Posted: 22 July 2025

Continuous Hiring: Simulated work exercise & taking references (Part 5)

In the previous article in this series we looked at how to conduct a career deep dive interview to determine if a candidate’s past and present behaviour is a fit for the role, team and your company.

In this article we will look at the final two stages of our structured interview process – giving candidates an exercise to prepare and deliver that simulates the actual work they will be doing, and how to conduct effective reference interviews.

1	Screening stage
2	Skills stage
3	Career deep dive stage
4	Simulated work exercise stage
5	References stage

Table 1: Minimum recommended interview stages

Purpose of a simulated work exercise

Having examined a candidate’s skills in stage 2 and their behavioral fit in stage 3, the simulated work exercise gives you an opportunity to assess both in combination, only this time in a setting that is as close to the “real world” of the role as possible.

Depending on the role, the work exercise may take the form of analysing some data, writing some code, or in the case of commercial roles like our Account Executive, delivering a presentation.

Presentations provide a wealth of additional valuable candidate data, as they allow you to assess things like:

The candidate’s preparation process
The quality of their deliverable
- Was it rushed?
- Full of typos?
- Too Detailed?
- Well structured?
- Copied?
Their ability to open, close and manage a meeting
Their ability to keep to time whilst addressing key topics
How they handle questions and think on their feet
Their overall level of professionalism
Their Communication skills

Table 1 provides a presentation template with instructions for candidates that you can use as the basis for a work exercise for Account Executive candidates.

You can also download a Powerpoint version of this template here.

Stage 4: Account Executive simulated work exercise

Who:	Founder + co-founders + other members of Senior Leadership Team
Format:	60 minutes (in person)
Goal:	See how a candidate prepares and delivers in a simulated work situation
Slides to prep:	Give each candidate a deck with the following slides (candidate instructions in italics) and 7 to 10 days to prepare – Slide 1: Brief biography What are the most relevant highlights of your experience that give you confidence in your ability to be successful here? What do you feel has most contributed to your success to date? Slide 2: Deal win review We are looking to get a feel for your understanding and experience of closing complex deals It’s important to speak to the customer’s business problem, stakeholders, objections and how you overcame them Be prepared for some probing questions around things ranging from how you ran the deal to how you handled the tough objections – feel free to add a few slides here to help tell your story (try to limit to 3 if possible). Slide 3: Selling <insert your company’s product> How would you sell us at your current/previous company? Who are the decision makers, how could we add value? What would be the primary objections and how would you overcome them? Slide 4: My fast start plan Based on your experience and knowledge to date about the role, what are some of the top things you would do to get off to a fast start? There isn’t a “wrong” answer here – we are really looking to understand your thought process and some lessons learned/best practices that you’d apply. Slide 5: Why I’m a great hire In your own words, what is success for you and why are you a great fit for the role?

Table 1: Simulated Work Exercise for an Account Executive

Reference interviews

The goal of reference interviews is to validate what you have learned about the candidate in the preceding four stages of the structured interview process.

Having already collected a wealth of data about the candidate it can be tempting to skip this stage, after all any referees the candidate has supplied should be positive by default.

This is why it is important to pick the right referees.

As part of their answers in previous interview stages, candidates regularly reference other people they have worked for or with. These colleagues, peers, managers, subordinates or executives can often provide greater insight into the candidate than the referees they have supplied you with on their resume.

So it is important to make a note of any potential additional referees in your hiring scorecard as they come up, and as long as there are no legal restrictions in your jurisdiction preventing you from doing so, ask the candidate to set you up with a reference interview with the ones you feel are most relevant.

Even if you are only able to interview the referees provided by the candidate, do not be tempted to skip this important validation step – valuable data can still be obtained so long as you remember to “drill down” into the referees answers and ask for real examples.

Two reference interviews are the minimum required to validate what you have learned about the candidate, although you should expect to conduct more for more senior hires.

Table 2 provides a template, a common set of questions to ask each referee and things to look out for in their answers.

Stage 5: Reference interviews

Who:	Founder
Format:	15-20 minute call per reference (minimum of x2)
Goal:	Test and validate (or not) what you’ve learned about the candidate so far
Questions:	Ask these questions to every candidate so you can compare data – In what context did you work with the person? How long have you known them? On a scale of 1 to 10, would you say they were successful in the role? What experience did you witness that contributed to your feedback? What were their biggest areas for improvement / development back then? What advice would you give their new manager to ensure they are successful?
Drill down questions:	When the referee answers a question, remember to drill down further with one or more of the following: What – e.g. What is an example of that? What were the results? What do you mean by that? How – e. How did they go about it? How did the team react? How so? Tell me more? – an effective open ended question designed to get the referee to elaborate and share more detail about the candidate
What to look out for:	Enthusiasm (or lack of) when speaking about the candidate If they qualify responses e.g. “if…then….” – possible bad sign Hesitation or lots of um’s and er’s – possible bad sign Only confirming employment dates/titles – bad sign People generally do not like to give negative references so what is the referee not saying?

Table 2: Conducting an effective reference Interview

Making a decision

Having gathered data from at least two references interviews, it is now time to make a hire/no hire decision.

An effective technique is to gather together all the interviewers from the previous stages for a 30 minute review and discussion of their respective hiring scorecard ratings.

Ultimately the hire/no hire decision rests with the hiring manager, but the ability to discuss different perspectives on the candidate and review commonalities or variances in their scorecard ratings provides valuable input into the decision as well as data points on how proficient and consistent (or not) your team are with following the structured interview process.

Tying it all together

Throughout each of the five articles in this series we have covered different tools, tactics and techniques to minimise the chances of making a costly mis-hire.

The key to using them effectively is to make them part of a structured interview process, like the one described in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The goal of each stage of the structured interview process

Despite hiring being the single most important thing a founder or leader will do, it still remains the one area of business that stubbornly refuses to be systemetised.

Whether you use the tools, templates, interview structure and questions we have covered in this series of articles, the key things to remember are that hiring is the process of gathering candidate data, and that the biggest predictor of a candidate’s success in a role is their past and present behaviour.

Summary

If you have any questions about simulated work exercises, how to conduct an effective reference interview, or anything else we have covered in the previous 4 articles in this series, feel free to DM or email me at rav@crane.vc.