The Pros and Cons of Blind Hiring for Sales: An In-Depth Look
Diversity and inclusion have become top priorities for sales organizations in recent years, and for good reason. Research shows that companies in the top quartile for ethnic and cultural diversity on their sales teams outperform those in the bottom quartile by 35% in profitability. Gender diverse sales teams also consistently outperform less diverse teams in terms of revenue generation.
However, despite increased focus and investment, progress has been slow. A recent survey by Sales Hacker found that over 75% of B2B sales professionals are still men and over 80% are white. Unconscious bias in hiring is often cited as a major barrier to moving the diversity needle.
This is where the practice of "blind hiring" comes in. By removing certain identifying information from the recruiting process, the goal is to reduce bias and create a more level playing field for all candidates, regardless of gender, race, age, etc.
While blind hiring has gained traction for some corporate roles, it remains a controversial topic in the sales world. On one hand, proponents argue it‘s an important tool for increasing diversity and focusing on the skills that really matter for the job. Critics counter that sales hiring relies too heavily on intangible traits and in-person interaction to ever go fully "blind."
So what‘s the real story? Let‘s take a deep dive into the potential benefits and drawbacks of blind hiring for sales roles, as well as some strategies to implement elements of it into your process.
The Case for Blind Hiring in Sales
Reducing Unconscious Bias and Increasing Diversity
One of the primary arguments in favor of blind hiring is its potential to mitigate the impact of unconscious bias in screening and selecting candidates. Studies have consistently shown that resumes with white-sounding names receive 30-50% more callbacks than those with African American or Asian names, even when the qualifications are identical.
Blind hiring, by removing details like names, photos, and educational background from initial applicant profiles, aims to take implicit bias out of the equation and enable a more objective evaluation of skills and potential.
For sales teams looking to cast a wider net and surface candidates from underrepresented groups, this could be a game-changer. As mentioned above, greater racial and gender diversity has been linked to improved revenue performance. Blind hiring can help get more of those diverse candidates in the door.
Zeroing in on the Attributes That Matter Most
Another key benefit of blind hiring is that it shifts the focus squarely onto the competencies and traits that are most predictive of sales success. By stripping away personal identifiers and "reading between the lines" of the resume, hirers can zoom in on evaluating the seller‘s most relevant attributes.
What are those attributes exactly? Research by Salesforce has identified the following core traits of top performing reps:
- 83% have high levels of self-awareness
- 87% are strong problem solvers
- 82% are competitive and willing to take risks
- 85% display high emotional intelligence
Assessing these traits blindly, through methods like psychometric testing, simulations, and anonymized interviews, can help sales orgs make more objective and data-driven hiring decisions. It‘s about looking beyond the pedigree and uncovering the true "selling DNA."
Expanding the Talent Pool and Hiring for Potential
Blind hiring also has the potential to significantly expand the talent pools that sales teams are drawing from. By considering candidates based primarily on their core capabilities vs. their history or background, it opens the door for more "non-traditional" applicants.
Think sales reps without college degrees, those from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, career-changers from other industries, re-entering parents, etc. Blind hiring creates opportunities to surface diamonds in the rough that might have previously been screened out.
This "hiring for potential" mindset is especially relevant at a time when sales teams are struggling to fill open headcount. A 2021 survey by Highspot found that the average sales role takes over two months to fill and nearly 60% of companies say hiring sales talent is harder than ever.
By removing some of the traditional barriers and focusing on aptitude vs. experience alone, blind hiring can help sales orgs access desperately needed talent and build more future-ready teams.
The Challenges and Pitfalls of Blind Hiring in Sales
The Essential Human Element of Selling
While the potential benefits of blind hiring are significant, there are also some major challenges to applying it to sales. Perhaps the biggest is the critical importance of human interaction and relationship-building to the sales process.
More than most other business functions, sales success is heavily dependent on interpersonal skills, communication ability, empathy, and overall likability. Sellers need to connect emotionally with buyers, build trust and rapport, and in many cases be someone the customer genuinely enjoys spending time with.
Assessing these intangible traits is very difficult to do through blind hiring methods alone. Resumes, written assessments and even voice-altered interviews can only tell you so much about a candidate‘s ability to influence and persuade.
There‘s a reason why the final round of the sales interview process almost always involves in-person meetings, presentations, and social interactions. Hiring managers and peers need to experience the candidate "live" to get a true feel for their sales potential. Until we develop highly sophisticated AI and VR technologies, this is unlikely to change.
Demonstrating Sales Skills in Real-Time
Another big hurdle for blind sales hiring is the need for candidates to demonstrate their abilities in real-time, high stakes environments. Unlike many other roles, selling is a performance art that requires quick thinking, improvisation and grace under pressure.
