Every candidate Beacon Talent presents has cleared the same three-part standard, developed by founder David Berk and run on every search since day one. Not a values statement. A screen.
Most recruiting is keyword-matching with extra steps: years of experience, a title that sounds right, a couple of recognizable logos. That works for roles where the job is to maintain something that already exists. It fails constantly for GTM roles, where the actual job is usually to build something that doesn't exist yet, and a resume cannot tell you who has actually done that.
The Builder's Standard exists because we watched the same mis-hire happen over and over, at every level, across every GTM function: someone who looked exactly right on paper, and had never personally built the thing the role actually required. Three checks catch it, every time.
Did the candidate personally source the pipeline, build the team, or ship the system themselves, or did they walk into one that already worked? This is the single question that separates a real operator from a polished resume, and it applies to every GTM role we place, not just sales.
An enterprise AE who closed $500K deals fed by a built-out SDR team and a strong inbound engine.
An AE who personally identified the account, made first contact, and closed it with no pipeline handed to them.
Ask them to walk you through their single biggest self-sourced deal from scratch: how they identified the account, first contact, and close. Then ask what they'd do differently. Builders have a detailed, specific answer. Inheritors struggle here.
"I exceeded quota" tells us nothing. It's not checkable and it's not comparable. What we ask for instead: the exact quota, the exact attainment percentage, the exact deal size, the time period, and what the rest of the team averaged around them. A rep at 110% where the team average is 65% is a fundamentally different candidate than one at 85% where the team average is 90%, even though the second number looks worse on its own.
"I was a top performer and consistently exceeded my targets."
"$1.2M quota, closed at 118%, average deal size $22K, 45-day sales cycle, team average was 71%."
This standard applies past sales roles too. A growth marketer talking in CAC payback and cohort retention passes. One talking in channels and impressions without connecting to revenue does not.
A candidate can be a genuine builder with real numbers and still be wrong for a specific search, if their stage, ACV, and motion don't match what the hiring company actually needs. We match on those three things explicitly, then verify the fit the way most recruiters skip: by calling the manager the candidate actually reported to, not the reference the candidate selects.
The question is always the same: on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to hire them again, and why? Anything below a 9 is a red flag. Then we ask what's the one thing they need to work on. That answer tells us everything a controlled reference never will.
Beacon Talent's screening methodology for GTM candidates, developed by founder David Berk and run on every search: Built Not Inherited, The Number Not the Story, and Verified Fit Not Assumed Fit.
Because the most common and costly GTM mis-hire is someone who managed or inherited a system that already worked, not someone who built it. An enterprise AE fed by a built-out SDR team is not the same candidate as one who personally sourced and closed in a startup environment, even when the resumes look similar.
We call the manager the candidate actually reported to, not a reference the candidate selects, and ask one direct question: on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to hire them again, and why. Anything below a 9 is a red flag.
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