Why you need to create an Ideal Candidate Profile for sales hiring

What is an ideal candidate profile and why do you need one

Author

Jess Schultz
March 23, 2025

Hi there - Happy Sunday! I’m back 😎 

This month we’ve covered -

This week, we’ll build upon the sales hire prep topic by talking about the Ideal Candidate Profile.

Let’s go!

What is an Ideal Candidate Profile?

Just like you have an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for your sales process, you should have an Ideal Candidate Profile for your sales recruiting process.

This is not the same thing as your job description - although they are related.

  • Your job description is your external-facing asset used to explain the job itself and attract the right candidates.

  • Your Ideal Candidate Profile is your internal-facing document used to document the ideal person for the job and guide your candidate evaluation and selection process.

Some things to consider when building this profile

Experience

Consider the necessary experience for your particular industry, product, maturity, and client profile mix.

For example…

Experience Type

Question?

Guidance

Company Maturity Experience

Have they worked at a startup before? Or have they only worked at large enterprises with mature sales and marketing orgs?

This one might be obvious, but if they’ve only worked at large corporations before with very mature sales and marketing functions…they are likely to struggle in your unstructured, ever-changing startup environment.

Industry Experience

Is it critical for them to have specific experience in your industry?

Sometimes, this is mission critical…for example, one of my clients sells software to support private credit transactions. Private credit is fairly complex and nuanced…it’s not as easy to learn as selling software like Calendly where most people can understand the benefit of having a scheduling link.

Deal Size Experience

Do they have relevant experience with your deal size and complexity?

For example…if they’ve only sold to SMBs where the deal cycle is 90 days on average and ~$50k ACV, they might struggle to adapt to selling to enterprise orgs where the tactics to open doors and close deals are much different, given it’s a 12 month+ sales cycle with a $1mm ACV price tag.

ICP Experience

Do they have experience selling to your ICP? Selling to CTOs is very different than selling to CHROs.

Now this doesn't mean someone can’t learn how to sell to CTO’s, but this may or may not be critically important to their success selling your particular product. Make sure you consider the importance of this factor for your needs and customers.

Approach & Tactical Skills

Next, consider the ideal candidate’s historical pipeline-building approach and tactical skills.

Approach to Pipeline

How have they built pipeline in their prior orgs? Cold calling? Strategic Partnerships? Thought leadership? Or have they mainly relied on inbound marketing-generated leads?

Which do you think is most important for your product/buyer/industry? If they are expert cold callers, but you don’t think that approach works well with your ICP…it’s not a match.

If they’ve only really worked pipeline generated by marketing (inbound) in prior roles and haven’t had to source their own deals…will that be a problem for you? Or do you have a steady stream of leads you simply need an experienced seller to nurture to close?

Tactical Skills

Consider their working style and tactical skills.

Is this person super organized and process-oriented naturally? Can they create their own structure? Or are they only successful when provided with a lot of structure?

Usually, as a startup, you can’t provide a ton of structure, so you need someone who can thrive in an unstructured environment. A process maker / builder who can bring order to chaos.

I’d ask questions about how they typically manage their time, performance, and priorities to suss this out.

💡 Also - if they’ve worked in onboarding or operations roles before, that’s usually a good sign they have some organizational chops.

Bottom line…

If you spend the time to profile your ideal candidate in detail like this BEFORE you start interviewing, you’re much more likely to find the best match for your specific sale/product/buyer/GTM motion.

Hope that helped! See ya next week.

Want to learn more about how I help startups increase their revenue by 150-590%? 👀 

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With love and gratitude, 

Jess Schultz

Founder & CEO

Amplify Group

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