In an initial e-mail to viable candidates, you could keep this question as simple and open-ended as possible. You don’t want to prime the self-marketing pump by offering too many suggestions or examples of what you are looking for. The goal is to get at the candidate’s authenticity, and to get inside the black box—separating the candidate’s marketing skill from his or her genuine compatibility.

Here is an extremely simple strategy that links this chapter with the previous one. After you collect information from your top performers on questions they would ask the next candidate for the job, consider asking exactly the same thing of the candidate: What would you, as a candidate, want to know most about your skills, competencies, and qualifications, if you were the one who was interviewing?

In essence, you are involving your candidate in the assessment and benchmarking process by asking them this:

Again, after collecting this information from current top performers, you can both expedite and add clarity to the upcoming interview process by asking candidates to provide you in advance with a brief essay of two to three pages, describing what they feel are the most important skills, competencies, and character traits required of a professional in their role, and to give some evidence in writing of how those skills, competencies, and traits have been linked with their most significant accomplishments on the job recently, with a clear description of what the results were, and the process they used to obtain them.

The following is an example of such an assignment I have used in the past.

The purpose of keeping this writing request simple is to see how the candidate will respond to an open-ended task. The assignment of the exercise also enables you to compare and contrast what your current top performers perceived as the most important traits and qualities needed for the job with what the prospective candidate had to say.

As simple as it may seem, using this approach to shift part of the burden of the interview to the candidate up front allows you to accomplish many goals in a short period of time:

Moreover, this written documentation or self-assessment by the candidate submitted in advance will help you to get a much better understanding of the candidate’s qualities or competencies in the following areas:

In other words, the assignment of tasks such as this helps us to find out if the candidate is entitled or not, has a good sense of dependability and follow-through, has the character traits you are looking for, takes the job seriously, and has something to prove. It’s also a quick way to weed through the 300 resumes that you may have sitting on your desk.

Following is an excellent example of a character-based essay written by a former candidate who kindly gave me permission to reprint it here. Take the time to analyze it fully, and you will see how valuable such an assignment can be as part of the selection portfolio when you are trying to identify potential champions.

The following prescreening essay was written by a former candidate named Gerry St. Onge who went on to become a recruiter with Brainworks, a staffing firm based in New Jersey. Consider what you have learned about the nature of character and success once you have finished.

I am a firm believer in the power of intention. Setting goals and envisioning the realization of goals lines up the energy for steadfastness and insistence on reaching the goal. In your mind the goal has already been reached, it’s just a matter of time and effort to realize it. With this state of mind, each task along the way is merely a means to an end. There will be successes and failures along the way—you learn from both, amplifying those things that contribute to successes and learning from and eliminating those things that have contributed to failures.

When I take on a sales challenge, I first assess the landscape of territory, company capabilities, history, etc. I then develop a set of long-term objectives (2-3 years) of what I want to accomplish. From there I can break down a set of medium- and short-term objectives, and from them develop a detailed plan of execution, knowing that I must be creative and innovative in adapting the plan as necessary along the way. This approach is very powerful in that it feeds confidence and resiliency, putting day-to-day experience (positive and negative) in the context of the big picture. It supports better judgment and decision-making along the way. When you are that determined and a bit obsessed with the end goal, hard work becomes great leverage. It’s a matter of “cranking the wheel”—a function of time and effort.

This approach has contributed to my success throughout my career. I’ll share one example here. At Synet, I was tasked to create new business in the northeast of the United States in the Enterprise Systems Management consulting space. Synet had a solid track record delivering tangible results for clients by transforming their customer support centers into best-in-class operations delivering best-in-class customer satisfaction. From this success, Synet targeted the wider ESM space possessing an advanced methodology and a small group of brilliant executers. I developed long-term objectives that included establishing Synet in the northeast as the leading ESM solutions provider, establishing Synet as a partner of choice with its alliance partners in the northeast, and establishing the northeast as the most productive in sales, revenue, and profit within Synet. This was an aggressive set of goals, given that there was no existing business in the northeast. I was convinced that the market was ripe, the competition was vulnerable, and Synet brought differentiated value.

The tactical plan was heavy in cold-calling to get appointments with prospects and alliance partner regional managers. Having the end game in mind, along with the power, gave me great leverage in plowing through the many calls needed to yield the appointments necessary to kick off my sales efforts. I was able to build a $2M pipeline for Synet within 6 months, and a $4M revenue stream within 12 months.

