Teaching an old Lion how to jump through hoops!

Part of my role with the Construction News and Report Group of Companies is recruiting new sales staff for covering our many different regions. The process of screening is different then what I had experienced anywhere before, but it is something that I myself completed when I was originally hired back in 2007.

The process which I can not divulge in complete details is set up to allow people to demonstrate their true knowledge of what we do and produce measurable results. The purpose is to weed out the candidates that are great fictional writers with resumes and find a truly great sales person.

I am finding that candidates under the age of 40 are happy to take up the challenge and demonstrate their skills. The other side of the coin is I am finding sales professionals over 40 take offence to our process and have heard the term "Jumping through hoops!" used several times.

How do I encourage these potentially great employees to play the game and take a leap of faith and do what they may think is below them? Most could probably pull out a Rolodex of business cards and demonstrate their ability to sell rather quickly, however like a fine wine they expect to be appreciated based on the vintage of their grapes or really in this case their experience.

The publisher and the owner of the company always asks the same question when these great candidates come along, "Why are they no longer there?" I am guessing in most cases performance slipped either based on the changes to environment or industry where they came from or more likely you can remove a higher ranking individual and with the savings in salary hire two people to replace them.

I posted the question to my publisher today about how we could handle these candidates differently. I proposed he take them on and coax them to demonstrate their skills. I think their may be an opportunity for establishing rapport better based on the amount of grey hairs on their heads as well as overall career experience.

How does your firm/company handle the hiring process when dealing with an older candidate?