BetterUp Account Executive Interview Questions
& Process

The whole interview process took about a month. It started off really well. I had a phone screen, then an interview with the sales manager, followed by an interview and a mock territory plan presentation with the sales leader. After that, there was a loop with a sales team member, a coach, and two people not from sales. The sales interviews were great and it felt like a strong mutual fit. The final loop was okay, but the first non-sales person, who was in sales enablement but didn't have much actual sales experience, seemed to be looking for a very specific type of candidate for a discovery exercise. It felt like they wanted someone to fit a particular mold, which is odd because top salespeople usually stand out and don't fit a mold. The final exercise is where things went wrong. They said not to prepare for it, calling it a GTM exercise to gauge how you think. The person in charge of this exercise, who has a PhD, is apparently very strict, and others have had similar experiences. If your thinking doesn't align with theirs, you won't get an offer. They expect you to know exactly what to do in a mock GTM exercise, even though it's not directly related to sales. This really highlights how non-sales people and a restrictive hiring process can prevent hiring top talent. They seem to prefer people who think in a certain way and don't want unique individuals. If you're someone who thinks differently, this might not be the place for you. They follow a script and expect a specific mold, which shows their exclusivity.

The interview process is pretty straightforward. You'll meet with people from the sales org and other departments. They'll give you half the time to ask questions and everyone is generally pretty friendly. It's important to point out that BetterUp seems like a very young company where they'll value things like 'energy' & 'ability to fit' over more tangible examples of being an agent of change for your past clients, your degree of business acumen, past performance, etc. This is pretty typical behavior when you scale up an organization and put a lot of leaders in place where its their first leadership role. So definitely come to the interview bright eyed and bushy tailed. Also if you're a seasoned sales professional, be prepared to go through trivial sales exercises that are conducted by folks that haven't worked directly in sales before. It's the equivalent of asking someone who has been a database administrator for 10 years if they know what a relational database is. The exercises are a bit soul crushing granted you're not brand new to sales, but you can jump through the hoops easily enough if you prep.

This was a long process with 8 interviews total, but I was really impressed by how much care they put into it. The interviewers were all super experienced and genuine, which was great. I met people from Sales, a Solutions Consultant who was also a Behavioural Scientist, someone from Programs, and even one of the Founders. This whole process really made me want to join the company because of its culture and mission. They included a case study to see how I think and a role-play for the AE position, where I had to do a typical discovery and pitch using some provided slides.