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Webinar tip · 22 October 2026
Stop asking candidates to present
Unless the job involves presenting, an interview presentation tests the wrong thing. Test the work itself instead.
Phil Mellows-FacerManaging Director, BMS Performance
The interview presentation is a fixture of many hiring processes. Phil Mellows-Facer, Managing Director of BMS Performance, questioned why it is there at all, unless the job involves presenting.
Test the job, not the presentation
His example: if you are hiring a salesperson whose job is booking appointments by phone, run a role play of a phone call. That shows you far more than a slide deck.
He was blunt about the classic "what will you do in your first 30, 60, 90 days?" presentation: candidates do not yet know what the job needs, so they should be told, not asked to guess.
What to do this week
- List the three things your next hire will actually spend most of their time doing.
- Replace the presentation with a short exercise based on one of them.
- Give every candidate the same brief, the same time and the same scoring criteria.
Read the clip transcript
Lots of people have presentations in an interview. I really question why they're there, unless somebody's job is to present. Yeah, so let's make it practical. So if you're going to have a salesperson that's job is to be on the telephone booking appointments, let's do a role-play of a phone call. Why are we asking you to present what you're going to do in your first 30, 60, 90 days? It's completely irrelevant, and they don't know what they're going to do. They should be told what they need to do.
From the webinar · Jan 2024
Rethinking recruitment to get ahead
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