhat subjective, this will at minimum measure the candidate’s abilitu to and experience in communicating the business merits and technical specifications of a solution to a customer in order to favorably influence the purchase decision.

Finally, hiring managers may want to consider having candidates construct a personality profile such as DiSC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiSC). The candidate’s DiSC profile will provide an estimation of the candidate’s Interpersonal and, to some extent, Lifestyle skills cateogories. Such personality testing has proven to be reliable across languages and cultures. For technical sales positions, an individual with strengths in the Dominance and Influence DiSC quadrants has the most potential for success. These strengths are typically exhibited by those with extroverted personalities who are driven to emerge as visible leaders and are more responsive to incentives. Such individuals typically thrive best in sales environments.