Stop 5 of 8 · Later
Hiring a rep
A job post, eight screening questions, a scoring sheet for redacted resumes and a first week that does not fall apart.
You are not hiring a resume
The seventh person in Nadia's six-person company changes the company. An outside rep at a dental-supply distributor drives all day, sees twelve offices a week, sells consumables that reorder themselves and equipment that does not, and is alone from eight until four. Half the resumes you will get are from people who have never done that and want to.
The writing around a hire is a full day: the post, the questions, the comparison, the plan for week one. That day is why owners hire the first tolerable candidate in March and regret it in June. It is also the day Claude can take back.
The post, the screen, the sheet
Write the post around the week, not around adjectives. What the day looks like, what makes someone good at it here, what you do not expect them to know. Then eight screening questions where a strong candidate and a weak one give visibly different answers. Then a scoring sheet so four resumes are read against the same five things instead of against whichever one you read last.
Try this
Write a job post for an outside sales rep at a six-person dental-supply distributor in Orange County. The territory is about 120 dental offices, mostly repeat consumables with some equipment. Cover what the week actually looks like, what makes someone good at it here, what we do not expect them to arrive knowing, and how to apply. No corporate language and no list of adjectives. Under 350 words. Leave the pay as [range].
Give me eight screening questions for that role where a strong candidate and a weak one answer visibly differently, and for each one tell me what a good answer sounds like. Two of them should be about an account that has stopped ordering. None of them should be about strengths and weaknesses or where they see themselves in five years.
[paste the resume with the name, address and phone number removed] Score this candidate against the job post on five things: territory experience, consumables versus equipment, keeping accounts, being on the road all day, and evidence they can work alone. One to five on each, and beside every score quote the line from the resume that justifies it. Finish with the two questions I should ask this person.
Write a five-day plan for a new rep's first week: what they ride along on, what they read, the twelve accounts they call, and what they should be able to do without me by Friday. One page. Assume nobody here has more than an hour a day to spend on them.