Case Study
How Estes Group Uses CoderPad for Non-Technical Hiring: Testing Sales Skills and AI Fluency at Scale
Estes Group helps growing companies build and scale high-performing teams. For one client, Estes was leading searches across the sales organization—from junior Account Executives to managers and senior leadership.
The challenge wasn’t finding candidates. It was figuring out which ones were actually worth interviewing.
One recruiter was managing multiple open roles and a high volume of applicants. Hiring managers were spending too much time screening candidates who looked great on paper but couldn’t deliver in the interview.
CoderPad helped Estes move the signal earlier: first, prove you can sell. Then, show us how you work.
The challenge: Salespeople are good at selling themselves
That’s part of what makes sales hiring hard.
A polished resume, a strong personality and a great interview can make someone look like a great hire. Salespeople are trained to pitch—and that includes pitching themselves.
Estes was seeing the downside firsthand. Candidates with strong resumes and recruiter screens were regularly reaching the VP of Sales only to fall apart in the first conversation.
Salespeople know how to interview. They know how to tell a good story and say the right things. The challenge is figuring out what’s underneath that.
For the VP of Sales, that meant a calendar full of low-value interviews.
I was spending a huge amount of my week interviewing people where I knew within the first ten minutes it wasn’t going anywhere. After enough of those conversations, you start losing confidence in the whole funnel.
Eventually, the pressure to fill roles started outweighing the signal. Candidates moved forward despite doubts. Some became hires who didn’t last.
Estes needed to find out much earlier: Can this person actually do the job?
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Show us you can sell…before we pass you to the hiring manager
Estes added CoderPad Qualify at the front of the funnel.
The prompt is simple: Give us your elevator pitch. Why should we hire you? You have five minutes.
For a salesperson, it's a fundamental test.
Can they communicate clearly? Get to the point? Make a compelling argument? Sell their value?
Instead of trying to infer those skills from a resume, Estes gets to see them before putting another meeting on the calendar.
If you’re applying for a sales role, you should be able to sell yourself. It’s not a trick question. We’re giving candidates a chance to show us the exact skill we’re hiring them for.
Fewer candidates. Much better conversations.
The result: far fewer candidates need to reach the hiring manager.
And that's the point.
The candidates who do make it through are much stronger. The VP of Sales' calendar is no longer an expensive screening mechanism. It's where deeper evaluation happens with candidates who have already demonstrated the fundamentals.
I’m interviewing fewer people—and I actually want to talk to the people who make it onto my calendar. That’s a much better use of my time.
For Estes, it means one recruiter can manage multiple searches and high applicant volume without adding another layer of manual screening.
CoderPad lets me scale my judgment. I don’t need another recruiter doing screening calls all day. I can spend my time on the candidates who have earned more of it.
Testing AI fluency for sales candidates
Communication was only one part of the job Estes wanted to test.
Modern salespeople use AI to research accounts, develop messaging, personalize outreach and prospect faster. So Estes built another skill directly into the hiring process: AI fluency.
Using CoderPad Screen, candidates complete a realistic prospecting exercise. They're given target accounts and asked to build an outreach plan—and they're explicitly encouraged to use CoderPad's built-in AI Assist along the way.
The test isn't whether they use AI. It's how well they use it.
Do they give it the right context? Ask good questions? Push past generic answers? Spot bad output? Add their own judgment? Turn what AI gives them into outreach that could actually get a response?
Everyone says they’re good with AI now. That’s meaningless on its own. We want to see it. Give someone a real sales problem, give them AI and watch how they work.
CoderPad captures that process, giving Estes visibility into both the candidate's final work and how they collaborated with AI to get there.
And because the exercise is auto-graded against defined criteria, Estes doesn't have to trade scale for signal. Candidates can be evaluated consistently across a high-volume funnel, while recruiters can quickly identify the strongest submissions and spend their review time where it matters.
I don’t need to know whether someone can write an email without AI. That’s not how they’re going to work here. I need to know whether they can use AI well enough to make their work better.
From interviewing salespeople to watching them work
Together, Qualify and Screen give Estes signal on the skills that actually matter before a candidate reaches the hiring manager.
Qualify: Can they communicate? Can they sell?
Screen: Can they prospect? Can they think critically? Are they AI fluent?
Auto-grading: Can we identify that signal consistently at scale?
We’re trying to close the gap between interviewing someone and actually seeing them work. The closer we can get to the real job before we hire someone, the better.
That's the bigger opportunity for Estes: skills-based hiring doesn't stop with technical roles.
Salespeople don't need to write code to prove they can do the job. They need to sell. Prospect. Communicate. Exercise judgment. Use AI effectively.
CoderPad lets Estes see them do it before making the hire.