Posted: 20 May 2025

Continuous Hiring: Skills & Behaviours (Part 3)

In the previous article in this series we looked at how combining a hiring scorecard with a structured interview process is key to minimisng your chances of making a costly mis-hire.

In particular we took a detailed look at how to conduct an effective screening interview so that unsuitable candidates are filtered out as early as possible in the hiring process.

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

In this article we will look at Stage 2 – how to assess a candidate’s skills and behavioural fit.

Stage 2 – Skills interviews

As with our example Account Executive Scorecard, most hiring scorecards will have anywhere between 7 to 9 different skills and behaviours or “competencies” to test, so it is unrealistic for all of them to be meaningfully covered in a single interview.

This is why Stage 2 typically involves multiple skills interviews (and interviewers), with each interview designed to test several of the scorecard competencies.

Table 2 shows an example of how the 7 competencies in our example Account Executive Scorecard could be broken down and tested over three separate skill interviews.

Skills interview	Competencies to test
1	Track record of sales success in an early stage startup
2	Competitive, Integrity, Collaborative
3	Communication, Organised and analytical, Resilient

Table 2: Example breakdown of scorecard competencies across multiple skills interviews

Using the scorecard

Every interviewer should have the scorecard on hand during their skills interview, but more importantly they should make sure they are familiar with all of the competencies, not just the ones they will be testing in their specific interview.

Remember that hiring is the process of gathering and analysing candidate data, and candidates regularly offer valuable data points in their answers for other competencies that are not being explicitly tested.

For example, every interviewer should be able to make an assessment on how the candidate communicates even if “communication” is not a competency they have been asked to test.

Similarly a candidate’s answer to a question about collaboration may uncover important data about their integrity or competitiveness.

Balancing thoroughness with speed

Before making the significant commitment of time and effort to conduct multiple skills interviews,

Founders should always conduct the first skills interview themselves and use the data gathered from it as an additional filter to determine if the candidate should progress further.

In our Account Executive example, the first skills interview would be focused exclusively on testing and verifying the candidate’s “Track record of sales success in an early stage start-up”.

Only after a thorough assessment of this critical competency should promising candidates be moved forward to the remaining skills interviews that make up Stage 2 of the structured interview process.

Skills interview 1

Table 3 provides a template, example questions and the rationale for conducting the first skills interview for an Account Executive.

Competencies to test:	Track record of sales success in an early stage startup
Who:	Founder
Format:	60 min call or in person
Goals:	Save time and effort by filtering out anyone that does not have the requisite sales skills or experience in an early stage company Determine if a candidate has been consistently successful selling deals that match your ideal customer profile, technology and typical deal size without relying on an extensive supporting infrastructure
Rationale:	A lack of stage fit is one of the most common reasons why Account Executives fail in early stage companies – Candidates whose experience is in larger more mature companies will have been surrounded by a supporting infrastructure of people, process, materials and tools that they rely on for success. These are things you will likely not have in place yet but this type of candidate will usually need or expect them as a prerequisite for hitting their target The fast paced and unpredictable nature of a start-up can be challenging for anyone who has never experienced it. Being unable to adapt usually results in reduced performance and productivity. Candidates who have not previously worked in an early stage company will likely be more used to selling in a stable and predictable environment with minimal change. You will almost certainly require someone with the ability to adapt to near constant change and who is comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation Poor or middling performing Account Executives often prefer to join earlier stage companies because the relative lack of mature sales processes, rigour and oversight, together with less product & market maturity offers them more ways to excuse any lack of results. This is why it is important to test a candidate’s stage fit and motivation for leaving their current role, especially if they already have several short stints at different earlier stage companies on their resume
Question bank:	Select from the following questions to determine if a candidate has a track record of success selling your type and size of deal – “Walk me through the sales cycle of a high value deal you closed yourself with a technical buyer?” “Give me an example of how you run an initial meeting with a prospect? How do you set the next step with them?” “How do you manage your time between prospecting and working deals?” “Tell me about a time you couldn’t get access to an Economic Buyer. How did you deal with it?” “How do you make sure you have all the right stakeholders in a deal?” “What parts of the sales cycle do you feel you are particularly strong at?” “Which parts of the sales cycle do you know you need to work harder at?” Select from the following questions to determine the candidate’s fit for your stage of company – “Would you say you’ve been successful in your sales career? What do you attribute to your success?” “Tell me about how you have grown revenue in an early stage business. What were the main challenges? How did you overcome them?” “(In your current/previous role) how did your Ideal Customer Profile evolve over time?” “Give an example of how you mapped a market to decide which accounts you should target?” “Tell me about a situation where you had to build pipeline from scratch?” “Give me an example of a deal where you had to bring in the founder or other senior leader to help you close? When did you bring them in and what part did you ask them to play?”
What to look out for:	Can they provide specific details about situations, deals, prospects, stakeholders etc? Have they closed deals of a similar size, complexity and with similar stakeholders to yours? Are they on top of their numbers? Do they deflect questions by answering something different or by pivoting to unrelated points on their CV? Are they running down the clock with long or irrelevant answers?
Interview tips:	Speak for 20% or less of the time Politely interrupt the candidate if they continue talking for too long or about irrelevant things. For example – “That does sound like a pain! You were just telling me about doing cold outreach. I’d love to hear more about how that went…”

Table 3: Skills interview 1 template

Behavioral questions

Notice how the questions in Table 3 are designed to prompt the candidate to share real examples from their current and previous work experiences.

