Hiring profile

A hiring profile describes the seller you need before you read a single résumé. It says what the job is, which deals they will run and what they must do well from day one. It also says what you will teach them, so you stop looking for a finished person.

It lives as a one-page document next to the onboarding plan. Write it from your own deals. Look at the CRM: your sales cycle, the number of deals per seller, who decides on the customer's side. A seller for short deals with many inquiries differs from one for long deals with several decision makers.

For example, the profile says the seller runs a discovery call alone. They write a proposal in a day and keep every next step dated.

Use the profile at every hiring step. The job post is built from it. The screening questions check it. The final interview includes a role play on a real situation from your deals. The head of sales and whoever else interviews score each candidate against the same list.

It changes the hiring decision from a feeling into a comparison. Each line of the profile asks for evidence: a deal the candidate ran, a number they tracked, a call you heard. A pleasant conversation without evidence does not fill a line.

The profile connects to onboarding and ramp time. What the profile demands on day one, onboarding does not need to teach. Check it against sales capacity: how many sellers the plan needs and when they must reach full strength.

• Copying a generic job post. It attracts everyone and filters no one. Write the profile from your own deals and your stages, then build the post from it.
• Asking for every skill at once. Nobody matches, or the best talker wins. Split the list into "must have on day one" and "can learn in onboarding".
• Judging by the interview alone. Candidates who sell themselves well do not always sell your product well. Add a role play based on one of your real deals.
• Never updating the profile. Your deals change and the profile goes stale. After each hire's ramp, check which lines predicted the result and rewrite the rest.

By Friday, the head of sales writes a one-page hiring profile for the next seller. Take your three best current sellers and note what they do that others do not. Turn each habit into a line with the evidence you will ask for. Split the lines into day one and onboarding, and send the page to the owner for comment.

A weekly meeting on stuck deals that ends with a decision and an owner for each.