This is why most sales hiring processes include things like mock sales calls, role plays, whiteboarding sessions and case study presentations. Managers want to see how the candidate performs "in the moment" and reacts to common sales objections and scenarios.
Anonymizing this kind of live skill demonstration is incredibly difficult. Even if you use voice alteration software, the mannerisms, body language and physical appearance of the candidate still come through. And those matter in assessing overall sales presence and ability.
Purely automated or written assessments may be able to test certain core sales competencies, but they fall short in simulating the dynamic, real-world situations that reps face. There is not yet a good substitute for seeing sellers in live action.
The Need for Culture and Team Fit
In addition to selling ability, another key criteria for most sales hires is culture and team fit. Sales leaders want reps who not only produce individually, but also gel well with the rest of the team and embody the company‘s values.
Evaluating this culture fit requires picking up on subtle cues and characteristics – sense of humor, small talk topics, communication style, etc. – that are hard to assess without meeting the candidate in-person. How someone carries themselves and interacts with others is also important.
While blind hiring can help eliminate some demographic-based assumptions, it also takes away valuable information for determining organizational alignment. Making a bad culture fit hire can be toxic for the morale and productivity of the entire sales team.
Without being able to openly see and interact with candidates, it‘s very challenging to get a complete picture of what they would really be like to work with day-to-day. Blind hiring in its purest form has limitations in selecting for team chemistry.
How to Implement Elements of Blind Hiring in Sales
While a 100% blind hiring process is likely not realistic or even desirable for most sales teams, there are still ways to incorporate some of the key principles and practices. Here are a few strategies to consider:
1. Use validated, job-relevant assessments
Implement standardized assessments and simulations that objectively measure core selling competencies – things like prospecting, needs discovery, objection handling, closing, etc. Have candidates complete these before any interviews to get a skills-based baseline.
2. Anonymize initial resume screens
Before reviewing applicant resumes, have someone on your team remove all non-essential personal information – name, photo, college, address, hobbies, etc. This allows the initial screen to focus solely on job-related qualifications and mitigates "pedigree bias."
3. Standardize your interview process
Develop a set of structured behavioural interview questions that all candidates are asked in the same order. Train your interviewers to stick to the script and probe for specific examples of relevant skills and experience. This reduces bias from unstructured, subjective conversation.
4. Have multiple interviewers score independently
For each stage of the interview process, have at least 2-3 interviewers meet with the candidate separately and fill out a standard evaluation scorecard. Tally the scores at the end to make decisions based on the wisdom of the crowd vs. individual opinions.
5. Leverage blind pre-screening questions
Use standardized pre-screening questions on your job application or initial outreach to surface the most relevant, job-related information about the candidate. Things like "What is your approach to handling common sales objections?" or "Tell me about a time you overcame adversity to hit your sales target." The answers will give you valuable insight without the distraction of demographic-based assumptions.
The Future of Blind Hiring in Sales
As the pressure to build more diverse and inclusive sales teams continues to mount, blind hiring will undoubtedly play a bigger role in the future. While a fully anonymized process may never be feasible, sales orgs will increasingly adopt tactics and tools to mitigate bias and create more objective, consistent hiring practices.
We can expect to see advancements in pre-employment sales assessments, job simulations, anonymized interviewing and AI-driven candidate matching in the coming years. Forward-thinking teams will use predictive analytics to determine which traits and behaviors are most indicative of sales success and hire for those in a more targeted, data-driven way.
At the same time, the irreplaceable human elements of sales hiring are not going away anytime soon. Organizations will still place a premium on candidates‘ ability to build trust, close deals and gel with the existing team culture. The key will be striking the right balance – leveraging blind practices on the front-end to surface the most qualified, diverse talent, and then incorporating more interpersonal evaluation on the back-end.
Those sales orgs that can master this balance will be well-positioned to win the war for talent. Not only will they make better, less biased hiring decisions, but they will also show candidates that they are committed to building equitable, inclusive teams. In a competitive field like sales, that commitment to fairness and objectivity can make all the difference in attracting top performers from all backgrounds.
Is blind hiring the magic bullet that will single handedly solve the sales diversity gap and eliminate hiring bias? Certainly not. These are complex, deep-rooted challenges that defy silver bullet solutions. But by thoughtfully applying some of the underlying principles and tactics, sales teams can absolutely make meaningful progress towards more fair, effective and future-ready hiring practices.
Embracing blind hiring as part of a larger DEI strategy shows that your organization is willing to challenge the status quo and rethink legacy assumptions in service of building the best sales force possible. And in an ever diversifying business landscape, that open-minded approach is more critical than ever.