These are behavioural interview questions and they are far more effective at predicting a candidate’s future behaviour than asking them questions about what they would or might do in hypothetical situations.

Behavioral questions typically begin with –

“Tell me about a time…”
“Give me an example from your current or previous experience of… ”
“What did you do in that situation….”

Veracity check

In the previous article in this series we introduced the concept of the “drill down” question – always following up every answer a candidate gives by drilling down further with one or more of the following –

“What” – e.g. What is an example of that? What did you do? What happened next? What was your role? What were the results?
“How” – e.g. How did you go about it? How did the team react? How did you deal with it? How did that feel? How so?
“Tell me more?” – a simple and highly effective open ended question designed to get the candidate to elaborate and share more detail about their initial answer

Combining behavioural questions with drill down follow-ups is not only effective in assessing the veracity of a candidate’s answers, it also gives you greater insight into “how” they do things, and whether that “how” is a match for the culture of the role, team and your company.

Here is an example of combining a behavioral interview question with follow-up drill down questions (in bold) to determine the veracity of a candidate’s answers and to understand how they like to do things –

Founder: “Give me an example of how you run an initial meeting with a prospect?”AE candidate: “First off, I research the attendees beforehand and send them a brief email before the meeting”

Founder: “What sources do you use for your research? What are you looking to find out?”

AE candidate: “I mainly use LinkedIn for research. I’m looking at how long they have worked at their company and how senior they are”

Founder: “Tell me more about that?”

AE candidate: “Ultimately I’m trying to understand what role each attendee might play in the buying process and what they might be looking to get out of the meeting”

Founder: “How do you practically apply what you’ve learned from this research?”

AE candidate: “I use the research to personalise the email I send before the meeting and to put together potential discovery questions for the meeting itself”

Founder: “Can you walk me through a recent example of putting together one of

these personalised emails? How useful was your research and how did it impact the meeting?”
Example 1: Combining behavioural and drill down questions

For candidates that look promising after the first skills interview, tables 4 & 5 provide a template and example questions for conducting the remaining skills interviews that make up Stage 2 of the structured interview process.

Skills interview 2

Competencies to test:	Competitive, Integrity, Collaborative
Who:	Co-founder or senior team member
Format:	30 – 45 minutes call or in person
Goals:	Determine if the candidate has drive and determination to succeed, whilst acting ethically and working well with others
Question bank:	Select from the following questions to determine how competitive the candidate is – “Tell me about a time you had to go the extra mile to hit your number?” “Tell me about a time you created urgency in a deal when the prospect didn’t have a decision date?” “What does success look like for you in this role?” “What were your results last quarter? How did they compare to the plan / previous year / your peers?” Select from the following questions to determine the candidate’s integrity – “Tell me about a time you’ve had to cut corners to achieve a goal?” “Tell me about a time you’ve prioritised your personal goals over the prospect?” “Tell me about a time you failed to live up to the expectations you’ve set?” “Give me an example of when you’ve consciously decided to sell to a non-ICP customer. Why?” Select from the following questions to determine the candidate’s ability to work collaboratively – “Give me an example of working across the company to achieve a positive result for a prospect?” “Give me an example of a deal where you had to pull in other roles to help you close? Who was involved? What part did they play?” “Give me an example of a deal where you involved the founder. What stage was the deal in and why did you decide to involve them?” “Tell me about a time you had to persuade another leader to help in order to close a deal?” “Give me an example of when you’ve felt stressed or annoyed with a colleague, leader or customer. What did you do?” “Give me an example of when you have strongly disagreed with a peer, team member or leader? What happened?” “Give me an example where you managed a customer objection badly. What happened?” “Give me an example of where you managed a customer objection well?” “Give me an example of when a prospect demanded something that you could not or would not give. How did you handle it?”

Table 4: Skills interview 2 template

Skills interview 3

Competencies to test:	Communication, Organised and Analytical, Resilient
Who:	Co-founder or senior team member
Format:	30 – 45 minutes call or in person
Goals:	Determine if the candidate communicates well with different levels of stakeholders and via different channels Understand if the candidate has a structured approach to managing and prioritising their workload Learn more about how the candidate deals with setbacks, difficult situations and failure
Question bank:	Testing for the communication competency is mostly achieved through observation and paying careful attention to how they listen and respond to your questions. For example – Are they brief? Articulate? Do they speak with clarity? Use one or more of the following questions to dig deeper if needed – Give me an example of adjusting your communication style to the audience? What communication channel do you use most? Why? Tell me about a time a prospect meeting went off the rails? What did you do to get back on track? Give me an example of where you’ve had to sell a prospect on your company and its mission as well as the technology? Tell me about your last meeting with a CxO. Did you do anything differently compared to meetings with other stakeholders? Select from the following questions to determine if the candidate is organised and analytical – How do you manage and prioritise your workload? How do you prioritise inbound leads? How do you keep track of actions in complex deals with multiple stakeholders? What data sources do you regularly use in your work? How do you use them to help you close deals? Select from the following questions to determine if the candidate has resilience – Give me an example of closing deals without the resources you needed? What did you do? Tell me about a deal you lost that still bothers you today? Tell me about a time when you significantly missed quota. What did you learn from that experience and what did you change as a result? Give me an example of a recent professional setback?

Table 5: Skills interview 3 template

The next stage

In the next article in this series we will look at conducting a career deep dive interview which is at the heart of stage 3 of our structured interview process.

In the meantime, if you are interested in learning more about behavioural and drill down questions please feel free to DM or email me at rav@crane.vc if you have any questions.