For tech companies looking to hire for go-to-market (GTM) jobs, your interview process is key for narrowing down who will be your best fit for your unicorn seller. Whether you are a hiring manager at an early stage startup or an internal recruiter at a larger enterprise, however, the pool of qualified talent often remains limited and top performers are in high demand across the industry.
This article covers our top recommendations for refining your interview process to better evaluate candidates to find your unicorn fit. Drawing on our collection of educational resources, here we will go over our biggest tips for redefining the fundamentals of sourcing top talent in the current GTM landscape in tech:
Hiring for Tech in 2025
Hiring in the technology sector in 2025 is beset by new and changing unique dynamics that directly impact how you should approach interviewing. Many of the trends that drove talent acquisition for SaaS in previous years have seen continuous shifts, making recruitment chaotic at times and causing goals to constantly change even in the best case scenarios.
Here are some of the top developments impacting talent acquisition in the technology industry in 2025:
- Quiet Consideration: Many employees are actively but quietly browsing new potential jobs with better career prospects when feeling burnt out, greatly affecting turnover in key roles
- Enterprise Selling: Much of the SaaS and AI sectors have shifted sales targets to acquire more enterprise-sized accounts, creating more stable revenue streams
- Persona-based Sales Experience: Tech companies are changing their unicorn seller requirements, moving away from industry-based sales experience to the persona-based selling knowledge needed for the enterprise market
- AI Explosion: The generative artificial intelligence industry continues to grow exponentially, eclipsing other parts of tech
What is Making Tech Hiring Complex
Sales and other GTM roles in the modern tech landscape increasingly require knowledge and specializations that were lesser priorities 5 years ago, or may not have even existed yet. Customer Success roles have evolved into strategic consulting positions requiring executive-level relationship management. Even traditional Account Executive (AE) positions increasingly demand technical fluency that was once the exclusive domain of Sales Engineers.
Standard questions about volume of past experience and behavioral quirks are not going to cut it when you need to determine if a candidate will be able to drive your revenue up. This also has the consequence of dragging out your recruiting search, increasing your Cost-per-Hire as you spend more to source.
Your Interview Preparation
With many go-to-market roles requiring more specific experience, if not outright specialization in one or more fields, effective interviewing becomes even more critical in modern tech recruiting. Building on our established interview prep guidelines, here are our key recommendations for 2025:
Research Beyond the Resume
Resumes can only tell your hiring managers so much, especially for technical sales or customer success positions that require significant soft skills combined with product knowledge. This is where preparing the right questions for the interview becomes even more important, to help you dig into the candidate’s experience in areas that cannot be quantified in a CV adequately.
Understand Your Own Sales Motion
Before interviewing any candidate, ensure you can clearly articulate your sales motion, target personas and what success looks like in your environment. This clarity becomes essential when assessing whether a candidate’s experience aligns with your specific approach, regardless of their industry background.
Filter Out Bad Candidates
Here are a couple of tips to help filter out applicants that are most likely not going to be a good fit:
Check References
The more specific experience required of many current GTM roles today demands more thorough reference checking. For senior enterprise sales or executive candidates, this also means seeking more granular types of references:
- Client references to understand how customers perceived their value
- Peer references for insights into collaboration and teamwork
- Management references for performance and development perspectives
- Team member references to assess leadership and mentoring capabilities
Watch for AI-Generated CVs
AI can help some applicants reword their resume, but some unscrupulous candidates will leverage it to make up experience and skills they do not have. However, these can be easy to spot when you know what to look for:
- Too many empty (and inappropriately-used) buzzwords included
- Generic descriptions of activities without real milestones
- Overly-polished language regarding their job history and achievements
Many of these examples are signs of a bad CV regardless, so keeping on top of what you need in your unicorn candidates will help weed out the bad fits in either case.
Assessing Technical Knowledge Appropriately
The requirement for technical understanding across GTM roles has continued to intensify, particularly in AI and other emerging technology sectors. Not every salesperson needs to be an engineer, but – depending on their exact position, market and channel – your unicorn seller(s) will need to understand product specifications and use cases enough to communicate with stakeholders. Here are some ways to help your hiring managers assess technical competency without requiring an engineering degree:
Focus on Application, Not Theory
Rather than testing product knowledge academically, assess how candidates have applied their technical understanding in real world sales. Put together questions that allow them to explain how they engage either experts or non-technical stakeholders on the customer side, including examples of how well they have collaborated with customer success and product teams to address client needs.
Evaluate Learning Ability
For emerging technology areas, you will want to assess candidates’ ability to quickly grasp and articulate new technical concepts. Ask for examples of how they handled new products or transformative updates to existing platforms, looking for how well they have adapted to these changes and leveraged them for prospect or customer engagements.
Role-Specific Interviews
Interviews will change according to the position you need to hire for, as there will be different benchmarks for what makes a unicorn candidate. Keep your target sales motion and market audience in mind as you adapt your interviewing questions to fit with what you need in a top performer:
Account Executive
When interviewing AEs, focus first on their experience with your target deal sizes and sales cycle complexity. Ask about specific examples of stakeholder management, competitive situations they have navigated, and how they have collaborated with customer success and product teams during sales. For Enterprise Account Executives, you will also want to determine how well they understand C-suite needs, and ensure they can unify technical and business needs in the same conversation.
Customer Success Manager
For CSMs, evaluate strategic account planning and relationship building capabilities. Assess their approach to identifying expansion opportunities and their experience managing complex client relationships that drive both retention and revenue growth. For Enterprise Customer Success Managers, you will also want to gauge their consultative knowledge and history.
Sales Engineer
Sales Engineer interview questions must allow you to assess technical depth combined with business communication skills, focusing on their experience leading technical validation processes. Evaluate how well they have collaborated with sales teams to advance deals while maintaining technical credibility with stakeholders in the IT department.
Fast-Track Your Tech Talent Search with Betts Connect
Finding and screening qualified candidates for complex GTM roles can feel overwhelming when every hire needs to contribute immediately. Our Betts Connect platform helps you face this challenge by providing direct access to pre-vetted professionals who are actively seeking opportunities in the technology sector, ensuring every interview counts.
Contact Betts here to discover how Connect can transform your hiring process and connect you with the top-performing talent you need.