You will be able to run an interview where every candidate gets the same questions and the same scoring.
You have interviewed a candidate for 45 minutes and it went brilliantly. You talked about a client you both knew, laughed about a trade show in Marina Bay, and agreed on what makes a good salesperson. You walk out sure you have found your hire. Then a colleague who interviewed the same person says they were vague on every question about their numbers.
Both of you are probably right. You had a good conversation. Your colleague ran an interview. This lesson is about the difference, and why the second one predicts who will sell.
A structured interview is one where every candidate is asked the same questions, in the same order, and every answer is scored against the same guide. An unstructured interview is a conversation that goes wherever it goes.
Unstructured interviews feel more natural, but they reward the wrong things. Candidates who share your background, your humour or your opinions feel easier to talk to, and that ease gets mistaken for skill. Candidates who are good at talking, which many salespeople are, can fill 45 minutes pleasantly without telling you anything you could check. And because every candidate gets a different conversation, you end up comparing impressions rather than answers.
Structure does not make the interview cold. You can still be warm, and you can still explain the role and answer questions. What changes is the core of the interview: a fixed set of questions tied to the hiring profile you wrote in lesson 2.1, Write the profile before the job ad.
Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers. "How would you handle a buyer who goes quiet?" invites the candidate to describe what a good salesperson would do, and most experienced candidates know the right answer.
Behavioural questions ask about real past events. "Tell me about a deal you lost that you expected to win. What happened, and what did you do next?" There is no textbook answer to that. The candidate has to pick a real deal and walk you through it, and their choice of example tells you something too.
Write one or two behavioural questions for each must-have in your profile. Wei Ming wrote six for his five must-haves. Two examples: for prospecting discipline, "Walk me through how you planned your prospecting in a normal week at your last job, and what happened in the weeks you were busiest." For coachability, "Tell me about a piece of feedback from a manager that changed how you sell. What did you change, and how did you know it worked?"
The first answer to a behavioural question is usually the polished version, and the useful information tends to arrive with the follow-ups. Probe in three directions. Specifics: which client, what month, what was the deal worth? Numbers: how many calls, what was your target, where did you finish against it? Role: what did you do, as opposed to the team or your manager? Listen for "we". A candidate who says "we closed the account" may have led the deal or watched someone else lead it. Ask, "What was your part?"
Candidates who did the work can usually answer these follow-ups easily. Candidates who are retelling someone else's success, or describing something that did not quite happen, tend to get vaguer as you probe. That change is one of the most useful signals you will get in an interview.
Keep the follow-ups neutral. "Tell me more about that" and "What happened next?" work better than "That must have been difficult", which tells the candidate what you want to hear.
The scoring guide is what turns the questions into a fair comparison. For each question, write what a weak, a fair and a strong answer sounds like.
For Wei Ming's lost deal question, a weak answer blamed the buyer or the price and described no action. A fair answer named a reason and a lesson but no change in behaviour. A strong answer named a specific mistake the candidate made, what they did differently on later deals, and ideally what happened when they did.
Score straight after the interview, alone. Once you hear a colleague say "I loved her", your own memory starts to adjust. Write a number and one line of evidence for each question. Then compare. If scores differ, talk through the evidence each of you wrote down and leave general impressions out of it.
Wei Ming used a three-point scale: 1 for weak, 2 for fair, 3 for strong. A candidate who scored 3 on charm and nothing on the questions would never make it past the scoring sheet, which is exactly the point.
Keep the questions about the job. Personal questions about family plans, age or background have no place in a structured interview, and the fair employment guidance from TAFEP mentioned in lesson 2.1 covers what to avoid.
The activity below asks you to write your six questions and the scoring guide for each. Write the guide in plain sentences describing what you would hear, so a second interviewer could use it without asking you what you meant.
Write six behavioural questions tied to your profile and a scoring guide that says what a weak, fair and strong answer sounds like.
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