In sales, as in life, if you are going after something, go all the way. Selling is fun because you create the business—you search it out, guide it, nurture it, and bring it home. The result of your work solves problems for clients and it feeds the juice of your company. You make a difference. It’s very exciting. You have to believe in yourself, your company’s capabilities, and the value you can deliver to your clients. You have to believe that you are helping your clients solve important business problems, and delivering business advantage to them. Your job is to win them over for their own good. They may not initially understand the value you can bring them. It’s your job to show them the way; you must be tenacious to break through to demonstrate how you can help—they will thank you in the end. It’s like being on a mission, and although there are bumps along the road, the mission must be accomplished for the good of your client, your company, and yourself.

Ultimately, a sale requires winning and maintaining the respect and trust of the buyer. To that end, you must be very careful to set expectations, and then, preferably, exceed them. Doing what you say you will do starts with being realistic with your promises and helping your client set realistic expectations.

Successful sales campaigns require an orchestration, coordination, and manipulation of critical variables. It’s a complex project with many players, with many agendas and demands on their attention. Frequent and effective communications are critical here to maintain the buyer’s attention level. It is critical to promptly confirm various things with the prospect, which represent milestones as you move through the sales process—such as requirements, commitments, and time frames—as you establish agreement on the problem and the value of your solution, and manage buyer actions culminating in deal closure. Staying close to the buyer will also best ensure that new, or currently unknown, variables can be surfaced and managed, minimizing the risk of surprises that can kill a sale.

By championing your sale, the buyer is taking on some level of risk, and you are his or her partner in the success of the endeavor. A strong sense of urgency and attention to detail demonstrates to the prospect your value as a dependable partner in realizing success and mitigating the risk of failure.

The multifaceted need of the buyer must be understood in order to craft an offer that truly meets the requirements better than the competition. Like peeling an onion, you must probe and investigate all aspects of the problem. You must know what motivates the buyer and the influencers. Sometimes the “requirements” initially described hide deeper needs, often indicating a more complex problem. Your ability to uncover what I call the “nerve source” (down to the emotional level) of the problem yields two powerful advantages. First, your understanding of the real needs, along with your solution that addresses them, offers great competitive advantage. Second, by demonstrating your ability to go beyond the stated requirements, and ideally expanding the buyers’ understanding of the depth of their own problem, wins valuable consultant relationship points. The discovery process in the sales cycle has a powerful selling effect. Asking great questions and listening effectively demonstrates partner value, builds trust, and forms relationship foundations that are invaluable as you win acceptance of the solution and close the deal. I believe that leverage obtained in the discovery phase wins deals.

At the end of the day we are problem solvers. For me, this is the zenith of the fun and greatest contributor to my satisfaction. We help our companies by solving the problem of increasing market share, sales, revenue, and profit. We do this by selling solutions to our clients’ business problems. And in the process we have fun, find satisfaction, and make money as we continue to hone our craft.

In any high-level sales environment, sales effectiveness requires that the salesperson be knowledgeable about the problem and solution space surrounding his or her offers. When taking on a new sales challenge, I make it a top priority to quickly build expertise such that I can engage clients in discussion about their business and probe into the potential value of my offering. This is very important. It is critical to winning trust and developing a consultative relationship with the buyer. My goal is to develop knowledge to the point at which I can engage in discovery with buyers and in short order asses their situation and identify areas for deeper discovery that suggest opportunity potential.

I signed up to be the Year 2000 Sales Exec at NCR, initially to manage a large account but also to replicate and increase business with new accounts across the country. I was to be the Year 2000 specialist. I dug in, got close to the wisest folks on the subject, quickly learned the basics, and in short order, got my arms around the space enough to identify an opportunity to expand our offering into the program management arena. I rallied the troops around it, trained NCR sales teams across the country, and personally generated significant new business for the firm. I earned a reputation as the Y2K expert among my peers and for my clients.

I knew a little bit about infrastructure monitoring software when I joined Synet. I was far from an expert on Call Centers or ESM. Once again I got close to the brilliant minds in the firm and quickly achieved a solid understanding of the problem and solution space. Within a month, I was in a position to pursue an alliance partner who was a software supplier with an aggressive message that Synet was uniquely capable to help its clients actually realize value from their software investment. This led to the opportunity to present to their sales teams, which generated leads, turning into some healthy business for me. I was also able to credibly engage with the clients at any level and discuss their ESM strategy, offering observations and insight into potential risks in their approach, leading to another stream of healthy business.

We never stop learning. The world is constantly changing. We can always get better. Challenges and failures provide opportunities to learn. These clichés are so true. This is one of the things that makes life so much fun, and it helps us maintain a healthy level of humility. Sometimes, when we begin to think we know it all, life has its way of reminding us about how much we still have to learn. In sales as in life, it is important to remain open to the new and to discover what can make us better in our craft and our life. It is also critical in sales and in life not to take things personally. It is hard at times, but so important to look at bumps in the road and failures as an opportunity to learn.

