A market dive interview requires candidates to do some at-home research and to present new prospects and how they would approach them during a live presentation. More specifically, for junior roles, a market dive can lead to sourcing new quality prospects while; for senior roles, the exercise can lead to designing an acquisition strategy.
Recruiters will provide candidates with sales documentation as well as the exercise instructions beforehand. This comprehensive brief will provide accurate and relevant context to candidates to base their research. Candidates will then have to present their findings through an onsite or remote presentation.
For interviewers, a market dive is a great home assignment to review a candidate’s ability to provide data and interpretation leading to qualifying new prospects. Recruiters will also be able to assess their data collection tools and techniques as well as their ability to balance quantitative and qualitative research. Stellar candidates will distinguish themselves by showcasing great communication skills and strong work ethics in addition to sound research skills.
Here's a comprehensive check-list of a candidate’s skills that a market dive can help you assess:
- Ability to get up-to-speed on the company’s challenges by studying the documentation sent prior
- Ability to source and manipulate qualitative and quantitative data
- Ability to target the right people and understand their needs
- Ability to create creative, compelling and targeted communication to address these people
- Ability to detect market trends to target potential clients more effectively
- Ability to present the work done
Market Dive
Step 1 - Prepare your sales documentation
This documentation should gather some key information that will allow candidates to understand the market segments your company is targeting in order to be able to identify potential leads. You can use your own team’s sales documentation or put together a specific presentation - in both cases, make sure that those answer the following questions:
- What's your product's value?
- How do you segment your market?
- What defines a qualified prospect?
- What are your company's customer success stories?
- What are the challenges your sales team is currently meeting?
- How is your sales process organized?
If the market dive involves sharing sensitive data, consider signing an NDA with candidates.
Step 2 - Prepare the exercise
Recruiters have to create an exercise that fits the role’s seniority level they’re recruiting for.
For a junior sales position, ask candidates for a list of leads with qualification data as well as their outreach strategy. Their presentation should answer two questions:
- Why are those prospects good targets? Candidates can elaborate using persona, Ideal Customer Profile, ice-breaker ideas, etc.
- What would be their outreach strategy? It could be cold calling, messaging with specific content, sending outreach batches, etc.
For a senior or leadership sales position, ask candidates to study a new customer segment. Make sure to provide details on the format and depth you’re expecting: do you want a list of leads or are you looking for ideas to adapt the sales pitch, product or sales cycle? Example: "We consider providing our services to catering companies in the WA area. What adjustments would you make to our current products and sales methods to better serve this new segment? What messaging or approach would you go for?"
It’s estimated that candidates will spend 3 hours studying your sales documentation and from 4 to 10 hours doing their research. Since it’s a paid assessment, you can expect real insights or leads from candidates, whether they get hired or not.
Step 3 - Share your sales documentation and brief to the candidate
Send your sales documentation and exercise to the candidate ahead of time. Make sure to specify the expected presentation’s format - we advise you to ask candidates to use the tools your organization uses (Notion, Google Slide, Pandadoc, etc.) instead of a traditional Powerpoint presentation, unless your organization uses Powerpoint, of course.
The more information you share beforehand, the more you will evaluate a candidate's ability to get up to speed and be autonomous. The market dive is also a good way to lower the interview evaluation workload for your team: by asking the candidate to prepare alone you’re reducing the time you’ll spend with them in person.
Consequently, paid interviews or paid assessments are a great way to incentivize candidates to spend time preparing while also remaining fair to them and acknowledging the value of their work.
Last but not least, make sure you remain available to answer potential questions from the candidate to avoid any misunderstanding about the brief.
Step 4 - During the presentation
Here's a checklist of questions to have in mind when reviewing a candidate's findings:
- Were they able to learn from the documents you sent over and reuse that knowledge in their output?
- What are the sources, tools and techniques they used for their research?
- Are they proficient with your company’s data collection tools?
- How did they analyze the data they collected? Did they show some strong deductive reasoning to make assumptions from the data? Did they think critically to effectively analyze data?
- Were they able to observe some consumer trends?
- Were they able to distinguish direct and indirect competitors to get more insights into the market?
- Did they use creative thinking to reach customers in unique ways? Were their approaches adapted?
- Did they overall do the minimum or did they go above and beyond?
A market dive is also an opportunity to review some of the candidate's soft skills:
- How clear and concise was their presentation?
- How prepared was their document? Did they use the company's colors? Was it clean and without typos?
- Were they convincing in how they communicated their findings?
- Did they show active listening skills?
- Did they show good public speaking skills?
- Did they show good interpersonal communication skills?
- Did they show strong work ethics in how they sourced their data and how they would reach out to prospects?
