The Written Screen Job Simulation
Send a shared doc of a dozen easy questions. Half the candidates disqualify themselves.
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 93%
Instead of relying on interview questions, Kazanjy screens sales candidates with a job simulation: a Google Doc containing about a dozen straightforward biographical questions, which the candidate is given edit rights to and asked to complete. The questions are easy on purpose. The screen's power is that roughly half of applicants simply never do it — and of those who do, the document reveals communication ability, narrative structure and attention to detail in a way no interview answer can.
Origin
Pete Kazanjy's own hiring practice at Atrium, which he also shares with his portfolio companies. He frames it as job simulation — testing the actual behaviour of the role (written communication and follow-through) rather than asking about it.
Core principles
- 01Simulate the job; don't interview about the job.
- 02Effort filters are the cheapest signal in hiring — make completion voluntary and watch who bothers.
- 03Written output exposes structure, care and detail simultaneously; a verbal answer exposes none of them reliably.
- 04The questions should be easy. Difficulty is not what does the screening work.
How to run it
- 1
Write a dozen simple biographical questions
Build a Google Doc with roughly twelve deliberately uncomplicated prompts, e.g. 'tell me about something that you built that you're proud of'. No trick questions, no puzzles.
Pro tip Keep the questions genuinely easy — you are measuring effort and communication, not intelligence.
- 2
Clone it and hand over edit rights
For each candidate, clone the doc, grant edit access, and say: let me know when it's done. That is the whole instruction.
Pro tip A shared doc rather than a form makes it feel low-friction while still capturing full written expression.
Watch out Do not chase them. The absence of chasing is what makes the effort signal valid.
- 3
Read the non-response as the first result
About 50% of candidates will not complete it. That in itself is the answer — it filters out people who are not serious and people with low levels of give-a-damn.
Pro tip 'I forgot to do it' is a complete data point. You now know everything you need.
- 4
Score the submitted docs on three axes
For those who did complete it, grade: can they communicate compellingly, with a beginning, a middle and an end? Is it free of typos? Did they answer every question or skip some?
Pro tip Narrative structure is the axis that most predicts a seller's ability to run a discovery call.
- 5
Only then spend interview time
Interview only the candidates who passed. Live conversation is your scarcest hiring resource; spend it on people who have already proved effort and communication.
In the wild
Kazanjy sends the doc to sales applicants at Atrium. Around half never complete it, despite the questions being simple and the instruction being nothing more than 'you have edit rights, let me know when it's done'. Some come back saying they forgot.
→ Half the funnel disqualifies itself at near-zero cost to the hiring manager, and the remaining half arrives pre-scored on communication and attention to detail.
Common mistakes
Making the questions hard
Difficulty converts the screen into an aptitude test and loses the effort signal. Simple questions are precisely what makes non-completion damning.
Chasing candidates to complete it
Reminders contaminate the experiment. The whole point is to observe what a candidate does with a low-friction request and no supervision — exactly the conditions of the job.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and sales leaders screening a high-volume candidate funnel for early-stage seller and SDR roles.
Not ideal for
Extremely scarce, in-demand senior candidates whom you are courting rather than screening, and roles where written communication is irrelevant.
From the transcript
“One of the things I'm a really big fan of is job simulation especially in in sales. And so I'm a big fan of doing…”
“people to answer and you'd be shocked like the way it that how well it screens people. Like you know, 50% of people won't do…”
“You also can see whether or not people can communicate in an in a compelling fashion, right? With a beginning and a middle and an…”
“It's just like and you just clone it, give it to them. All right, you have edit rights. Let me know when it's done.”
From the episode
Founder-led sales
Pete Kazanjy (Founding Sales, Atrium)