Interview guides
The questions Scout asks: generated guides, templates, follow-ups, trying the interview yourself, languages.
An interview guide is the set of questions Scout asks a candidate, with the follow-ups, what a good answer looks like, and what to clarify. Scoring is measured against it, so the guide is where you set your bar. A guide is reusable: one guide can serve several roles.
How a guide is made
When a role is created, Scout drafts a short intro screen for it, six questions built from the job description and must-haves, and shows them to you.
Here's the intro screen I've drafted for Account Executive. Six questions, about 15 minutes:
1. Walk me through a deal you closed in the last year, from first contact to signature.
2. How do you build pipeline when marketing isn't feeding you leads?
3. Tell me about a deal you lost and what you'd do differently.
4. How do you run a discovery call?
5. What does your typical quarter look like against target?
6. Why this role, and why now?
Want to change anything, or shall I send you a link to try it yourself?
Then the loop is:
- Suggest. Scout proposes the questions.
- Refine. Tell it what to change: "make question 2 about outbound specifically", "drop the last one", "add a question on working with SDRs".
- Try. Say "let me try it". Scout sends you a demo interview link. You take it exactly as a candidate will, voice and all, and see the scorecard afterwards.
- Go. When you are happy, Scout moves on to outreach.
Templates
Thirteen built-in templates cover common roles. Start from one with "create a guide from the Enterprise AE template", or browse them on the dashboard under Interview Guides then Browse Templates.
- Account Executive (Enterprise), Account Executive (Mid-Market)
- Sales Development Rep (SDR), Business Development Rep (BDR)
- Customer Success Manager, Partnerships Manager, Revenue Operations
- Sales Engineer / Solutions Consultant, Sales Manager / Team Lead
- Senior Java Developer, DevOps Lead / Head of DevOps, Fullstack JavaScript Engineer (Mid), Senior Product Designer
What a question carries
| Part | What it is for |
|---|---|
| The question | What Scout asks, in order |
| Follow-ups | Up to two per question, used when an answer is thin |
| What a good answer looks like | The rubric the grader scores against |
| What to clarify | Things Scout should pin down if the candidate is vague |
Candidates see only the topics in advance, never the question text or the rubric.
Languages
A candidate picks the language for their interview on the invitation page: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin or Arabic. The guide stays as you wrote it; Scout conducts the interview in the chosen language and the transcript and scorecard come back to you in English.
Length
Scout estimates about three minutes per question, with a minimum of five, and tells the candidate before they start. An interview is capped at 30 minutes.
Manage guides on the dashboard
Interview Guides lists every guide. Open one to add, edit, reorder or remove questions, or press New Guide to build one from scratch. On a role, choose the Default Interview Guide that is pre-selected when you invite someone. Deleting a guide asks for a Confirm in Slack.
Keep the intro screen short. Six questions in fifteen minutes gets a higher completion rate than twelve in thirty, and the second round is where depth belongs.