What to screen for
Sales resumes are full of numbers that are hard to check and easy to inflate: percentage of quota, deal sizes, rankings. First-round phone screens tend to reward the people who are good at phone screens. What you actually want to know is how a candidate works a deal.
- Discovery. Do they ask questions that uncover the buyer's real problem, or jump straight to a pitch?
- Qualification rigor. Can they tell a real opportunity from a friendly conversation, and do they walk away from bad fits?
- Objection handling. Do they explore the objection or argue with it?
- Motivation. Why this role, this product and this kind of buyer?
These are exactly the four competencies on the default scorecard of Nova's customer-facing profile, each weighted at 25%. Adjust them for your motion: an SDR role might weight discovery and motivation higher, an enterprise AE role qualification.
Example questions
Examples
We wrote these to illustrate the approach. Infyva generates the questions for your role from your job description. On Pro and Enterprise you can use your own fixed question bank instead.
You get fifteen minutes with a head of operations who agreed to a call but has not said why. What are the first three questions you ask?
Open questions about their current process, what prompted the call and what a good outcome looks like. A pitch in the first minute is a weak answer.
Tell me about a deal you decided not to pursue. How did you know?
Specific signals (no budget owner, no timeline, wrong fit), the conversation where they called it, and what they did with the time saved.
A prospect says, "Your price is 30% higher than the tool we already use." What do you say next?
Asks what the comparison includes, finds out what the current tool costs them in other ways, and only then talks value. Discounting immediately scores low.
Walk me through your best quarter. What did you do differently?
Concrete numbers, the activity behind them, and what they learned. Credit to the team or the market where it belongs.
Why do you want to sell this product to this kind of customer?
Specific, researched reasons tied to the buyer and the problem. "I love sales" on its own is generic.
How scoring works
Each answer is transcribed and scored against the scorecard competencies, with a written explanation you can read next to the recording. Two details keep the result honest:
- Evidence caps. A competency score cannot sit more than 15 points above the answer it cites, so the scorecard cannot run ahead of the answers.
- Content, not delivery. Infyva scores what is said. Accent, tone of voice and speaking style are not evaluated, so a polished voice with no specifics does not beat a plain answer with a real example.
If a candidate answers fewer than three questions, the report says there is not enough evidence to recommend a next step, rather than guessing.
What the report shows
- Every answer recorded and transcribed, so a sales manager can listen to the objection answer in under a minute.
- Scores per competency with reasoning, strengths and concerns.
- Integrity notes tied to the answer they happened on, such as leaving the tab mid-answer.
- A share link for the hiring manager, no account needed.
Where this fits in a sales process
Use the AI interview to replace the first screening call, not the whole loop. A sensible process looks like this: voice interview for every qualified applicant, then a live conversation with the hiring manager for the top group, then a role-play or mock call with the team. The first step is where you need consistency and volume; the later steps are where you need people.
- Describe your sales motion in the job description: inbound or outbound, deal size, cycle length, who they sell to. Questions come from it. Our job description guide has a template.
- Ask every candidate the same questions so you can compare like for like. See structured interviews.
- Read the reasoning, not only the numbers. The explanation behind each score is often where a manager decides who to meet.
Frequently asked questions
Can an AI interview really test a salesperson?
It can test how a candidate thinks and explains: how they run discovery, qualify, and handle a specific objection, in their own voice. It does not replace a live role-play with your team later in the process, and we would not suggest skipping that.
Will confident talkers score higher than careful ones?
Scores come from the content of the answer against the competencies, not delivery. A fluent answer with no specifics scores lower than a plain one with a real example and numbers.
Which scorecard does a sales role use?
The customer-facing Nova profile ships with Discovery, Qualification rigor, Objection handling and Motivation, weighted equally. You can edit the competencies and weights for your team.