This is a trait that I value in myself and in others. It is relatively rare in the world. It’s a mindset that says I’m responsible for something and its outcomes. There are variables, some of which are out of your control, but in sales, you are the owner of your sales objectives and you are accountable for the results you are tasked to deliver. You are the manager of variables. You own the outcome. There are no excuses. If there are variables that represent risk to closure, you must act to mitigate, or if you determine that they pose significant risk, you must assess that risk and choose whether to proceed accordingly as the steward of limited resources.

Where there is a will, there is a way. If you are committed to realizing a goal, there are many paths to success. The commitment to “find a way” is the seed of creativity and innovation, which is critical to successful sales performance. I have been fortunate to posses some skill in this area, and it has helped me in all areas of my life.

When I began my career at NCR, I joined as a junior sales rep on the largest financial account team in the country, selling mainframe computer systems. I discovered that the client was outgrowing our operating system, which was designed for small and mid-sized banks. The OS was failing on a regular basis, becoming a major distraction for the client and an obstacle to new sales. I took on the task to fix it—I dug in, developed a relationship with our biggest critic within the client, turned her around, led NCR’s development group to create a new response process for the client, and sought out and won approval to hire a third party consulting firm to provide on-site support for the client. No one gave these instructions to me—I found a way to solve the problem. I could not eliminate the bugs in our OS, but I significantly reduced the negative noise level that was hurting our sales process.

At Wang Labs I started with a territory at Citicorp that had blackballed Wang a while back due to fact that Wang had dropped a word-processing product that was well installed, and refocused resources in order to launch and support the new general-purpose and imaging processing minicomputer offering. I developed an attack plan that focused on four target offerings. I launched a recon campaign to identify suspects. I used an alliance partner’s sales tracking application and launched a comprehensive campaign including sending four letters to each target before I called them to follow up—the letters culminated with an invitation to a seminar. Out of that campaign, I closed several projects, including beating out competition for an international sales automation initiative where the software I use in my campaign was deployed for the client.

In conclusion, I think successful selling requires a wide blend of skills, including the ability to control or manage a spectrum of variables that you do not own, but must find a way to influence. I must believe that I am providing a valuable service to my territory, prospect, and client. This feeds my passion, enthusiasm, and tenacity necessary to drive the due-diligence required to reach or exceed my objectives.

As is evident, numerous competencies were addressed in this essay, showing both a high level of self-knowledge, and great attention to detail.

Perhaps most importantly, the author is able to provide clear, logical documentation of events from the past in which the display of character just summarized was connected with tangible results and tangible success. Furthermore—and this is a big one—the examples cited in this writing sample show a repeated pattern of success as a result of a habitual display of character in the workplace.

Armed with such a document before the interview, the interviewer is in a much more informed position to study the self-reported competencies of the candidate with those that were established as critical by the department, the hiring manager, and top performers. Considering the points made by the candidate in the essay just cited, take a moment to analyze how you might apply such a tool and strategy to your own hiring process and interview preparation. Of all the competencies or attributes Mr. St. Onge mentioned, which ones are also important for the jobs you are trying to fill in your department?

If you can think of any extra ones, write them here:

Using the information that serious, committed candidates will provide without complaint in advance as a primary research tool, interviewing the candidate becomes more of a delightful conversation than a grueling chore. You tend to prefer people who put forth effort in assessing themselves and help you to be more prepared for the interview.

And that is what the good behavioral interview is all about—informed, in-depth, carefully planned and meaningful conversations that allow the candidate to talk about the competencies, skills, and qualifications that he or she brings to the table.

Another assignment I find useful is the assignment of the Microsoft PowerPoint resume. Resumes can be a little lifeless sometimes, and it’s hard to digest hundreds of them at a time and separate the wheat from the chaff as quickly as you would like.

So, for candidates who are willing to go the extra mile, I ask them if they could turn their resume into a PowerPoint presentation and demonstrate the story of their career. I usually don’t ask candidates to follow a format—I give them full creative license, because I want to see what they will do when given an open-ended creative task. I usually learn a lot about the candidate after reviewing the results of the effort. I learn about the candidate’s:

If the candidate were to ask for direction on the PowerPoint resume assignment, I would indicate at least the following areas as essential components, preferably in this order, unless he or she thinks of something better:

The PowerPoint resume serves the same purpose as the essay: It gives you something more powerful than a resume. It gives you a window into the candidate’s character and mind at the same time. It helps you to see the “movie” of his or her life. And it also makes an outstanding addition to the candidate’s portfolio.

One of the most powerful strategies I have discovered for helping identify top-tier candidates is so important I will put it in a box:

By this point in the process, you have taken an exhaustive but practical and manageable look at performance indicators from the point of view of the organization and the candidate. In the next chapter, we will show you how to add another important layer of quality control through the proper use of assessment tests.