Sales Aptitude & Skills Test (Pre-Hire)
A scored, role-specific written exercise — a cold email plus three objection responses — that candidates complete before the first call, giving you a real work sample instead of a résumé.
What's inside
- Verbatim candidate instructions ready to send
- Cold email brief with a specific persona and product context
- 3 written objection-handling scenarios
- 40-point email rubric + 60-point objection rubric (100 total)
- 4 score bands with what to do at each
- Grader calibration notes, including an AI-generated-answer detection tip
Format: Written, untimed-but-bounded (candidates get 48 hours, task itself should take 45–60 minutes), completed before the first live interview. Send this exactly as written (swap in your own product where marked).
Candidate instructions (send verbatim)
Thanks for applying for [Role] at [Company]. Before your first conversation with our team, we'd like you to complete a short written exercise — it takes most candidates 45–60 minutes and gives us both a real sample of how you work, rather than just a conversation about it. Please reply with your answers within 48 hours. There's no trick here — write it the way you'd actually write it on the job. AI tools are fine for research, but the writing and thinking need to be yours; we'll discuss your reasoning live in the next round either way.
Part 1 — Cold Email (40 points)
Brief given to candidate:
[Company] sells [one-sentence product description, e.g., "shift-scheduling software for multi-location retail and restaurant operators"]. Write a cold outbound email to Jamie Reyes, VP of Operations at a 40-location regional restaurant group, who has never heard of us. Assume you found them through a LinkedIn search, not a referral. Keep it to what you'd actually send — most good cold emails are under 120 words.
Scoring rubric
| Element | Points | What earns full marks |
|---|---|---|
| Subject line | 5 | Specific, not generic ("Question about scheduling at [Company]" beats "Quick question") |
| Relevance/personalization | 10 | Ties to something true about a 40-location multi-site operator specifically — not a template with [Name] swapped in |
| Value proposition clarity | 10 | States a specific outcome/problem solved in one sentence, no jargon, no feature list |
| Call to action | 5 | Single, low-friction ask (not "let me know if you're interested" — should propose a specific next step) |
| Structure & brevity | 10 | Under ~120 words, scannable, no wall of text |
| Subtotal | 40 |
Part 2 — Objection Handling (60 points, 20 each)
Brief given to candidate:
You're now on a call with Jamie and get the following three responses at different points in the conversation. Write out, word for word, exactly what you'd say back to each one.
Objection 1: "We already have a scheduling tool and honestly it's fine — I don't see us switching."
Objection 2: "This looks interesting, just send me some information and I'll take a look when I get a chance."
Objection 3: "Your price is a lot higher than what we're paying now."
Scoring rubric (apply to each of the 3 responses, 20 points each)
| Element | Points | What earns full marks |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledges without being defensive or dismissive | 5 | Doesn't argue the objection away or ignore it |
| Asks a clarifying question instead of pitching immediately | 5 | E.g., asks what "fine" means, what they'd want to see, what the price is being compared against |
| Reframes toward a specific value/outcome | 5 | Ties back to a concrete business outcome, not generic feature-selling |
| Clear, low-friction next step | 5 | Doesn't end on a vague "let me know" |
| Subtotal per objection | 20 |
Total Scoring
TOTAL SCORE: ___ / 100 (40 email + 60 objections)
| Band | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 85–100 | Strong signal | Proceed to live interview with high confidence; use their weakest-scoring objection as a live role-play follow-up |
| 65–84 | Solid, some gaps | Proceed; probe the specific low-scoring element live before deciding |
| 45–64 | Borderline | Only advance if other signals (referral, track record, culture-fit interview) are strong; treat as a flag, not a rejection |
| Below 45 | Weak signal on written sales communication | For experienced-hire roles, a real concern. For early-career candidates with no prior sales-writing experience, consider a live-verbal retest before deciding — writing is coachable and this may be testing polish, not aptitude |
Calibration notes for graders
- Use two independent graders; average the two subtotals per section.
- If the two graders' total scores differ by more than 15 points, discuss the specific line items that diverged (not the overall impression) before finalizing.
- Do not penalize imperfect grammar from non-native English speakers if the sales logic (relevance, clarifying question, reframe, next step) is sound — score the sales thinking, not the prose polish.
- Candidates who clearly used an AI tool to generate a generic, unpersonalized answer (a real risk on this format) should score low on "relevance/personalization" and "clarifying question" regardless of surface polish — those two elements are the hardest to fake convincingly.
How to use it
Send the candidate instructions and both parts verbatim, have two people grade independently against the rubric, and use the score band to decide how much confidence to bring into the live interview rather than as a standalone pass/fail gate.