Why you need to create an Ideal Candidate Profile for sales hiring
What is an ideal candidate profile and why do you need one
Hi there - Happy Sunday! I’m back 😎
This month we’ve covered -
How to reduce your odds of failure with your first sales hire
Preparing for your first sales hire: A checklist for Founders
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…
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.
With love and gratitude -
If you want to learn more about working with me directly…
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