Ethics are extremely important in sales. Customers are conditioned to mistrust salespeople, and in some cases, it seems as though clients are just waiting for a chance to uncover an unscrupulous rep. Throughout the hiring process, it is essential to uncover as much as you can about a candidate’s ethical standards to ensure that you hire someone who your customers will be able to trust and who they will feel comfortable working with.
Uncovering ethical standards is harder than it sounds. Salespeople are often master interviewers. They know what to say and how to say it in order to paint themselves as the ideal candidate. If you want to cut through the “performance” of a sales interview and truly discover a candidate’s ethics, follow these tips:
Conduct Pre-Employment Assessments
Personality tests and assessments are a great way to discover a salesperson’s ethical values without putting them on the spot in an interview. They can be administered before the interview, but many experts recommend giving the assessment afterwards, so that the results do not cloud your perception of the candidate in person.
Incorporate Behavioral Interview Questions
Work in some questions that will expose the ethics of the candidate. Ask them to tell you about a time when they saw another rep take advantage of a customer just to make a sale. Ask if there would ever be a reason they would lie to cover for their boss. Have them describe a situation that caused an ethical dilemma. You can even put them on the hook and ask them to tell you about a time they felt badly about taking a client’s money or signing a client to a long-term contract. Highly ethical salespeople won’t have an anecdote for that particular situation.
Ask if They Have Read Your Company Code of Ethics
If your company publishes its code of conduct or code of ethics online, ask the candidate if she’s read them. This will show you whether or not the candidate really did her homework before the interview and studied up on the company. It will also demonstrate just how important ethics are to that candidate if they’ve taken the time to read the standards before the interview.
Conduct Thorough Reference and Background Checks
The best way to uncover a candidate’s ethical standards is to ask people who know firsthand. Call each and every reference the candidate provides, and if any of the references are unreachable, ask the candidate to provide more. During the reference calls, don’t just ask about dates of employment or whether or not the candidate is eligible for re-hire. Dig a little deeper by asking direct questions about the candidate’s ethical standards.
Uncovering a candidate’s ethical standards isn’t always easy. Sometimes the most unethical candidates of all are masters of deception. If your enterprise software organization is looking for better ways to evaluate salespeople during the hiring process, the team at Strategic Search Solutions can help. We recruit exclusively for the enterprise software sector, and we have developed a recruiting, interviewing, and hiring plan that will help connect your organization with highly motivated, successful and ethical candidates who will drive results. For more information about our proven processes, contact us today.